Radio 538 is sinking deeper and deeper into the quicksand. The former market leader has its worst score since 2001, or 21 years (!) ago. “There seems to be a real panic right now.”
Edwin Evers parked Radio 538 on a mountain slope on the day of his departure, without applying the handbrake. The station’s demise is final now that it has recorded its lowest market share in 21 years. Just before the weekend, the score for the most recent measurement period, December-January, was announced: 7.6 percent market share†
Total panic
The last time Radio 538 recorded an even lower market share was in the period December-January 2001, when the station came in at 7.5 percent. Four stations did better than Radio 538 last December-January, namely NPO Radio 2 (18%), Radio 10 (11.1 percent), Qmusic (10.6 percent) and Sky Radio (9.5 percent).
That Radio 538 is now at the bottom of the listening figure top five is a cause for great concern at Talpa Radio, radio expert Patrick Kicken knows. “On the Bergweg in Hilversum there seems to be total panic. Rightly so. How can you squander a radio station like that,” he writes in his column speaking tube†
musical troop
According to Patrick, the music policy of Radio 538 is a mess. “It seems that half a year ago people already warned that if you keep making such a mess of it musically, 538 would fall below the 8 percent market share in the new year. And look there: 7.6 percent. For ever the number 1 in the Netherlands.”
He continues: “In the context of the merger with RTL, the value of this station has also fallen considerably, it must tolerate both Radio 10 and Sky Radio indoors, which costs perhaps a tenth of the entire personnel and marketing budget as 538. morning show, without disc jockeys.”
Wietze the Hunter
According to Patrick, it is also a ‘train disaster’ that Frank Dane was so abruptly fired as a morning jock. Wietze de Jager and Klaas van der Eerden are now in place. “Without a decent new jingle package, without a pre-buzz. And then let those guys start again in the months when 538 invariably have a hard time.”
“This doesn’t deserve the beauty prize, but it does deserve the ignorance award. So many programmatic errors in a row, I know people who have been fired for less.”