Nine ends 25-year partnership with Australian Traffic Network

Australian Traffic Network will no longer provide services to Nine Radio’s network of stations, including 2GB Sydney and 3AW Melbourne, ending a 25-year association.

Nine will instead produce traffic updates in-house, continuing its shake-up the radio business as it looks to save pennies and not be beholden to third party suppliers.

A syndication deal with Crocmedia was also recently terminated, citing the need for greater control over the “distribution and commercialisation” of its content.

The network has also revealed a new commercial offering for its news, sport, weather and traffic coverage, with exclusive sponsorship opportunities across all bulletins.

“Over the past six months we have been examining all parts of our business to best serve the needs of our listeners and our advertisers,” Tom Malone said, Nine Radio’s managing director.

“We’ll be doing more live traffic and more local traffic, with dedicated reporters in each market, so the reports are faster and more accurate than anywhere else.

“And the advertisers will be getting a better experience too, each report will be preceded by a 5-second brand credit, and then the client gets 30-second solus adjacency reinforcing the marketing message. We’re creating a premium environment to deliver cut through.

“Commercially, it also means the only place advertisers can buy slots on one of our four talk radio stations, or three music stations, is through the Nine sales team.

“We’ve built premium sponsorship packages across the day, and around the network, aligned with our key verticals of news, sport, weather and traffic.”

Richard Hunwick, Nine’s newly promoted director for TV and radio sales, said the opportunity for marketers was a powerful premium product.

“We have tremendous success with our existing commercial strings, but in making these changes we are giving brands a different way of cutting through,” Hunwick said.

“Exclusive sponsorships in news, sport, weather or traffic can be tailored to the client and make an excellent complement to our existing suite of recorded ads and live reads.”

Nine Radio offers a national reach of almost two million weekly listeners tuning in across talk stations 2GB, 3AW, 4BC, 6PR and music stations 2UE, MAGIC, 4BH and 6GT.