Daniel said;
and the controversy over the (off-air) Gillard comments has been
inflamed by his completely disingenuous apology.

I think you are being rather disingenuous yourself.
I heard Jone apologise two or three times with a total admission of
bad taste and a full apology.

I was disappointed that the PM did not accept his apology, not
even in a minor way. She would have made a much better image for
herself if she had, instead of making a song and dance of it in parliament.

Rhosty said;
Well, my bet is, the "FOREIGN" cosy cartels, would simply fold back
to, every man for himself?
Individual bottom lines, will invariably trump the affected loyalty of insidious cartels!

Ahhh, to do what you would like, you have to have a market that is
struggling to sell everything it has.
The oil market is at maximum stretch. There is no slack in the system
and the only place where there is is the natural gas market.
The info I was told today, is that the industry is not interested in
vehicle conversion to CNG.
They prefer we buy electric cars and buy their electricity.
A reply I got from Martin Ferguson, indicates that the govt does not
know how much gas we would need to convert the car & truck fleet.
I think that means they have the same opinion as the industry.

If we put the screws onto the oil industry, they would be happy to
shut the rest of the refineries and go home.

@ shadow minister: I have no idea where you got the idea that I wrote a cume counts the audience twice. I think you took your definition of 'cume' from Wikipedia. which talks about quarter-hour periods.

However, the latest ratings of the Jones show show a cume 455,000 PER WEEK. In other words, roughly 20% of Sydney's radio audience listen to Jones once a week. In terms of listening ears, 455,000 Sydneysiders tuned into Jones on average EACH WEEK during the last ratings period - in other words, about 89,000 per day.

I also never said to dismiss anyone over the age of 60. I'm 61. Many pensioners (superannuitants included) do not spend the way a Triple-M audience, for example, does. In my media experience, advertisers are very canny about where their advertising goes and Media Buyers scrutinise ratings closely. So if a potential audience aren't great buyers, advertisers won't go there.

Jones' influence is mainly restricted to the Western Suburbs of Sydney, where he can increase the Liberal vote by a few percent - often enough to make a difference. That's the only reason he is taken seriously.

He's no journalist and not even a reasonable commentator - he's what is called a pundit.

Some of the things he says are totally outrageous or false but few are allowed to challenge him on air.

In the end, as they said in The Wharf Review, he's just a peddler of incontinence aids and Funeral Homes, telling a particular group what they want to hear and manipulating people through their emotions - mainly those who are addicted to outrage and like to have their feelings justified.

In response to "Paul R', without dismissing the general thrust of your comments, I have to correct your interpretation of Cume.

When calculating Cume, a listener is counted only once across a week, which means you can't divide a Cume of 455,000 by 5 and suggest that the resulting figure is the daily number of listeners. If you listen to 2GB breakfast each day monday-friday, you still only count in the Cume figure one time.

To suggest 89,000 people listen to Jones per day assumes that every one of his cumulative audience listen on only one occasion during each week, which not even the harshest of Jones critics would suggest would be accurate.

It would be like saying 1,000,000 cars cross the Sydney Harbour Bridge each week monday-friday, therefore an average of 200,000 cross per day. Clearly incorrect.

At 455,000 listeners per week, Jones is, whether you love him or hate him, one of the most listened to broadcasters in Australia.

Perceptive article. Just a couple of queries.

Re: “There is only one way the stated goal of the social media campaigners to have Jones and Sandilands sacked can occur. That is if their ratings become uncompetitive.”

Is this really the stated goal? For some maybe. Different campaigners seem to have have different goals. Destroy the Joint, for example, seeks to “unite us all to stop hate speech, sexism and bigotry and along the way stun business with the power of ordinary Australians.”

They do not want to see Jones sacked or 2GB go broke, just have the station moderate its hate speech. Some claim this is happening.

Others, however, do want Jones off the air completely. This has already happened at 2AY, 2QN, Territory FM and others which have dumped his show. So his total reach has dropped significantly.

For him to lose his show on 2GB is not necessarily just a matter of ratings.

If a small company finds itself having to deal with too many complaints and negative feedback from the public it may become just too hard to continue advertising with 2GB, even if the ratings remain high and sales are good.

Similarly, a large company like Mercedes Benz may not want to risk its national image by associating with a figure of scorn even if local sales generated among Jones’ Sydney listeners remain satisfactory.

If these become problems for 2GB, they will find a way to move him. Yes, he is a shareholder, but only a minority one.