Attaining the number one spot is the aim of top radio stations in Melbourne. The Melbourne area has many top radio stations in Australia that offers the best in entertainment, sports, news, and music. They range from the commercial to online and digital stations that provides numerous listeners a variety of programs. Music genres such as rock, classics and the likes dominate in many stations. They keep evolving over time to meet the needs of their listeners who are in different age categories.

The city of Melbourne was dominated by commercial radio stations such as FOX FM.

Smooth FM has built up a strong challenge for the top spot.

The Smooth FM Story

Today, the battle for the top spot has been won by Smooth FM displacing the Southern Cross Austereo’s Fox FM to become the commercial station that is the most listened to in the city of Melbourne. Nova’s Smooth FM went up 0.1 shares to a high of 9.5 percent in survey five.

NOVA Entertainment radio networks are known for their creativity and they didn’t disappoint with Smooth 91.5 FM. It currently plays a genre of mood music or easy listening songs from the late 1950s to the early 60s including those in today’s digital era. A variety of genres ranging from jazz, pop, and Standards are played on the station for listener’s delight.

Before rebranding to what it is today, the radio station has gone through different phases. From being a talk and music station, it was transformed in 2006 into a music format and later to Classic Rock in 2010 and targeting an audience of age from 35 to 54 years.

After maintaining the Vega brand and Classic rock 91.5 for which it was known for a couple of years, it was rebranded to Smooth FM to have a more focused music area and targeting audience between 35 to 54 years. In 2012 Michael Buble was named the face of the radio station.

For the first time in March 2017 things paid off for the Melbourne-based radio station to rank high and now the most listened to radio station in Melbourne.

Gold 104.3 moved to the second spot amassing a 9.1% audience share to leave the former top spot holder in the third place with an 8.8% audience share.


The NOVA Entertainment collections are doing quite well in their ratings. Nova 100.3 FM got a little increase of 0.1 points to an 8% share to come into the fourth position in Melbourne’s most listened to radio station.

The least ranked commercial radio station in Melbourne was Kiis FM with a 6.1% share after dropping 0.3 points to fall from 6.4% to 6.1%.

Survey 2018

In the first radio survey of 2018, Smooth FM in Melbourne has maintained a good position so far. The brand has gone up 2.5 to an audience share of 10.3%. The rise can be attributed to the active Melbourne market compared to that of Sydney.

On talk programs, 3AW got the highest overall share of 13.2 in spite of dropping 1.8. Smooth FM also maintained a competitive form with a double-digit to show for its performance.

In the losers end, Kiis was down by 1.8 to have an audience share of 5.7%.

For the breakfast timeslot, Smooth FM maintained the second spot behind Fox rising from the last survey of 7.7% to reach 8.2%, thanks to the radio sensations of Mike Perso and Jennifer Hanson.

Smooth FM which maintained the Drive lineup rose 0.4 to reach 9.8% in the timeslot. The Drive war saw Byron Webb managing to overtake Gold FM’s, Gavin Miller. Smoot FM is gradually closing up on the gap with Fox FM for the top spot in the Drivetime slot.

Drive favorites, Tommy Little and Carrie Bickmore including Kate Langbroek and David Hughes kept the winning going with a 10.5% audience share. Gold FM was third after falling 0.5 points to reach 9.7% just behind Smooth FM.

Nova rose from 7.9% to 8.1% in spite of its stability in the Kate Tim and Marty show. The likes of ABC and 3AW either got little improvement or maintained their stability.

The feat achieved by Smooth FM in getting to the top spot shouldn’t be treated as strange.

Quality broadcasting of the Nova Entertainment group is never in doubt across cities in Australia.