ARN's youth brand CADA reveals scaled back line-up for 2024

CADA, ARN's youth-focused brand, has revealed its 2024 line-up with ARN digital manager Sophie Nathan to host CADA Breakfast, while K-Sera will return to host the drive-time and evening slots.  

The changes follow a clean-out of talent last year, which saw the breakfast team - Kian, Avneesha and Yaz – and breakout stars Flex and Froomes all depart the station. 

The scaled-back line-up will see Nathan, who prior to joining CADA was a host on New Zealand’s The Edge radio station, manage the breakfast show on weekdays. K-Sera will host the drive slot as well as the award-winning K-Sera & The Dirty Dozen music programme in the evenings. 

ARN’s chief content officer, Duncan Campbell, told Mediaweek at the time that the changes reflected the challenging economic conditions. "The achievement we were getting from an audience perspective wasn’t translating into the desired commercial outcomes,” he said.

Campbell said the "scaled back" line-up in 2024 would not impact the brand's experience for listeners. 

“It won’t sound like a cut-down, badly put-together radio station,” said Campbell. “It will sound like CADA, like a proper radio station. It will have fewer resources behind the scenes, but that doesn’t mean that the output will suffer at all.”

“There’ll be some new voices on air, but it will still be CADA. We remain committed to the brand, and when times improve, and the economic cycle comes around, then ARN will reinvest in CADA so it can realise its full potential," Campbell told Mediaweek. 

December's departures followed a strategic “reshape” of the CADA content team in May. At that time, ARN said the changes aimed to focus on the on-air talent and resulted in a small number of roles being impacted.

CADA, which launched in 2022, is ARN's youth-focused brand, which positions as Australia’s Home of Hip Hop and R&B. 

See also: ARN’s youth-focused station CADA in trouble as economic woes trigger redundancies