THE LATEST JOINT National Listenership Survey (JNLR) has revealed a fall in the numbers tuning in to RTÉ’s weekend radio programmes while there is better news for the likes of Today’s FM Ray D’Arcy and Matt Cooper.
JNLR figures released yesterday show that of the 85 per cent of Irish adults who listen to the radio on an average day many are tuning in to news programmes later in the day rather than in the morning.
Many listeners now opt for some light breakfast entertainment in the form of Ian Dempsey and Ray D’Arcy on Today FM who both gained 6,000 listeners each in the last three months to increase their overall listenership to 189,000 and 255,000 respectively.
Its drivetime programme ‘The Last Word’ with Matt Cooper showed an increase of 8,000 listeners in the last three months to 174,000.
Unsurprisingly, RTÉ dominates the figures with programmes across its stations accounting for 18 of the top 20 most listened to programmes in the country.
There are gains for ‘Drivetime’ (up 14,000 in the last three months to 259,000 listeners) and ‘Liveline’ (up 11,000 to 428,000)
But weekend shows like Miriam O’Callaghan’s ‘Miriam Meets’ is down 16,000 to 271,000 and ‘The Marian Finucane Show’ is down 23,000 to 341,000.
These figures account for listeners in the period between July 2011 and June 2012 when compared to April 2011 and March 2012.
There were gains for George Lee’s Saturday morning programme, ‘The Business’ which was gained 4,000 listeners while there will be little surprise that ‘Morning Ireland’ remains the most listened to programme in the country with 444,000 but this is down 5,000 listeners.
Some of them may have flocked to Newstalk’s ‘Breakfast’ which has 133,000 listeners though this is itself down 5,000 listeners in the last three months although it has gained 23,000 listeners in the last two years overall.
Other Newstalk programmes such as ‘The Right Hook’ with George Hook showed no change although it has gained 11,000 listeners in the last year.
‘Moncrieff’ lost 5,000 listeners in the last three months but has increased its listenership by 4,000 in the last year.
Newstalk’s popular sports programme ‘Off the Ball’ reached 48,000 listeners, an increase of 5,000 listeners in a year-on-year comparison which makes it the number one programme on national radio at that time of the day (7pm to 10pm)
In terms of market share, RTÉ Radio has 23 per cent share followed by Today FM with 9.9 per cent, Newstalk with 4.6 per cent. In Dublin, FM104 has a market share of 12.2 per cent, followed by Q102 which has an 8.3 per cent share.
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