LAST UPDATE | 26 Jul 2018

IVAN YATES HAS overtaken Pat Kenny as Newstalk’s most listened to radio host, according to the latest JNLR listenership figures.

Yates’s programme The Hard Shoulder gained 8,000 listeners since the last figures were published in April. The bump pushes the former politician up to 153,000 listeners, fractionally ahead of Pat Kenny on 152,000.

Here’s how things looked across the Newstalk schedule:

• Newstalk Breakfast – reach 126,000 (flat book-on-book, up 7,000 year-on-year)
• Pat Kenny Show – reach 152,000, an all-time high (up 4,000 book-on-book, 1,000 year-on-year)
• Lunchtime Live (Ciara Kelly) – reach 102,000 (up 3,000 book-on-book, up 4,000 year-on-year)
• Moncrieff – reach 87,000 (up 4,000 book-on-book, up 10,000 year-on-year)
• Hard Shoulder (Ivan Yates) – reach 153,000 (up 8,000 book-on-book, up 23,000 year-on-year)
• Off The Ball – reach 57,000 (up 3,000 book-on-book, up 6,000 year-on-year)

Newstalk’s operations director Chris Doyle said the results for The Pat Kenny Show and Off The Ball represented “all time high figures”.

RTÉ

RTÉ and Today FM joined Newstalk in talking up their gains following the release of the new figures.

Daytime programmes across both RTÉ Radio 1 and 2FM show gains.

• Morning Ireland is up 7,000 listeners in the last quarter to 438,000
• Ryan Tubridy has also seen a rise of the same amount over the last quarter to 311,000
• Today with Sean O’Rourke is up 12,000 in the last three months – rising to 307,000
• Ray D’Arcy and Drivetime climbed 14,000 and 2,000 listeners respectively, in the last quarter measured.
• The News at One is up 21,000 year on year to 346,000

On 2FM, there were jumps for Breakfast Republic (up by 8,000 year-on-year to 186,000), Tracy Clifford (up 10,000 year-on-year to 134,000) and Eoghan McDermott (up 26,000 year-on-year to 144,000).

The Nicky Byrne Show was up 4,000 year-on-year at 148,000 listeners. Dan Hegarty’s The Alternative is up 2,000 year-on-year to 12,000.

Dan Healy, head of RTÉ 2FM, told TheJournal.ie that there was much to celebrate.

“Those people who said there was no future for the station know nothing about radio. In radio, you fail quickly and recover slowly.

“It’s still a project and it’s got a lot more work to do, but we’re reaching 15-34 year olds because we have unique content – we were told that streaming would be the death of 2FM, no it’s fucking not.

We’ve shown that when we’re funded, we can create Irish audiences.

Tom McGuire, the head of RTÉ Radio One, said that the results were pleasing because it showed that Irish people had engaged with the broadcaster during a heavy news cycle.

Today FM

Over on Today FM, The Last Word with Matt Cooper now reaches an audience of 141,000 (+3,000 on the last quarter of 2017 and +10,000 on last year) while Ian Dempsey’s show is up 4,000 listeners in the last quarter to 167,000.

Dermot and Dave’s mid-morning slot is up 5,000 to 167,000 in the last quarter. Newest presenter Muireann O’Connell is up 5,000 to 106,000.

“Today FM is 18 months into a new strategy and although we’ve experienced some challenges along the way, it’s great to see growth of this kind in such a short period,” CEO of Today FM Keith McCormack said.

- With reporting by Ceimin Burke 

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