Radio One and Joe Duffy Score Well In Latest JNLR

There was little by way of good news for radio stations across Ireland in the latest JNLR results, which were made public yesterday – though RTÉ Radio One clearly stole a march on its rivals.

Overall, radio listenership was down, though not by enough to set alarm bells off in the advertising industry – on which radio depends for its revenues. The longest-running station in the country bucked the downward trend marginally, growing its national share to 23.8%. It also has 35.5% of the market in Dublin, which is an important space for advertisers. Joe Duffy’s Liveline is a big winner here, having edged its way into the second slot overall (behind Morning Ireland) at 395,000 – an increase of 24,000 year on year, and of 4,000 since the last ‘book’.

On the flip side, RTÉ saw a drop in listenership at 2fm – which had benefitted from a brief resurgence when the most recent three-monthly figures were published. The drop from 6% to 5.8% is again not sufficient to cause heart attacks out in Montrose – but the logic of the way in which the JNLR measures numbers across four three-month periods suggests that the drop was in fact larger. The question now is: will it become a trend. The station’s daily listenership has fallen by 59,000 over the year – which is a more significant hit.

2fm boss Dan Healy commented that it is not a day for panic and he is right. However, the team will have to address how to meet the challenge of recruiting new, younger listeners. Indications are that they shed older listeners but failed to recruit at the younger end of the spectrum.

Red FM in Cork is one of the success stories of recent years, with figures reportedly improving across all of their daytime shows – and 120,000 listening at different times across the day. Leading the way is Neil Prendeville with 64.000 people tuning in on a daily basis. Also on the up is 98FM in Dublin, but the other Communicorps stations fared less well. Newstalk’s daily reach has dropped from 402,000 to 367,000, and it may have been in anticipation of this that they introduced a new schedule in September. The full impact of that shift won’t be seen for some time.

Today FM has also dropped below the 400,000 mark, its new figure of 397,000 representing a drop of 56,000 listeners over the year.

There was a significant irony in the results for TXFM, which went off air finally yesterday. The alternative rock station – peopled by people who are passionate about their music – had a 3,000 increase in its listenership, from 16,000 to 19,000.