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IT’S THE DAY when all the radio stations compete to tell everyone how successful they are.
The latest radio listenership figures - known as the JNLRs – were released this afternoon, and within minutes, employees at every radio station in the country were poring through the vast amount of statistics within its pages.
Because there’s so much information, there are a lot of figures that stations can spin to present themselves in a positive light to advertisers and listeners.
The report covers the 12 months from April 2013 to March 2014, and showed that 83 per cent of all adults listen to the radio every weekday. Just over half (57 per cent) listen to a local or regional station, while just under half (45 per cent) listen to a national station.
Irish people are a radio-lovin’ folk: on average, we listen to almost 4 hours per day between 7am and 7pm on a weekday.
National radio stations are the most popular in Dublin, while local and regional stations do best in the north-west, Cork, and the south-west regions (and particularly among younger people aged 15-34, who listen to them a lot more than they do to national stations).
The JNLR/Ipsos MRBI report notes that in many areas local radio stations reach more than 40 per cent of the local adult population every day, while in Kerry, Mayo and north Donegal, more than half the population tunes in every day
One of the biggest changes in Irish radio in the past year was the shake-up at 2FM which saw many presenters axed or given less-prominent slots to allow new shows to come through. The station’s boss Dan Healy said it was too soon to see any changes in the listenership figures. However, he said, “we have seen progress in the Dublin market compared to this time last year”.
Here’s a quick round-up of some of the big results.
Seán versus Pat:
You know Pat Kenny moved to Newstalk, right? Did we mention that? Well, he’s still not quite there a year, but so far his mid-morning breakfast show is now at 114,000 listeners every day, up by 18,000.
Meanwhile Today with Seán O’Rourke on RTÉ Radio One is down by 15,000 listeners – but he won’t be crying into his microphone just yet. The show still gets 312,000 listeners, putting it comfortably within the top ten most listened to programmes on Irish radio.
The Breakfast Club
Morning Ireland on RTE Radio One continues to hold its position as the big daddy of Irish radio with 440,000 listeners – even though it lost 5,000 listeners – making it the most popular programme in the country yet again.
Further up the dial, Newstalk Breakfast presented by Ivan Yates and Chris Donoghue saw its listenership increase by 16,000 to 137,000.
At the lighter end of things, Ian Dempsey has 189,000 listeners every day on Today FM, compared to 124,000 for 2FM’s Breakfast.
Mid-morning talk kings
Ray D’Arcy saw his figures on Today FM fall to 218,000 listeners, but he remains significantly ahead of Ryan Tubridy on 2FM which has 148,000 listeners, and which also saw a decline.
Evening talk shows
In the battle for commuters on the way home from work, RTE Radio One’s Drivetime with Mary Wilson continues to lead the way with 241,000 listeners, although the figures fell by some 19,000, followed by The Last Word with Matt Cooper on Today FM with 157,000 listeners every day and The Right Hook with 121,000.
The Quiet Man
Ronan Collins has slowly but surely built up his audience to 221,000 listeners every day on what has typically been a weird makeshift slot on RTE Radio One between the Today programme and the News at One. His try-anything approach to music is clearly winning over his audience.
National stations
There was very little change in the overall listenership of the national stations. When respondents were asked which national station they had listened to yesterday, 24 per cent said RTE Radio One (which was no change on the previous figures. Twelve per cent listened to Today FM, a fall of one percentage point. Ten per cent listened to 2FM (also down one), 9 per cent to Newstalk (no change) and 4 per cent to Lyric FM.
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The Elite in this country are not going to take their foot off the ordinary persons neck until we get up off our knees
Well said!
We have some way to go before we even get to our knees.
The most likely scenario is stagflation (low growth, high inflation) for the rest of this decade, and even beyond.
That will mean a few bank bail-ins, such as in Cyprus, so be very careful with your savings, if you have any.
Oh, and an austerity budget each year too.
Look out below.
2014? We’re barely surviving in 2013, another year of austerity will totally sink the country!
I really don’t think people realise that austerity is permanent. Even if we reach a stage when we can balance our incomings and outgoings, every spare cent will be used to pay rich people’s gambling debts for generations. There seems to be a fallacy that when the bailout ends our trouble will be over. The day our mighty government legalised wealthy people’s gambling debts ensured permanent austerity for ordinary people.
Lately I’m just feeling compelled to leave this link in places like this:
http://thechatteringmagpie14.blogspot.ie/2013/07/the-emperor-has-new-clothes.html
We export or starve, its that simple. Creating parasite jobs such as water meter installers and readers is a cop out way of governing the nation and only business large and small have ever created real jobs so get the obstacles such as petty EUSSR rules out of the way and let them get on with it.
“We export or starve, its that simple.” Nonsense. Ireland produces far more food than it consumes.
George,
The potato famine was a long time ago. We produce an excess of food which we export. In the event of Irish people starving as Morticia seems to think is imminent, that food supply would be retained in the country or the government would quickly find themselves removed from power, probably violently.
Morticia also doesn’t seem to accept the role of government in creating jobs. The private sector will never provide an adequate supply of sustainable jobs for the people. How could they when the objective of private enterprise is to produce as few jobs as possible and pay them as little as possible in order to maximize profit.
The necessity of the state intervening to plug the massive gaps in the free market system and create employment for its people was well understood from the 1930s onwards. Post WW II (near) full employment was the norm in the U.S, UK, Europe, Australia, Canada etc. which rarely had unemployment higher than 2% and where prosperity was far more equally shared. The government employed millions of it’s own citizens in these countries and did so with newly created money from their own central banks where necessary.
Since the 1980s however, self serving neo liberal economics has gained world wide traction which sees an elite get ever richer while they peddle myths to the rest of the population such as “We must balance the books” , “Austerity is the only alternative”, “Banks are the engines of growth”, “ Don’t restrict the markets with regulation”, “ only business large and small have ever created real jobs “ etc etc.
Obviously the use of a ‘figure of speech’ can be confusing for some, but where does all the magic money to fund the generosity of our various govenrments come from ? Do we have a big collection box somewhere for donations or do we sell stuff abroad to bring in the few bob.
Morticia, apologies if I read too much into an off the cuff figure of speech. We can export goods to generate money that is true. Real sovereign countries can also create their own currency to fund a budget deficit if the so wish. The U.S does not need to borrow dollars in the financial markets. It can simply create them by pressing keys on a computer in the Federal reserve. Ireland handed that power over to the ECB when we joined the Euro and are paying massively for that mistake now. The ECB has created over a trillion euros in that’s past few years and distributed it to the European banks at extremely low interest. Ireland has been forced to massively hike our taxes and shred our social systems to get the funding at a much higher which the ECB can create on a whim. This is neo liberal economics in a action.
“neo-liberal economics” what exactly does that mean????
the UK and US employed the theory of “Quantitive Easing”, the US more than the UK, especially considering all their austerity cuts in comparison with the US.
The ECB should do so aswell without the restraints!
Each job is worth 20 k, looking at the jobseekers app ,its hard to see a job paying more than 18k..that includes some trades ie.welding/painters/panelbeaters etc..If the race to the bottom continues the country will never recover.
Too many employers taking advantage..if you cant pay a living wage you shouldnt be in business.
How is someone going to be able to spend on minimun rate..as a poster said on another thread recently there are over two million medical cards in issue..so apart from the approx 350,000 on the register there are over 1,750.000 people who cant afford basic healthcare from their wages/salaries.
If thats not a damning indictment on a country..what is?
The race to the bottom benefits no one.
I hear what you say but I absolutely despise your attitude!
forgive me if I’m wrong but the way I interpreted your last comment was “work pay = x”, “welfare et al = x + 1″, why should I get out of bed?!??
please tell me I’m wrong?!?
wrong end of the stick Pat.Can you explain to me how having almost 2 1/2 million people dependent on welfare to some extent is benefitting the country.Only people the minimun wage benefits is the employer, who is effectively subsidising their wage bill via FIS etc
I know from experience that the working poor who have allmost no spending power after paying the essentials are paying the price.!
If you have no discretionary spending because of low wages/high taxes..(relatively) and stealth taxes..how can you lift the local economy?
Everyone cant earn 50k+but surely a worker is entitled to a living wage in one of the most expensive countries in Europe!
I am sure IBEC will have a counter agreement soon. “Austerity” call it by the correct name a Recessionist policy
“argument” not agreement.
“indirect taxation or other income streams instead” In other words introduce further regressive taxes that screw the workers, poor and unemployed and don’t tax the incomes of the rich!
A suggestion IEA and Noonan make 2013 the last budget of austerity otherwise there will be no Ireland to rescue.
Hopefully someone from the business communirty can answer a question relevant to this item. How much money do we need in circulation to create a job? I was told by a person [expert in such matters] that each £100,000 in circulation supported a real job but that was in c1984, is there a more recent figure? With so many ‘jobs’ piggy-backing on manufacturing it would be nice to figure out where our priorities lie.
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