Marriage referendum and ‘evil God’ digital hits for RTÉ

The marriage equality referendum, the Late Late Toy Show and Gay Byrne's interview with Stephen Fry were among the biggest drivers of traffic to RTÉ's online properties last year.

The tragic deaths at Berkeley and Carrickmines were the most-read news articles on RTÉ’s digital news platforms in 2015 with 913,000 and 686,000 page views respectively, while the marriage equality referendum count received 668,000 page views.

The biggest single day for online traffic to RTÉ's digital news platforms was Saturday, May 23rd, the day of the count, with 977,000 unique visitors to RTÉ. ie and the RTÉ News Now app, clocking up 6.8 million page views.

The second busiest day of the year for RTÉ's digital news platforms was Sunday, October 11th, with 871,000 unique browsers and 6.5 million page views. On that day, news broke of the killing of Garda Tony Golden in Co Louth, while sports fans also logged on for the Poland v Ireland soccer game and analysis of Ireland's Rugby World Cup match against France.

The biggest news events for RTÉ overlap with those on IrishTimes.com, where the three most-read stories in 2015 were a report by Simon Carswell on the Berkeley balcony deaths, a report on the death of actor Maureen O'Hara and a personal piece by TV3 political editor Ursula Halligan ahead of the marriage referendum about growing up gay in a homophobic Ireland.

RTÉ said its "surprise hit" of 2015 was a news article with the headline: "Health warning over drying washing indoors", which received two spikes in traffic during 2015, having being picked up on social media across Asia in January 2015 and again towards the end of the year, when it went viral on Facebook.

On RTÉ's YouTube channel, the biggest hit by some distance was a clip of Fry's appearance on Byrne's The Meaning of Life, in which the comedian and broadcaster outlined his views on an "evil" God, notching up 6.6 million views in the process.

February and March were the busiest months on the RTÉ Player, thanks to the Six Nations, the Cheltenham festival and EastEnders' Who Killed Lucy Beale? storyline.

Across the year, the soaps (EastEnders, Fair City, Home & Away and Neighbours), as well as RTÉ News, the Late Late Show and the Sunday Game Live were the most popular shows on RTÉ Player, with the Late Late Toy Show attracting the highest volume of streams at 180,000.