Radio 1 recovers lost listeners, ratings survey shows

Resurgent Red FM overtakes Cork’s 96FM, but there’s a slide for Today FM

RTÉ Radio 1 has recovered some of the audience it lost last year, the latest snapshot of the Irish radio industry confirms.

Newstalk and RTÉ 2fm held onto recent gains, but listeners drifted away from Today FM, according to the Joint National Listenership Research (JNLR) survey for July 2014 to June 2015.

Today with Seán O'Rourke, Morning Ireland and Miriam O'Callaghan's Miriam Meets were among the Radio 1 programmes to make decent gains since the last quarterly survey. But Mr O'Rourke's show, now listened to by 317,000 people, is the only Radio 1 weekday show to have a higher audience than it did a year ago.

The John Murray Show recorded an audience of 296,000, down 17,000 year-on-year but up 9,000 compared to three months ago. Mr Murray will be making sports programming for RTÉ from this autumn, while RTÉ has confirmed that his 9am-10am slot on Radio 1 will be filled by Ryan Tubridy.

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Mr Tubridy grew his 2fm audience by 47,000 to 191,000 over the past year, helped by a slightly earlier start to his show and the waning fortunes of Today FM. His departure from 2fm is expected to allow it to concentrate on wooing younger listeners.

Newstalk Breakfast consolidated its gains over the past year, taking its total up 1,000 to 173,000, up 26,000 year-on-year, but Pat Kenny lost 8,000 listeners since the last survey, sliding back to 134,000.

The second most-popular programme on Newstalk is now The Right Hook, which has swollen its audience by 20,000 year-on-year. George Hook's 143,000 listeners overtook those of Today FM drivetime rival Matt Cooper, whose show The Last Word saw its audience fall by 12,000 since the last survey to 141,000.

The Communicorp-owned station has been hurt by the defection of Ray D’Arcy to Radio 1, where the presenter has started to grow the popularity of the slot he inherited from Derek Mooney.

Radio 1, UTV Media’s music station FM 104 and the country-themed Sunshine 106.8 FM were the winners in the Dublin radio market, but the more dramatic shift took place in Cork, where a resurgent Red FM extended its popularity and took over as the number one station.

Red FM is reaping the benefits of poaching presenter Neil Prendeville from its rival, UTV-owned 96FM. The two stations both have a market share of 20.6 per cent, but Red FM is calculated to have the higher daily audience.

Local radio stations Highland Radio, MWR, Radio Kerry and Northern Sound continue to dominate in their franchise areas, but Radio 1 remains strong nationally with a 21.6 per cent share of weekday listening.

Head of Radio 1 Tom McGuire said younger listeners had turned to the station during the marriage referendum, "and I'd like to think they stayed with us". Miriam Meets, meanwhile, is likely to have kept some of the audience that tuned in last January, when Minister for Health Leo Varadkar chose the Sunday interview show to announce that he is gay.

Mr McGuire said Mr Tubridy's new show would be very different from his previous Radio 1 programme, which ran from 2005 to 2010. "I think he's grown on the Late Late Show, I think he's grown on 2fm," he said. "It's going to be a people's show, and it's going to be a bit of fun."

Laura Slattery

Laura Slattery

Laura Slattery is an Irish Times journalist writing about media, advertising and other business topics