TXFM pulls in non-Phantom listeners

TXFM, the niche music station that replaced Phantom FM in March, is attracting "non-Phantom" listeners to the service. The Dublin station recorded an audience of 22,000 in the latest Joint National Listenership Research (JNLR) survey, up from Phantom's last figure of 15,000.

As the fieldwork for the JNLR is carried out over a rolling 12-month period, three-quarters of the survey period relates to when Phantom was still on the air. But the upward nudge in listenership still points to a positive rather than negative reaction to TXFM’s launch.

“It’s not going to be profitable any time soon,” says Today FM chief executive Peter McPartlin of TXFM, which operates under the wing of Today FM on the same floor of Communicorp’s Dublin headquarters, Marconi House. But the figure of 22,000 means the station is on its way to reaching the 25,000 listenership target that it has told shareholders that it hopes to make within a year of the relaunch.

In the world of indie music radio, the difference between 15,000 listeners and 25,000 listeners “could be the difference between going out of business and surviving”, says McPartlin.

Back in 2009, when Communicorp first came on board as an investor, Phantom FM had a listenership of 29,000, but McPartlin doesn't envisage TXFM getting back to that level.

“It’s a different landscape now compared to 2009,” he says, noting the proliferation of online listening options since then. “Even at 22,000, it’s probably too early to say we will get to 25,000,” he says.

The most listened-to show on TXFM is Joe Donnelly’s TXFM Drive, which broadcasts from 3pm to 7pm, to 9,000 listeners, while its other daytime shows, Cathal Funge’s TXFM Breakfast and Claire Beck’s TXFM Daytime, both have 8,000 listeners.

The numbers tail off in the evenings. One frustration for TXFM – and for any station operating a revolving roster in weekday slots – is that the JNLR survey does not give it an individual listenership breakdown for the various specialist music shows that go out between 10pm and midnight. Social media responses and other feedback to the station, however, indicates the Nialler9 show that airs on Thursdays is the most popular of these.

Encouragingly, TXFM’s own “warts-and-all” research – “and there were some warts, naturally” – suggests that 80 per cent of its audience is comprised of Phantom listeners, but about 20 per cent are “brand new” listeners who never tuned into the Phantom.

“They felt it was a club that they weren’t allowed into,” says McPartlin.