Listening figures sound another sour note for troubled `Radio 1%'

If this week's JNLR/MRBI listening figures for April to June are to be believed - and they are, effectively, the only numbers in town - those countless taxis sporting the station's logo are virtually the only cars on the road with Radio Ireland on, as it were.

"Radio 1 Per Cent" took a beating in the media this week, with its tiny market share surprising even some of its more sneering critics. The numbers came as little shock to insiders at the station: Radio Ireland's own research has shown a similar audience size to that revealed in the JNLR.

Straw-graspers at the station reckon that the audience is a bit larger now than it was during the research period, which covers roughly its first three months of operation. When they cop themselves on, they realise there is really only one direction to move from 1 per cent, and Radio Ireland is moving in that direction far too slowly.

Financial losses are already mounting faster than anticipated, and the pre-launch forecast of profitability within three years has been quietly revised. However, despite inevitable arguments among executives about the station's future direction, none of the backers appears likely to desert this struggling ship: they still regard it as a promising long-term investment.

Media comments from Georgina Caraher of Young's Advertising, who said the station had just one week to sort itself out - likely to involve a relaunch and a new name, she said - only served to get backs up at Radio Ireland. Management there is resolved to get the job done in more like the next six or seven weeks.

Whatever about the name, though, the scale of changes likely in the autumn schedule and the marketing blitz to accompany them will indeed look very like a relaunch. For the last month or so, an agency working for Radio Ireland has been carrying out the most intensive market research in the history of Irish radio.

When the results come in at the beginning of September, everything is up for grabs. The new schedule will be shaped with care around contours dictated by the market research.

It's a long way from the "we know our audience/we are our audience" comments of chairman John McColgan just six months ago.

McColgan and company are doing their best not to look panicked. Clearly, though, nerves really started jangling when the three-month courtship of Gerry Ryan ended with 2FM's midmorning star spurning one whopper of an engagement ring. In the end Ryan preferred, in RTE, a suitor offering less cash, but who can make him a TV star.

Without question, had they landed him for the autumn, this week's numbers could be quite credibly dismissed as BG, Before Gerry.

Not everyone agrees that the station stands condemned. Aidan Dunne, media director at McConnell's Advertising, who has bought time for clients on Radio Ireland "at the right price", says the JNLR report reveals an audience that is "small and perfectly formed".

He observes that even a relatively small listenership means "a quarter of a million people a week are listening, which is a fair old crowd. And they're demographically good", predominantly young and middle-class.

The apparent bias toward males in the station's audience is, for whatever reason, typical of most new ventures, Dunne says, and also reflects Radio Ireland's strengths in sports and current-affairs coverage. "If this is the foundation, as it grows up the audience would be very attractive to advertisers," Dunne says.

A very large audience, in the face of competition from RTE and buoyant local stations, was probably never on the cards, but the industry should realise it's not necessary, he says, if the listeners are the right ones.

The irony that he is more upbeat than most station insiders is not lost on Dunne, who recognises the dangers in the prevailing mood of crisis: "Lack of internal confidence kills companies more quickly than cash-flow problems." Unfortunately for the sake of that confidence, Radio Ireland's best-received programmes are concentrated in low-rent evening and weekend time slots, where the market share reaches 3 per cent. The all-important daytime housewife is conspicuous by her absence: the JNLR figure is 0 per cent.

The station has arguably been at its best with irreverent weekend revues Murray and Mackay and Sunday Supplement. Something approaching devotion is expressed by people when evening presenters Donal Dineen and John Kelly are mentioned.

Couldn't some of this be imported to where it counts? Paddy Murray and Liam Mackay would reportedly be keen to host a weekday programme, in the established radio tradition of morning shows. Wouldn't John Kelly's impeccable taste, musical knowledge, charming manner, sexy voice and media profile make him the housewife's choice?

At least one industry observer thinks so. "It's mid-season and half the team is injured. Put your best utility player in the key position. Get John Kelly out of bed early and put him on at 9.30 a.m."

The possibility has been considered in Upper Abbey Street. But thus far, it appears, Kelly is uncomfortable with the restrictions that nervous programmers would feel compelled to impose on a prime-time programme; Kelly's Eclectic Ballroom blend of blues, jazz, ethnic, folk and rock would be diluted.

The example of a summer-morning music show hosted by the discerning Karl Tsigdinos, which was somewhat adulterated after a few brilliant days, when executives stepped in with a playlist, will hardly have encouraged Kelly.

Its highest-paid presenter, Eamon Dunphy, star of early-evening drive-time, arouses more mixed emotions in Radio Ireland, as elsewhere. The recent contempt-of-court hearing, where the station apologised profusely for comments made on air by Dunphy before the verdict in the De Rossa libel trial, is regarded as the latest in a litany of Eamon-induced troubles that include a studio separation from his erstwhile co-host, Ann Marie Hourihane.

If Dunphy's programme, The Last Word, succeeded more often in being feisty and controversial, he would be more readily forgiven these transgressions. He seems to lack the confidence for a good onair argument, preferring sometimes boring interviews with people he agrees with about pet topics. The JNLR report says his listenership is the same size as Kelly's, extraordinary given that he runs from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., with Kelly in the TV-dominated 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. slot.

The torpor of The Last Word, which has even shed most of its musical content, shows how hard it is to legislate for these things. One Radio Ireland executive recently compared the station's output with its IRTC submission, and told his colleagues that far from having gone poppier and more downmarket than promised, the programming is actually more worthy and turgid.

The morning current-affairs programme, Daybreak, is another case in point. It dropped music from its brief before it even went on air, then the short'n'snappy "news-talk" format gradually gave way to interviews and discussions similar to, but often longer than, on RTE Radio 1's Morning Ireland. It's quite good, but it doesn't pose a sufficient alternative to draw listeners from RTE's better-resourced news coverage. The ratings are particularly disappointing.

Further disappointment became public this week with a Phoenix report that Emily O'Reilly will leave Daybreak because of the anti-familial hours. But her Radio Ireland colleagues are confident she wants to stay, though perhaps in another role.

Whatever that is, commercial reality dictates that it will be in a very different daytime schedule, likely to be "market-driven", lighter, full of thirty-something tunes, with a more unified personality and more discipline in what it expects from particular programmes. Perhaps it will follow the lead of Dublin's FM104, another "failure" at start-up, but for a slightly older audience and with a bit more "public-service" residue.

The other scenario, call it "the Kelly alternative", in which Radio Ireland tries to carve out a niche as a high-quality music-led station catering to the tastes of an elite minority, is probably too dangerous for executives to contemplate.