Radio Review: The JNLR figures were published this week, and so media mavens suffered their semi-annual dose of station publicity material full of what newspaper lawyers might call "partially-dubious claims, damned partially-dubious claims and statistics", writes Harry Browne.
Aided by the fact that most listeners and plenty of analysts don't quite grasp the differences between the various survey categories, PR people reached for the "reach" numbers when they suited and, less frequently, shared the "share" percentages that are more potentially meaningful about who listens how much to what.
At NewsTalk 106, management was forced to wax optimistic about tiny variations that scarcely bear statistical mention. On the other hand, Today FM is evidence that such shifts can eventually add up to success, while Dublin's Lite FM is starting to put together a run in the wrong direction.
The most unmistakably significant development is that pop music station Red FM has taken chunks out of everyone else in Cork. North-westerners appear to be gradually abandoning NWR (though most people still said they listened to it daily), but the trend is not quite so clear in other parts of the State where the franchise is soon to change hands and/or boundaries.
Radio listening is down a bit overall, perhaps because for a couple of months there some of us tended to have TV's Sky News bubbling away in the background rather than Radio 1. But frankly, I wouldn't make too much of that or any other number here: remember, the JNLR records what people said they listened to, rather than what they demonstrably did tune in to. That means name-recognition is crucial, so the ratings are even more marketing-driven than most media phenomena.
New Dublin stations like NewsTalk 106 and Spin 103.8 may be more successful than the numbers indicate, as their identities slow-burn into listeners' consciousness. Spin, I'm reasonably convinced, is doing okay with its young-adult targets, who are anyway more likely to listen later than the 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. slot that produces the JNLR's headline share figures.
It's no surprise that NewsTalk used its media slot this week to underline its perceived opportunity in posing George Hook's name against that of Matt Cooper; the latter is presiding over a definite decline - in every respect - on The Last Word (Today FM, Monday to Friday).
But if you were spinning the dial at Dublin evening drivetime this week there was no doubt which presenter was full to the brim with confidence: Philip Boucher Hayes on Five Seven Live (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday to Friday) - which didn't get a JNLR drubbing.
You can have too much of a good thing and, arguably, when it comes to confidence, sometimes Boucher Hayes's cup overfloweth. (He doesn't even seem to mind when people, understandably, call him "Myles".)
Too often you can feel his still-youthful eagerness to get the next clever question in, notwithstanding the flow of the conversation or the interviewee's last answer. There was a bit of that in Wednesday's programme when he gleefully described the UN's apparent role vis-à-vis the US as "a pooper-scooper".
However, in that same item he also skilfully used the studio presence of former Irish ambassador to the UN Noel Dorr to critique his other interviewee, Dr Gary Schmitt of the Project for a New American Century, a conservative US think-tank.
Thus, as soon as Schmitt wondered aloud if committing Indian troops to Iraq was a good idea given the question of "how well that will sit with Muslims", Boucher Hayes turned to Dorr and asked: "Do you think having Hindu troops in Iraq would be any more offensive to Iraqis than having US troops there?"
Okay, it's not hugely subtle, and perhaps perpetuates the myth that offending Iraqis or otherwise is important to the US occupiers as their conquest of Iraq begins to reap commercial benefits. Still, it wasn't bad for talk radio.
Sportscall (RTÉ Radio 1, Sunday) contained challenges about colonialism and ethnicity of a different sort. With Con Murphy in the presenter's chair, the last segment of the show dealt with one of the usual host Des Cahill's bête noires, the booing of Glasgow Rangers players by Ireland/Celtic fans at Lansdowne Road.
Now, I've never done that myself, despite the green-and-white hoops wrapped around my soul; it was particularly silly and embarrassing on the occasion when alleged Celtic fans didn't recognise that the Dane introduced as Peter Lovenkrands was patently not him and booed him as a hated Hun. Have they not got a telly?
Nonetheless, the Irish media's "shame" over the undoubtedly cruel practice, with words like "racist" and "sectarian" thrown loosely around, is misguided hype, as a caller suggested - particularly when hacks would be so cautious about using those words about, oh, say, the US war in Iraq.