RTE Radio 1 'most listened to'

The latest radio listenship figures show a further consolidation of RTE Radio 1's position as the most listened to station in the country, and it once again accounted for the top 10 most popular shows and 18 out of the top 20.

However, the news was better for some of the station's stars than others, with Ryan Tubridy recording an 11,000 increase in listeners on top of the 13,000 he achieved in the last set of figures.

Pat Kenny was up 7,000, having grown his audience 6,000 last time out, and Marian Finucane continued her seemingly inexorable rise in popularity by adding another 4,000 listeners to her Saturday and Sunday shows.

In contrast, the News at One presented by Sean O'Rourke was down 2,000 and Morning Ireland lost 3,000 listeners. Morning Ireland remains the nation's most popular programme with 464,000 listeners, ahead of a virtually unchanged Liveline presented by Joe Duffy, with an audience of 424,000.

At 2FM, Gerry Ryan almost fell out of the top 10 in spite of adding 2,000 listeners.

Clare Duignan, managing director of RTE Radio said 2FM was fighting to regain listeners and said early indications were that changes to evening and arts scheduling were yielding results.

The biggest loser in the current figures is Today FM, where The Last Word presented by Matt Cooper, dropped 13,000 listeners on top of an 11,000 fall in the last figures. A few years ago, The Last Word had more listeners than Drivetime on RTE Radio 1; today, the gap stands at 74,000.