RTE's share of radio market falls

The market share of RTE radio listenership is continuing to fall, according to audience statistics. The JNLR/MRBI figures, published yesterday, show the prime-time listening share for RTE radio stood at 47 per cent for the year ended June 2001, 2 per cent down on last year.

RTE's three main stations, Radio 1, 2FM and Lyric, saw their market share fall by 1 per cent with respective shares of 26 per cent, 19 per cent and 1 per cent for 2000-01.

Some 44 per cent of the market was controlled by local stations and 8 per cent by Today FM. While there were regional fluctuations, RTE nationally made gains in a number of areas.

Morning Ireland, the most listened to programme in the State, had 480,000 weekday listeners, a gain of 29,000 on last year. Liveline gained 19,000 listeners on last year and Gerry Ryan 10,000. Marian Finucane, however, lost 7,000 listeners and the News at One, 5,000.

One of the winners in the survey was Lite FM which showed an average weekday listenership in Dublin of 122,000. This was more than 30,000 above the station's target figure for its first year in operation, according to Mr Martin Block, Lite FM's chief executive. The figure translates as a market share of 10 per cent in Dublin.

Today FM gained 62,000 listeners, with The Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show jumping 25,000 to 177,000. In contrast, 2FM's breakfast show fell by 10,000 to 199,000.

Today FM's Last Word closed the gap on its Radio 1 rival Five Seven Live from 73,000 fewer listeners in the year ended February 2001, to 62,000 fewer under the latest survey. Five Seven Live continued to grow, however, increasing its listenership by 18,000 to 217,000.

The results show overall listenership continuing at a high level, with 88 per cent of adults listening to radio each weekday.

Mr Paul Mulligan, head of operations at RTE sales and marketing, said this was "the most amazing" figure in the survey. "In the UK you wouldn't get that level of listenership on a weekly basis, never mind a daily basis," he said.

All stations, he noted, had to move aside a little to accommodate Lite FM. However, "the overall message is that radio is incredibly strong".

RTE's director of radio, Ms Helen Shaw, said she was pleased with the station's performance given that the market was becoming increasingly competitive. She predicted that competition in Dublin would become fiercer in the coming months with the arrival of three new independent stations.

As a public broadcaster, she said, RTE was continually trying to walk the line of "maintaining strong audiences and providing choice and quality in programming".

Ms Shaw, meanwhile, confirmed that Vincent Browne would return to front the 10 p.m. Tonight show on Radio 1. It replaces After Dark, which had a listenership of just 31,000, 16,000 fewer than the 1999-2000 series of Tonight with Vincent Browne.

A total of 6,775 people were interviewed for the survey by researchers MRBI on behalf of JNLR (Joint National Listener ship Research), which is sponsored by the radio industry.