SOME OF THE most high-profile presenters at RTÉ Radio have seen a significant drop in their daily year-on-year listener totals, according to the latest data from JNLR.

The figures – produced quarterly by JNLR and Ipsos/MRBI – show that RTÉ continues to dominate the airwaves, boasting 17 of the country’s 20 most popular radio shows. Today FM cracks the top 20 on three occasions, with the Ian Dempsey Show, Dermot & Dave, and Weekend Breakfast with Alison Curtis.

Some of the public broadcaster’s flagship shows have suffered a dip since June 2022, however, with Ryan Tubridy seeing a decrease of 24,000 in daily listeners (from 369,000 to 335,000). The Saturday and Sunday editions of The Brendan O’Connor Show have lost 19,000 and 22,000 daily listeners respectively.

Daily listenership of Morning Ireland, Ireland’s most popular radio show overall, has dropped from 473,000 to 437,000 — a near 8% fall. Sundays with Miriam saw an even larger fall-off of 47,000 listeners, down to 292,000 daily. 

Head of RTÉ Radio 1 Peter Woods said: “Weekend programmes have always fluctuated – but the position of so many of those programmes in the top ten underlines our continuing pre-eminence and connection with the audience. This was a good book.”

RTÉ Radio 1’s weekday share of radio listenership stands at 19.8%, RTÉ 2FM’s share is 5.8%, with Lyric FM’s share at 2.4%. 

While The Pat Kenny Show remains Newstalk’s most popular on-air offering, the show has seen a drop of 12,000 in its daily listenership since last year. Lunchtime Live has also lost 8,000 daily listeners in the year-on-year breakdown. 

By contrast, Newstalk Breakfast, hosted by Ciara Kelly and Shane Coleman has increased its daily listenership by 8,000 — up to 149,000 listeners daily. Moncrieff has also grown its listenership to an all-time high of 98,000 daily.

Overall, Newstalk has seen a nearly imperceptible overall drop in daily listeners – from 792,000 to 786,000. The station’s market share has dropped in the capital, however, from 12.2% last summer to 10.5%.

Managing Editor of Newstalk, Patricia Monahan commented today: “We are delighted to be the talk station of choice for 786,000 listeners every week and to continue to be the voice of a new generation of talk listeners in Ireland.”

The strongest performing local radio station in terms of market share is Donegal’s Highland Radio, which clocks up a market share of 68.3% in its region. Other local stations that boast a market share of over 50% in their region between 7am and 7pm on weekdays include Northern Sound, Radio Kerry and Midwest Radio.

The research saw 16,800 people interviewed during the survey period by Ipsos, on behalf of JNLR, a research project commissioned by  commissioned by all national, regional and local stations, BAI, AAI, and IAPI.

General figures suggest that radio remains popular in Ireland, with more than 3.2 million Irish adults saying that they tune into the radio every day. Over 90% of respondents said that they listen to the radio at least once a week.