THE QUARTERLY REPORT published by Joint National Listenership Research (JNLR) with polling company Ipsos/MRBI shows that The Ryan Tubridy Show on RTÉ Radio One had been losing listeners before he was taken off air.

A drop from 369,000 to 334,000 average daily listeners tuning in to Tubridy’s daily morning show represents a noticeable decrease in listeners since the same time last year. In the previous quarter, Tubridy’s listenership had been 335,000.

Since the latest figures cover the period between July 2022 and June 2023, they don’t necessarily reflect the after-effects of this summer’s RTÉ corporate governance scandal which saw Ryan Tubridy taken off air at the end of June. RTÉ has yet to make decision regarding Tubridy’s return to his old radio slot.

Elsewhere on RTÉ Radio One, Claire Byrne has also suffered a drop of 27,000 listeners compared to last year, now bringing in 323,000 average listeners from Monday to Friday. Brendan O’Connor has seen a smaller drop, bringing in 330,500 average listeners across Saturday and Sunday, whereas last year he averaged 344,000.

Sunday With Miriam has been hardest hit, falling from 339,000 this time last year to 287,000, marking a 15% drop in listeners  — and keeping with a trend marked in the previous quarter’s report.

Morning Ireland remains Ireland’s most listened-to radio show, but even that has experienced a notable decrease in listenership from 473,000 to 440,000 year-on-year.

Speaking about the latest figures, Peter Woods, Head of RTÉ Radio 1 said: “This is a book that shows RTÉ Radio 1 is continuing to connect with audiences across right across the week.”

Over on Newstalk, Pat Kenny’s show remains the most popular with a daily listenership of 179,000 – just marginally down from 184,000 last year. The station now reaches an audience of 798,000 every week and achieving a national prime-time market share of 7%, which is marginally lower than its all-time-high 7.2% which it recorded this time last year.

Up against Morning Ireland, Newstalk Breakfast with Ciara Kelly and Shane Cuddihy struggle to hit the same heights with a daily listenership of 145,000. There was closer competition between RTÉ’s Drivetime (220,000 daily listeners) and Newstalk’s The Hard Shoulder (149,000).

Seán Moncrieff’s afternoon show has reached all-time high of 103,000 daily listeners.

Bauer Media Audio Ireland – which owns Newstalk, Today FM, 98FM, SPIN 1038, SPIN South West and Red FM, and this week announced its intention to purchase iRadio – declared a weekly listenership of 1.93 million listeners across all of its stations.

Today FM now boasts an average weekly listenership of 938,000. Its most popular shows include The Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show (221,000), Dermot & Dave (216,000) and Weekend Breakfast with Alison Curtis (185,000). All of these shows saw significant increases since the start of the year.

Wednesday’s JNLR report shows that 3.320 million listeners (15+) tune into radio every weekday – that is daily radio listening at 80.2% of all adults. Weekly listening increases to 91.2% of the population.

The strongest performing local radio station in terms of market share remains Donegal’s Highland Radio, which clocks up a market share of 66.5% in its region. Other local stations that boast a market share of over 50% in their region between 7am and 7pm on weekday include Mayo’s MidWest Radio, Radio Kerry, and Northern Sound in Cavan-Monaghan. 

Kildare FM has the lowest market share of any regional radio station, at 19.8%.

The survey saw a total of 16,800 people interviewed during polling, and found that 91.2% of respondents said that they listen to the radio at least once a week.