THE LATEST RADIO listenership figures have been released, with most radio stations finding something to share their happiness about.

RTÉ Radio 1 remains the country’s most popular radio station, with its weekend schedule performing particularly well, while Morning Ireland, Liveline and the Marian Finucane Show remaining the country’s three most popular shows.

Morning Ireland’s average audience for the 2012 year stood at 441,000, with Liveline at 420,000 and the Saturday edition of Marian Finucane claiming 363,000 users.

Today FM claimed to be the only national station which showed growth in its overall daily audience, as it consolidated its status as the second most-popular station.

470,000 people listen to Today FM on a daily basis, compared to 382,000 for RTÉ 2fm.

The Ray D’Arcy Show remains its most popular show, with 243,000 daily listeners, while Ian Dempsey’s breakfast show stands at 175,000.

The Last Word with Matt Cooper has a daily audience of 160,000. Today FM’s lunchtime slot – now held by Keith ‘KC’ Cunningham’s, who took over from the departing Ray Foley in October, has grown its audience by 7,000 – to 151,000 – in 2012.

2FM, which has had a series of challenging results, said it was encouraged by the final results for 2012, with RTÉ Radio managing director Clare Duignan saying the station had some notable year-on-year increases in its schedule.

Ryan Tubridy remains its most popular presenter, with 160,000 listeners – but that number is down by 16,000 in the last year. Hector Ó hEochagáin’s breakfast show claims 124,000.

The evening 7pm-10pm slot taken by Dave Fanning and Jenny Greene claims just 25,000 listeners, however – a poor return ahead of the introduction of 2FM’s new sports show next month, which will take the first hour of this slot, and all three hours when it broadcasts soccer commentaries.

Newstalk said it had won an extra 6,000 ABC1 (high-spending) listeners each day, with George Hook’s drivetime show up 2,000 to 131,000, and Sean Moncrieff’s afternoon magazine up the same amount to 95,000.

Multi-city station 4FM was happy with the 12 per cent growth in its weekly reach, to 159,000, with its ABC1 listenership up by 17 per cent. Of particular interest was growth in its reach in Galway, which was up by 38 per cent, and in Cork by 17 per cent.

Independent broadcasters – including local stations – claimed their combined market share clearly outstripped that of RTÉ in every area of the country, with non-RTÉ broadcasters commanding nearly 68 per cent of the national radio market between 7am and 7pm every day.