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HAVE YOU LISTENED to the radio today?
The number of people who tune in daily has risen slightly, according to the latest JNLR/Ipsos MRBI report.
84% of us now listen to the radio everyday, according to 2014 figures, up 1% from 2013.
However, it wasn’t an even rise across all national stations. Newstalk was the only one to gain in listenership, up 1%.
Regional stations 98FM (1%), Q102 (2%), Spin South West (1%), Cork’s Red FM (3%) and 103FM (1%) also saw gains.
The only station across the country to record a loss was 96FM in Cork, down 1%.
TXFM, formerly Phantom, has clung on to a 2% listenership in Dublin.
People also still prefer non-national stations, and is the choice of radio listening to 58% of the public.
2FM’s unchanged 10% share, with several individual gains across the station, could indicate RTÉ has steadied what was believed to be a sinking ship.
Colm Hayes and Rick O’Shea both received boosts, with Breakfast Republic remaining steady. Tubridy too saw a gain of 6,000 up to 177,000.
This, as well as all figures below for individual shows, covers the final quarter of 2014, compared with the third.
Just when we thought we were over Pat Kenny’s departure from RTÉ, Ray D’Arcy went the opposite way, heading back to the mothership after more than a decade in commercial radio.
Anton Savage has now taken his seat at Today FM, but only being two weeks in the job, his new listenership isn’t recorded in this JNLR book.
However, he had been developing a strong following in his weekend Savage Sunday slot, forming part of a range positive results for the Communicorp station (although Ian Dempsey’s show is down 9,000 to 187,000).
Savage had gained 8,000 Sunday morning listeners, with the figure for December standing at a total of 118,000. The show had seen several JNLR books record a rise in listenership.
In the same period, people’s love of D’Arcy appeared to wane. The Ray D’Arcy Show lost 6,000, dropping to 215,000.
People were also tuning away from Derek Mooney’s slot at RTÉ. Mooney, who left radio to head up RTÉ’s wildlife coverage, lost 5,000 listeners, falling to a listenership of 193,000
If you’re listening to radio on a Saturday or Sunday morning, you’re more than likely listening to Marian Finucane. She has managed to grow her listenership by 16,000 on Saturdays and 9,000 on Sundays to 366,000 and 351,000 respectively.
For RTÉ Radio 1, Sunday with Miriam (up 3,000), Saturday with Clare Byrne (up 4,000), and This Week (up 11,000) also performed well.
Tom McGuire, Radio 1 boss, said “the figures demonstrates that listeners still recognise RTÉ Radio 1 as the home of ‘talk radio’”.
Worthy of note is Today FM’s weekend showing in this book. There has been a spike across several shows, including Saturday Breakfast with Alison Curtis (up 5,000, and before her stint filling in on The Ray D’Arcy Show), Saturday Hits with Paula MacSweeney (up 6,000), to the Sunday Business Show (up 8,000).
Today FM chief executive Peter McPartlin said:
We’ve a lot of new voices on board and we’re delighted to have hit 2015 with more listeners each week than we started 2014 with (almost 893,000).”
Today FM / TwitterNow, everyone's patting themselves on the back but, we'd just like to thank ALL our loyal listeners. Almost 900,000 weekly. Mad Ted. #jnlr
— Today FM 💛 (@TodayFM) February 5, 2015
As you might be aware, the main radio war that has taken place on Irish airwaves has that been the mid-morning current affairs slot, with Newstalk’s Pat Kenny and RTÉ’s Sean O’Rourke going head-to-head.
After a wobbly result in the last figures – falling 12,000 – Sean O’Rourke has gained 3,000, and retains his stronghold of almost 300,000 listeners.
1,000 less people turned the dial to Pat Kenny’s Newstalk show, with listenership now standing at 142,000 – an usual dip in a good book for the station.
George Hook took a heavy knock in the last book, falling roughly 10,000, but clawed back all those listeners and 3,000 more, standing at 126,000.
However, that’s still a long way off Matt Cooper’s 155,000 (up 1,000), who is helping to slowly chip away on RTÉ’s Drivetime, as the show lost 4,000 listeners (total 220,000).
There was more good news for Newstalk in today’s figures, in particular Breakfast. Chris O’Donoghue and Ivan Yates pulled in 12,000 more listeners (up to 165,000). They still have a long way to go if they want to tackle the behemoth that is Morning Ireland, with its 426,000.
“Our primetime shows continue to be a huge success, in particular Breakfast with Chris and Ivan which just goes from strength to strength,” Gerard Whelan, Newstalk CEO, said.
Our weekend shows also performed extremely well, and have shown increases across the board. It’s a great start to the year, and we look forward to building on this momentum throughout 2015.
Who are you listening to? Let us know in the comments.
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Reducing the cost of living would be a better method of dealing with this.
@Cookie: Well said Cookie, what is the point in mandating businesses to pay more for labour which Govt siphon off a portion in PRSI, USC and PAYE? This causes produce and services to increase so businesses can cover these costs this allowing the government to siphon off more again in VAT.
It seems the government want a high cost and high tax economy in order to squander taxes on pet fluffy projects that are generally wasteful and of course keep their buddies on the gravy train.
@Cookie: You hit the nail on the head as usual. It’s ridiculous how high the cost of living is here. I lived in NY for a few years and found it cheaper to live there. Everywhere you turn here there is a bill.
@LaoisWeather: Maybe the Government wants to abolish the FIS (now called the WFP) and force employers to pay employees more instead. Either way, the consumer/taxpayer will end up footing the bill.
@Cookie: the zealots in the Green Party want to crucify us with carbon taxes
@Richard Russell:
They already are
Especially when trying to import a car with fairly average emissions.
We can’t all cycle to work Mr Ryan!
@Cookie:
Agree. We have the almost the highest energy charges in Europe, same with bin charges , and thanks to very creative tax loopholes pay little or tax in this country. A complete reform of our tax system is long overdue
I’d imagine employers will just cut the hours for staff..
And make the staff that are there work harder..
@Geraldine O’Riordan: they won’t.
@Derek Moran: we will
The knock on effect is where most of the benefit would be lost. Surely the additional to businesses already struggling would be passed either directly onto the customer or staff would see a reduction in hours etc. A €2 or thereabouts increase per hour in wages for a small business across a 39 hour week is a substantial additional overhead. What about looking at the cost of living instead?
Ah yeah just let the self employed sort this out for you. No worries..Businesses only been open about 6 months in the last year but hey we got this
@Ann Mc Shane: You’ve not got anything – yet! All that’s happening is that The LPC is starting a review – you may well be an OAP before its recommendations are accepted by whatever government is elected in 2035!
@Ann Mc Shane: 6 months, ha, 14 weeks since march 23rd, 2020.
@Terry Larkin: my concern is their approach on helping employees live on their wages. Why should the employer and eventually the customer take the brunt. Its all wrong,
@Karl Mc Cauley: depends on your industry pal
The cost of living is just too expensive on our min wage the right job would be to tackle the cost of living but thats too much work so we will continue to tie ourselves up in further knots…
Maybe reduce the ridiculously high Tax first, increase the cutoff point and give people a chance to work hard and earn enough to be able to afford the high cost of living in this country.
Interesting to see how this will affect pubs. They’re obviously already going to be affected because of Covid, but if the minimum wage is increased by €2.10, that’ll surely add another 50c to €1 onto the price of a pint?
@Anthony Keenan: the price of everything will increase and then the living wage won’t be high enough anymore
@eoin carroll: of course it won’t, pure hyperbole
@Anthony Keenan: pubs can’t put up the price as it will decrease sales. It will come out of profits
@Anthony Keenan: If they are ever “allowed” reopen.
@eoin carroll: Yep, simple inflation
@eoin carroll: nows the time to take out a loan so.
How about cutting TDs wages. They get way overpaid for all the chaos they cause. Employ some monkeys instead. Oh I forgot we already have monkeys.
Abolish the so called temporary USC and reduce income tax. Help every working person who will then have more to put into our decimated economy. That’s if it ever opens up again!!
@Franny Ando: no don’t abolish it. Remove it from anyone under 50,000 or 85,000 as a couple and triple it for anyone on over 200,000 and 5 times for anyone on over 500,000.
@Karl Mc Cauley: Even better again.
Surely Dublin should have a higher minimum wage than the rest of the country
@mikeinclon: of course, in order to give it to dublin landlords and developers, makes perfect sense..
Family carers are paid €1.46 per hour, if paid anything at all. No bank holidays, no holiday leave, no lunch breaks, no pension, workers protection at all for up to 149.5 hours per week. All for a group that save the economy billions per year and picked up the slack for a failing health service during the pandemic. How about setting up a group to look at that.
Also worth noting min wage jobs are state subsidised jobs because people can’t live on the min wage.
Sorting out the cost of living in rip off Republic would be a better idea first. No point raising wages when we have things like utilities, insurance, groceries and even dining out or staying at a hotel in some parts even more than during the tiger times
@Tarraing Mo Liathróidí: At least people can choose how to spend that money. Or not.
@Fiona Fitzgerald: I agree having choice is great until you go to a concert or a match, then u have no choice cos the hotel sector become a cartel like in having all the same rip off prices
Everything else is going up in life but people’s wages.only working to barely survive in today’s world.capitalism has the world destroyed
@reginald: In Ireland you only work to exist. You don’t work to live.
@David Corrigan:
Work to shop in lidls as can’t afford anything better
@reginald: who says it’s capitalism’s fault? Nearly a quarter of the price of everything you buy goes to the govt. Also, bear in mind that our overlords in all the world’s central banks actually WANT prices to go up by 2% per year. It’s their stated policy.
And rents will soar.
@Darren Byrne:
Rents double what they were 20 years ago.
Salaries haven’t doubled!
Good, about time.
Pay more to pay more!
Increase the minimum wage great idea but sadly this government and most previous governments have perfected stealth taxes etc so you are always struggling
At the same time please examine why OAPs are still awaiting full restoration of 2008 entitlements??????
How exactly would a government go about reducing the cost of living? A small Increase in wages for people who do the most important often labour intensive work is mooted and there materializes on here an army of I’m allright Jack’s suggesting the sky would fall in.
@Jointheclubtoo: shure most SME’s are loaded and could afford €15 an hour for menial labour jobs if only they were pushed. They would never pass this increase on to the consumer… not at all, at all.
Look up costs, overheads and prices and come back to us.
@Jointheclubtoo: get rid of the euro as currency. Make it illegal for government to deficit spend. Return to gold standard. Problem solved albeit after the mother and father of recessions.
Appears to be a mandate to spend as much as possible as quick as possible.
What will your government trade for debt forgiveness.
We need a rent freeze and tax relief for rental payments, not increased costs to small businesses.
Still don’t get it. Minimum wage jobs were never seen as a main wage. They were always additional income to a main salary.
@Craic_a_tower: They are a main wage to many though
@Mike: that’s not the fault of the employer, though, is it? So why should the employer be forced to subsidize what used to be entry level jobs?
Anyone running a small business in this country knows it’s the straw that broke camels back half of s me will never open again when pandemic is over
Future rising prices will be partly blamed on this move. The Gov’t could avoid having to do this if their heart was set on correcting our failed housing policy. If they tackled that and made it fairer then it would be an improvement across the board.
@Paul Divers: failed housing policy? How about failed monetary system!
People wondering why the cost of living keeps on going up but have no idea about how our monetary system works. Makes sense.
I smell an election
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