Listeners find RTÉ revamp a real turn-off

RADIO listeners are tuning out of RTÉ in growing numbers as new figures show most of the broadcaster’s big name weekday presenters are continuing to lose audiences.

Only Joe Duffy’s Liveline programme is bucking a trend that has seen old reliables like Pat Kenny and Gerry Ryan, as well as flavour of the moment Ryan Tubridy, all drop listeners in substantial numbers over the past year.

While fortunes are sliding at the national broadcaster, the stars of chief rival Today FM are on the rise. The biggest success story of the last 12 months is Matt Cooper, whose drive-time show increased its listenership by a massive 35% to beat RTÉ rival, Drivetime.

Big gains were also made by his Today FM colleagues Ian Dempsey and Ray D’Arcy, and the station as a whole increased its overall market share marginally to 12.1% (+0.4%), while RTÉ Radio 1 and 2FM both saw their market share decline marginally to 20.9% (-0.2%) and 12.9% (-0.1%) respectively.

The other national station, NewsTalk 106, only began broadcasting countrywide last September but early indications show the move has proved popular, with Orla Barry in the mid-morning slot attracting almost twice her former listenership and the lunchtime and early afternoon shows more than doubling their audiences.

The Joint National Listenership Research (JNLR) results will prove a headache for RTÉ, which revamped schedules last autumn in a bid to halt a steady migration of listeners.

One silver lining for RTÉ was its third station, Lyric FM, which improved its market share marginally, while Marian Finucane also provides a relief from the slide by gaining audiences for both her Saturday and Sunday shows on Radio 1.

The gamble of moving Derek Mooney to a daytime afternoon show on Radio 1, however, has left him with just 134,000 listeners compared to the 259,000 he enjoyed for his Saturday morning Mooney Goes Wild programme.

There will also be disappointment with the performance of the revamped Drivetime show on Radio 1 which saw Rachel English replaced by Mary Wilson, as it has been overtaken by Matt Cooper’s The Last Word.

Cooper now has 3,000 more listeners than RTÉ, depriving RTÉ of the dominant position in a prime time slot for the first time.

RTÉ was putting a brave face on the figures, stressing that it still held the top 10 national radio programmes in the country and was enjoying early success with new shows such as Eamon Dunphy’s Saturday programme.

Head of Radio 1, Ana Leddy, said schedule changes on Radio 1 and Lyric FM were having a positive effect. “This is the beginning of a creative process I’m confident will continue to deliver results for RTÉ Radio,” she said.

Local stations continued to perform well with Highland Radio in Donegal, Limerick’s Live 95FM and Mid West Radio in Mayo easily beating the reach of the national stations in their own regions.

Newstalk’s expansion to a national station appears to have boosted its profile in its original Dublin base where it gained 1.2% in market share, giving it a share of 6.7% but 98FM was the city’s top choice with a 14.1% share, followed by FM104 at 13.3%.

In the Cork market, Cork96FM/County Sound retained its dominant position but there was a small increase in market share for Red FM.