Radio is as popular as ever, especially with young listeners

Pat Kenny won 28,000 new listeners, bringing his total listenership to 183,000. File picture: Sam Boal/RollingNews.ie

Radio is as popular as ever with 3.2m of us tuning into it every weekday, according to the latest listenership figures.

While 53% listen to national radio, the number of those listening to local radio stations is up 1% as is the number of younger listeners, aged 15-34, who listen every day.

Almost all the country’s main shows have see increases in their audience.

Ireland's biggest increase in listenership

However, the biggest winner in the newly published Joint National Listenership Research (JNLR) figures is a presenter who quit radio last December to spend more time with her family.

Mairead Ronan enjoyed the single biggest boost in radio listenership according to the latest JNLR/Ipsos MRBI radio report. Her lunchtime show on Today FM leapt by 33,000 to 136,000.  Picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins

Mairead Ronan's lunchtime show on Today FM saw its listeners jump 33,000 to 136,000.

The next highest jump in listeners came for Newstalk’s Pat Kenny —  up 28,000 to 183,000. His station colleagues over at Down to Business have also seen a rise, up 24,000 to 128,000.

Managing editor of Newstalk, Patricia Monahan said: "We are delighted to see Newstalk make significant audience gains in the latest results.

It clearly shows there is a demand for talk radio that engages, entertains, and provides a clear alternative to RTÉ Radio 1. 

However, Newstalk hosts some of the shows which have lost the most listeners. These include The Hard Shoulder, which has lost 31,000 listeners, taking its listenership down to 146,000, and Sean Moncreiff's show, whose listeners fell 20,000 to 76,000.

Top radio names to increase by 7,000 are RTÉ’s Ronan Collins, who is up to 242,000 listeners, and Ryan Tubridy, who is up to 366,000 listeners.

Today FM’s Fergal D’Arcy is up to 132,000, also with an increase of 7,000. RTE’s Today with Claire Byrne on weekdays now has 346,000 listeners, up 6,000.

In the battle of the Cork radio stations, The Neil Prendeville Show on Red FM dropped 1,000 listeners from 78,000 to 77,000, but it is still the most-listened to morning radio show in Cork.

However, PJ Coogan's Opinion Line on Cork's 96FM has seen an increase in around 5,000 listeners, taking it up to 71,000.

The latest JNLR/Ipsos MRBI report into radio listening compares results from May to December 2021 with those from the last report, which covered October 2020 to October 2021.

They are not exact comparisons but are the best available.

This is due to the fact that — because of Covid-19 restrictions — there was no interviewing conducted in November 2020 and between January and April 2021.

Because of these significant disruptions, fieldwork for the last report was extended to include October 2021.