Media & Marketing: Among the Irish stations acquired by UK company Emap this week from Scottish Radio Holdings (SRH) was Today FM, which now has an average 15 per cent listenership throughout the Republic.
The station represents the jewel in the crown for Emap in Ireland and it will be anxious to see the station's position secured in the period ahead. The only potential cloud on the horizon for the station is that its licence must be renewed in early 2007
According to the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI), expressions of interest for this licence will be invited this year with formal applications expected to be submitted sometime in early 2006.
At this point, Today FM would be the strong favourite to retain the licence, but there are no guarantees as Paul Claffey, owner of North West Radio, found out two years ago when his licence was not renewed.
It is difficult to assess how many companies might be interested in the Today FM licence.
However, eight expressions of interest were submitted to the BCI recently for what was described as a "quasi national" service, which could give up to 90 per cent coverage around the State.
Among the companies that submitted an application was NewsTalk 106. UTV might also be interested in offering a quasi-national service.
The BCI said yesterday the idea of a quasi-national service and the Today FM licence renewal process were completely separate.
Either way there will be no shortage of companies seeking to go national or "quasi national" in the years ahead. For example, several of the large UK radio groups still have no operations here at all. This includes GCap Media, Guardian Media Group and Chrysalis.
Today FM is already making profits of more than €4.2 million a year and that is after a short-term downturn in the Irish advertising market.
Spending by advertisers in the radio sector is still small compared to press, but it is growing significantly overall. For example, it has grown since 2000 by 109 per cent, although the number of stations has increased significantly in that time too.
TG4 gets Tour
After securing the exclusive Irish rights to tennis at Wimbledon, TG4 has added the Tour de France to its stable of sports programming.
The race used to get strong audiences on RTE and Channel 4 in the days of Stephen Roche and Sean Kelly, but since then it has been shown on various stations, including at one stage Eurosport.
Between July 4th and July 24th TG4 will transmit an average of three hours live coverage each day as well as a 30 minute highlights package every night that will include previews, cyclist profiles, results and reports.
According to AFA O'Meara, the Dublin advertising agency, TG4 is seen "by many media pundits as an innovative station and the Tour de France deal is the third major sports rights deal secured by the station in the past two months".
Apart from the tennis, exclusive rights for FAI domestic soccer matches have also been secured by TG4.
With RTÉ, Setanta, TV3 and TG4 now competing for different sporting events it is good for the various major sporting bodies, although in many cases the beneficiaries are sporting bodies based overseas.
'Haughey' slips
The first instalment may have mesmerised viewers, but the audience for RTE's Haughey programme fell back slightly for the second episode.
This time around it managed to reach 35 per cent of all adult viewers, down from the previous week's high of 39.5 per cent. And once again there was a female bias with 53 per cent of the 458,000 viewers women.
Despite the slight erosion of the Haughey audience, RTÉ still has a few tricks up its sleeve to bolster its summer audience. Bob Geldof's Live 8 concert on July 2nd should certainly pull in the viewers and the station is also placing a lot of emphasis on Miriam O'Callaghan's new Saturday night chat show.
TV3 scores
TV3 is finding it hard to match the kind of ratings Haughey is achieving. But, surprisingly, the station (owned by CanWest and ITV) is getting reasonable returns on its "simulcast" with UTV of Celebrity Love Island.
Last Monday the programme managed to reach an audience of 265,000 adults. This translated into a 21 per cent share of adult viewing on the night. Saor Communications, the Dublin advertising agency, noted this week that 68 per cent of viewers were women and 53 per cent were aged between 15 to 34.
Emmet Oliver can be contacted at eoliver@irish-times.ie
