RTÉ 2FM continues to lose its audience share, according to the latest radio listenership figures, which show a loss of 4,000 listeners to its the Gerry Ryan Show.
Over the past year, the show has slipped from third to eighth place in the 10 most listened to programmes, according to the JNLR/ TNS mrbi listenership surveys.
Overall, the 2FM market share declined from 11.6 per cent to 10.9 per cent in the latest survey, which covers the period July 2008-June 2009 and compares it to April 2008-March 2009.
Earlier this week, RTÉ announced that it would be repositioning 2FM next year by changing its focus from the 15-34 year age group to the 25-44 year age group.
The decision was criticised by the Independent Broadcasters of Ireland yesterday.
Its chairman Willie O’Reilly, who is Today FM’s chief executive, said this meant none of RTÉ’s stations would be catering for 15-24 year-olds.
“This is regrettable and does not reflect RTÉ’s own mission to provide programmes which ‘reflect the cultural and regional diversity of all the people of Ireland’,” he said.
RTÉ Radios managing director Clare Duignan described the criticism as nonsense and said the broadcaster was refocusing on the needs of 15-34 year-olds with its digital stations, in particular RTÉ 2xm, RTÉ Pulse and RTÉ Chill. These stations offer real opportunities for RTÉ to serve these listeners in a more credible way than 2fm has been able to do in recent years, she said.
The 10 most popular radio shows are still produced by RTÉ and, with the exception of Gerry Ryan’s show, all those shows gained listeners.
Morning Irelandgained another 11,000 listeners while the next most popular show, Liveline, picked up another 13,000 listeners. Saturday View, presented by the recently retired Rodney Rice, gained 24,000 listeners.
News at Onepresented by Seán O'Rourke gained 18,000 listeners – the largest number of listeners won by any of the top 10 programmes – while This Weekand Mooneyboth gained 17,000 listeners.
Mary Wilson's Drivetimeshow gained 8,000 listeners, while her Today FM rival, Matt Cooper, picked up 9,000 more listeners with The Last Word.
Newstalk’s George Hook also made strong gains, picking up 7,000 more listeners.
Ray D’Arcy is still the most popular presenter at Today FM with 235,000 listeners. The commercial station has maintained its market share of 10.6 per cent.
RTÉ Radio 1’s market share increased by 0.3 per cent to 23 per cent while Lyric FM’s share fell by 0.1 per cent to 1.6 per cent. Newstalk increased its share by 0.1 per cent to 3.7 per cent.
Newstalk’s breakfast show recorded 74,000 listeners, an increase of 2,000 on the previous survey.
It is too early to see the impact of new presenter Ivan Yates on the listenership as he joined Claire Byrne on the show in mid-May, close to the end of this survey period.
Newstalk chief executive Frank Cronin said the station now had 257,000 listeners daily, an increase of 35,000 compared with this time last year.
New multi-city service 4FM, launched in February, won a market share of 1 per cent in this survey.
The survey found no change in the percentage of people listening to radio daily (86 per cent).
FM104 is still the most listened-to local station in the Dublin area while Donegal’s Highland Radio remains the most popular local station in the State.
