Today FM has increased its audience by 60 per cent since its relaunch under a new name in January, the latest radio listenership figures show. The station continues to perform poorly in Dublin, but elsewhere it is picking up listeners from RTE and local stations, according to an interim Joint National Listenership Research report published yesterday.
The survey, conducted by the market research company MRBI, gives no indication of the station's market share, which was 2 per cent during the first nine months of its existence as Radio Ireland.
But it shows that in the first three months of this year an average of 8 per cent of adults tuned in to the station at some part of the day. That compared to 33 per cent for RTE Radio 1 and 30 per cent for 2 FM.
Local station listenership was down slightly from the previous survey, covering the six-month period from July to December, but half the adult population continue to listen to a local station every day.
Mr Aidan Dunne, media director with McConnells Advertising, said the new figures were very encouraging for Today FM.
Although the station's audience continued to be mainly urban and male, it was picking up more women listeners and was performing well outside Dublin, he said.
Mr Dunne said the survey contained mixed news for RTE. 2FM was picking up female listeners from Radio 1, which suggested that perhaps Gerry Ryan was winning audience from Pat Kenny and Gay Byrne.
"On the other hand, Radio 1 is picking up more listeners in the 25-34 age group which could be early evidence that the new schedule is starting to make an impact," he said.
Today FM's chairman, Mr John McColgan, said the station was "absolutely thrilled" it was now Ireland's biggest independent radio station, a reference to the fact that Today FM now has a slightly higher listenership (nationally) than the Dublin station, FM104, whose audience is, of course, restricted to the capital.
RTE's director of radio, Ms Helen Shaw, said the fact that two-thirds of radio listeners tuned in to RTE reflected the success of recent programming changes. "We would see these results as confirming our strong relationship with our national audiences," she said.
The figures published yesterday for Co Dublin show that RTE Radio 1 continues to be the most popular station in the capital, with 36 per cent of listeners tuning in at some stage, followed by FM104 (27 per cent), 2FM and 98FM (both 22 per cent) and Today FM (7 per cent).
