The JNLR national radio listenership figures were released today. The first item to record is that whilst the increases in the absolute numbers of listeners for some stations look nothing short of meteoric, it would have to be tempered with some other numbers.
The universe used suggests, like last time out, that the population has grown from 3,511,000 to 3,608,000. So while stations may have larger absolute listener numbers, their percentage reach may have stayed the same. In other words the same slice of a bigger pie.
The research does show that Radio is still a very powerful medium reaching 85% of the population on a daily basis. The most popular national station is the National Broadcasters’ RTE1 reaching 25% of the population every day. The second most popular is Today FM reaching just over half a million people every day of 14%, an increase of 1% on the previous 12 months. The gap between the two stations is narrowing slightly, but not significantly enough for TodayFM to pose a threat to the RTE1 dominance, yet.
2FM managed to keep its reach at 11% over the 12 months which would buck the trend of previous reports. Newstalk moved over the 300k mark and stays at an 8% reach. Lyric was the only other station, outside RTE1, to increase its reach moving to 4% and 139,000 listeners.
Radio | 2012-2 ‘000 | 2012-2 % | 2011-2 ‘000 | 2011-2 % | +/- ‘000 | +/- % |
Any Radio | 3056 | 85% | 2979 | 85% | 77 | 0% |
Any National | 1699 | 47% | 1610 | 46% | 89 | 1% |
Any RTE Radio | 1273 | 35% | 1228 | 35% | 45 | 0% |
RTE1/2FM/Lyric | 1260 | 35% | 1208 | 34% | 52 | 1% |
RTE Radio 1 | 891 | 25% | 873 | 25% | 18 | 0% |
RTE 2FM | 411 | 11% | 404 | 11% | 7 | 0% |
RTE Lyric FM | 139 | 4% | 107 | 3% | 32 | 1% |
Today FM | 501 | 14% | 444 | 13% | 57 | 1% |
Newstalk | 303 | 8% | 281 | 8% | 22 | 0% |
Any Region | 2091 | 58% | 2045 | 58% | 46 | 0% |
Home Local | 1603 | 44% | 1593 | 45% | 10 | -1% |
Other Region | 246 | 7% | 241 | 7% | 5 | 0% |