Dublin listenership straightened out after successive declines survey after survey. Actually, it’s not since 12Q1 has Dublin listenership increased on the previous survey. But taking the year on year approach listenership in the capital is down 15,000 and two percentage points on 13Q1.
Oftentimes the pendulum swings underlying the headline figure are minute, but this year bucks that trend. The big faller, in the magnitude of 12%, was FM104 falling by 26,000 listeners to 194,000 (19%). The next to tumble was Spin dropping 9% and 13,000 listeners. Q102 and 98FM both dropped 9% as well and Today was down 4% year on year.
2FM managed to gain some ground in the capital and added 6,000 listeners (9%).The station still underperforms in the capital and perhaps this is the thinking behind the recent changes to make the station more Dublin centric. The seem to have gone out of their way to remove many of those associated with beyond the pale.
RTE1 dropped 2,000 but still dominates the capitals listenership with a reach of 27% and 275,000 listeners. Newstalk added 17,000 (14%) in Dublin, most likely on the back of the Kenny switch and root themselves firmly in third place.
| Station | 14 Q1 | 14 Q1 | 13 Q1 | 13 Q1 | +/- | +/- |
| RTE Radio 1 | 275 | 27% | 277 | 27% | -2 | -1% |
| FM 104 | 194 | 19% | 220 | 22% | -26 | -12% |
| Newstalk | 137 | 14% | 120 | 12% | 17 | 14% |
| Spin 1038 | 129 | 13% | 142 | 14% | -13 | -9% |
| Q102 | 89 | 9% | 98 | 10% | -9 | -9% |
| 98FM | 88 | 9% | 97 | 10% | -9 | -9% |
| Today FM | 74 | 7% | 77 | 8% | -3 | -4% |
| RTE 2FM | 71 | 7% | 65 | 6% | 6 | 9% |
| Radio Nova 100FM | 59 | 5% | 47 | 5% | 12 | 26% |
| RTE Lyric FM | 54 | 5% | 45 | 4% | 9 | 20% |
| Sunshine 106.8 | 34 | 3% | 26 | 3% | 8 | 31% |
| Classic Hits 4FM | 32 | 3% | 25 | 2% | 7 | 28% |
| TXFM | 15 | 1% | 18 | 2% | -3 | -17% |
Taking a broad look at the Dublin listeners’ preferences it’s interesting in that most of the ‘larger’ stations experienced declines (bar 2FM) and the stations that seem to struggle in recent surveys have turned in some great results.
Among them is Nova which recorded a handsome 26% rise in fortunes in the past twelve months adding 12,000 to bring them to 59,000. Nova, when it come to producing print copy for publicity purposes, are no shrinking violets and can turn the cloudiest day into sunshine(!). Book on book they managed a 9,000 increase so we can expect some Shakespearean prose from them Friday morning – and why not (Biggest increase in Dublin out of all the stations or Fastest growing station in Dublin, just to kick the copywriting off).
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Market Shares
The market shares reflect somewhat the overall listenership patterns and are in the table below for your own enjoyment. FM104, 98FM and Q102 all experiencing greater than 2% decreases in share. RTE1 had a good run managing to add 2.3% in share followed by newstalk at 1.6%.
The two graphic tabs below tell their own tale of what happened throughout the day. The Dublin tabs are split in three, Dublin overall to give you a very messy view of the listenership and then the Dublin top four and Dublin next four to make the information a little more legible.
| Station | 13_4 | 12_4 | +/- |
| Q102 | 6.70% | 9.30% | -2.60% |
| FM104 | 12.10% | 14.20% | -2.10% |
| 98FM | 5.30% | 7.30% | -2.00% |
| Spin 1038 | 6.90% | 8.00% | -1.10% |
| TXFM | 0.80% | 0.90% | -0.10% |
| Region/Loc/ | 0.40% | 0.40% | 0.00% |
| Today FM | 6.20% | 6.10% | 0.10% |
| Sunshine 106.8 | 2.50% | 2.40% | 0.10% |
| RTE Lyric FM | 2.80% | 2.40% | 0.40% |
| RTE 2FM | 5.40% | 4.80% | 0.60% |
| Classic Hits 4FM | 2.60% | 1.30% | 1.30% |
| Radio Nova 100FM | 4.20% | 2.70% | 1.50% |
| Newstalk | 9.00% | 7.40% | 1.60% |
| RTE Radio 1 | 34.80% | 32.50% | 2.30% |
Even though they lost ground in this survey, the graphs below clearly show the dominance of FM104 throughout the day. Unlike many stations they manage to retain the breakfast listeners for a large portion of the day unlike the other Dublin stations who seem to jettison them at lunchtime.
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But then the final graphics are the tell tale signatures of what went wrong/right during the day and where it happened compared to last year. You can draw your own conclusions on them.
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