The National picture for radio is still very healthy with 2,995,000 or 83% tuning in on an average day. But as the graphic shows the picture has been one of slight erosion over that past few surveys given that in 2009 radio’s reach was 87%.
The proliferation of technology isn’t exactly helping radio listenership as with technology comes other distractions like Facebook and Twitter etc which might well be eating into what was once radio time.
Radio listenership is much dominated by the early part of the day with the morning schedule between eight and ten taking the loins share of the listeners. The slowly drift away with a small spike at lunchtime and again during the evening commute. The last three surveys are plotted here and as you can see its fairly static.
In terms of individual performance some stations have fared better that others but all the stations took a fall in this survey. Any radio listening is down 57,000 on the same period last year (2012 Q3).
Station | 13_3 | c1 | 12_3 | c2 | +/- | +/-3 | c3 |
Any Radio | 83% | 2995 | 85% | 3052 | -2% | -57 | -2% |
Any Region/Local/M-City | 57% | 2061 | 58% | 2098 | -1% | -37 | -2% |
Any National | 45% | 1624 | 47% | 1681 | -2% | -57 | -3% |
Home Local Station | 42% | 1523 | 44% | 1605 | -2% | -82 | -5% |
Any RTE Radio | 34% | 1231 | 35% | 1260 | -1% | -29 | -2% |
Any RTE1/2FM/Lyric | 34% | 1211 | 35% | 1248 | -1% | -37 | -3% |
RTE Radio 1 | 24% | 861 | 24% | 879 | 0% | -18 | -2% |
Today FM | 13% | 457 | 14% | 493 | -1% | -36 | -7% |
RTE 2FM | 11% | 384 | 11% | 410 | 0% | -26 | -6% |
Newstalk | 8% | 294 | 8% | 303 | 0% | -9 | -3% |
Other Regional/Local Station | 7% | 269 | 7% | 253 | 0% | 16 | 6% |
RTE Lyric FM | 3% | 120 | 3% | 124 | 0% | -4 | -3% |
RTE1 still very much dominates the listening with 861,000 average every day. Its closest competition is Today FM at 457,000 (13%) followed by 2FM.
The big faller in the survey was Today FM dropping 36,000 or 7% of its listeners and most of those losses we outside the capital. Another faller was 2FM dropping 26,000 and 6% of its listenership year on year. These are figures are taken in isolation and really any radio trends should be viewed over time.
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The graphic shows that while dropping in this survey, 2FM have put the brakes on the declines in recent surveys. Likewise, Today FM has performed marginally better in the more recent surveys.
Market Shares
In terms of shares, there was very slight movement. The only highlights were that RTE Radio 1 gained 0.5% and Today FM lost 0.6% and 2FM dropped 0.4%. Outside that it was very much the same picture as last year.
Station | 13_2 | 12_3 | +/- |
Any Radio | 100.0% | 100.0% | 0.0% |
Any National | 47.0% | 47.0% | 0.0% |
Any RTE Radio | 33.0% | 32.7% | 0.3% |
Any RTE1/2FM/Lyric | 32.4% | 32.3% | 0.1% |
RTE Radio 1 | 23.4% | 22.9% | 0.5% |
RTE 2FM | 7.3% | 7.7% | -0.4% |
RTE Lyric FM | 1.7% | 1.7% | 0.0% |
Today FM | 9.1% | 9.7% | -0.6% |
Newstalk | 4.8% | 4.6% | 0.2% |
Any Region/Local/M-City | 53.0% | 53.0% | 0.0% |
Home Local Station | 39.2% | 40.5% | -1.3% |
Other Regional/Local Station | 4.9% | 4.2% | 0.7% |
Over the day we have winners and losers in the different day parts. Below are four tabs showing this graphically. The first tab shows the whole day, which is a bit of a visual assault. The other three tabs break that down into easier to manage day parts.
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