The JNLR radio research for the first quarter of 2017 has been released. Nationally it shows there has been an increase in listenership to 82% or 3,083,000, an increase of 101,000 on the last book and 94,000 on the previous year. It also means that the total number listening to the radio is above the three million mark for the first time since 2015.
It should be noted that there has been a small increase in the estimated population in this survey and there are times when the overall percentage may actually go down in comparison to other books, but the absolute number of people could remain the same or indeed increase in some cases, again, due to the change in universe.
Dublin is looked at separately, but it’s interesting to compare the fortunes of the national reach and the Dublin reach the latter not having seen an increase in radio listenership since 2014 and it’s been on a straight decline since mid-2015.
The National stations all improved on a book on book basis with only Today FM showing a drop on a year on year basis. RTE added 24,000 on the last quarter and 13,000 on the year bringing them to 891,000 or 24% (-1%). They had some big gains in the morning with Sean O’Rourke adding 22,000 (7%) book on book.
Behind them is Today FM who increased on the quarter by a healthy 18,000 (5%) to bring them over the four hundred mark to 410,000 (11%) and it’s the station’s first improvement book on book since 2015Q1 which has to be seen as a positive.
2FM added 15,000 on the end of last year and is 3,000 ahead of where it was this time last year with Breakfast being their star performer. Newstalk added 16,000 on the quarter and 7,000 on the year. Lyric stands at 144,000 or 4% reach an improvement on both the quarter and on the year.
While the national and Dublin stations in the main improved the local area franchises took a bit of a pounding book on book with only six of the 17 showing an improvement.
Table: Radio Reach
| Latest | Book On Book | Year on Year | ||||||||||||
| Station | 2017Q1 | 2016Q4 | +/- | +/- | Ch | 2016Q1 | +/- | +/- | Ch | |||||
| RTE Radio 1 | 24% | 904 | 24% | 880 | 0% | 24 | 3% | 25% | 891 | -1% | 13 | 1% | ||
| Today FM | 11% | 410 | 11% | 392 | 0% | 18 | 5% | 12% | 415 | -1% | -5 | -1% | ||
| Newstalk | 10% | 386 | 10% | 370 | 0% | 16 | 4% | 10% | 379 | 0% | 7 | 2% | ||
| RTE 2FM | 10% | 360 | 10% | 345 | 0% | 15 | 4% | 10% | 357 | 0% | 3 | 1% | ||
| RTE Lyric FM | 4% | 144 | 4% | 135 | 0% | 9 | 7% | 4% | 139 | 0% | 5 | 4% | ||
Graphic: Reach
Graphic: Average Reach per Hour
