Ray D’Arcy listener figures drop to new low as Irish radio audiences move closer to pre-pandemic levels

Radio listening in the Irish market has edged down closer to 2019 levels as audiences revert to their pre-pandemic habits, new figures suggest.

RTÉ stations Radio 1 and 2FM lost some ground in the Joint National Listenership Research (JNLR) survey for the year to the end of September, but Today FM’s national market share stayed level at its highest point in more than a decade, while Newstalk remained close to its biggest share of listening.

On RTÉ Radio 1, all weekday peak-time shows saw their listenership drop compared to the previous survey, which ran to the end of June, and its market share fell to 20.6 per cent, down from 21.3 per cent.

Among these Radio 1 shows, only Morning Ireland has a higher audience than it did a year ago. It is still the biggest programme on Irish radio with a listenership of 451,000, down 22,000 since the last survey but up 1,000 year-on-year.

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The Ryan Tubridy Show (344,000), Today with Claire Byrne (331,000), The Ronan Collins Show (232,000) and News at One (325,000) join Morning Ireland in retaining more listeners than those slots had before the pandemic.

Liveline, which saw its audience swell as high as 404,000 during the first year of the Covid-19 crisis, now has 321,000 listeners, down 25,000 year-on-year, while Drivetime has 212,000 listeners, down 12,000 year-on-year.

In between these two slots, The Ray D’Arcy Show fell by 31,000 year-on-year to a listenership of 179,000, a new low for the programme since it began in 2015.

Head of Radio 1 Peter Woods said the station planned to have a discussion “about all the different aspects of that programme” with its producers in the coming weeks, clarifying this was “not about the team”, who he praised, but “more about the structure” of the show.

Liveline, The Ray D’Arcy Show and Drivetime remain the biggest shows on Irish radio in their time slots.

On Saturday, Brendan O’Connor now has 344,000 listeners, down 22,000 year-on-year but in line with the audience for that slot seen in late 2019. On Sunday, his listenership climbed to 345,000, up 16,000 year-on-year. That’s a reversal of the historic pattern that saw Radio 1′s flagship weekend show perform better on a Saturday than a Sunday.

Radio 1′s Saturday morning review show Playback, presented by Sinéad Mooney, is now the second most listened-to programme on Irish radio with an audience of 354,000, up 40,000 year-on-year.

On Today FM, which kept its share of peak-time listening at 9.1 per cent, the standout performers were Ian Dempsey and Ray Foley. Mr Dempsey’s breakfast show is up 21,000 year-on-year at 199,000 and it has overtaken the show that follows it, Dermot & Dave, to reclaim its position as Today FM’s biggest show.

Mr Foley, meanwhile, has grown the station’s mid-afternoon listenership since his show began in February. His slot now has 149,000 listeners, up 6,000 since the last survey and up 17,000 year-on-year.

James Brownlow, managing editor of music and entertainment for Today FM owner, Bauer Media Audio Ireland, said Mr Foley was “one of the country’s best entertainment radio broadcasters”, while Mr Dempsey and his team had made their performance at breakfast “look effortless”.

Elsewhere on Today FM, The Last Word with Matt Cooper has 164,000 listeners at drive-time and Pamela Joyce has 130,000 listeners at lunchtime, both down 6,000 year-on-year.

Alongside The Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show and Dermot & Dave, the station has a third entry in the top 20 biggest shows on Irish radio: Weekend Breakfast with Alison Curtis, who has 183,000 listeners on a Saturday. All other programmes in the top 20 are broadcast on Radio 1.

On Newstalk, also part of Bauer, Newstalk Breakfast presented by Shane Coleman and Ciara Kelly increased its audience by 1,000 since the last survey to 147,000, up 10,000 year-on-year. This is the best listenership Newstalk has had at breakfast for more than six years.

The Pat Kenny Show (177,000) and Lunchtime Live with Andrea Gilligan (108,000) lost listeners in recent months and are down 6,000 and 4,000 year-on-year respectively, but the mid-afternoon Moncrieff show is up 14,000 year-on-year at 90,000, while The Hard Shoulder with Kieran Cuddihy is up 10,000 year-on-year at 156,000.

Newstalk’s national market share is now 7.1 per cent, little changed from the last survey.

RTÉ 2FM has a 5.6 per cent share of listening, down from 5.8 per cent.

“I’d have liked to see it nudge to 6 per cent,” head of 2FM Dan Healy said.

2FM Breakfast with Doireann, Donncha and Carl now has 124,000 listeners, up 1,000 since the last survey and up 21,000 on the audience recorded for the slot a year ago, with Mr Healy saying new features on the show were delivering spikes in numbers.

Drive It with The 2 Johnnies has 122,000 listeners, unchanged both year-on-year and since the last survey.

In Dublin, Radio 1 has a 31.7 per cent share, with Newstalk on 11.1 per cent. In third place, and the biggest music station in the capital for the first time, is Sunshine 106.8 with an 8.3 per cent share of listening. It overtook Bauer’s Spin 1038, which has 8.1 per cent.

In Cork, Red FM is the station with the biggest market share at 21 per cent, ahead of Wireless Group’s Cork’s 96FM with 20.1 per cent.

The station that is most dominant in its franchise area is Highland Radio, which has close to a 67 per cent market share in north Donegal.

The JNLR – a rolling 12-month survey conducted face-to-face with about 16,800 people – was disrupted for several months in 2021 due to the pandemic, which may result in some distortion to the year-on-year comparisons.

Overall, despite the stabilisation back towards pre-pandemic norms, the radio industry will be pleased with the survey, which shows 78 per cent of adults aged 15-plus and 68 per cent of 15-34 year-olds listen to the radio each weekday.

“Today’s figures are a great reminder that Irish radio is such a central part of people’s lives,” said Ciarán Cunningham, chief executive of industry body Radiocentre Ireland.