Media&Marketing:Are Dublin's youth listening less to radio and more to their iPods? That is the question advertisers may be asking after the publication of the radio ratings for 2007.

The Joint National Listenership Research report for January to December 2007 found that, among 15- to 34-year-olds in Dublin, most music stations lost listeners.

The "Listened Yesterday" figures show that the biggest loser was Q102 (-38 per cent) followed by Country (-20 per cent), while pop stations FM104 and 98FM were both down 13 per cent.

Bucking the trend were Spin (+1 per cent), Today (+8 per cent), classical music station Lyric (+12 per cent) and Newstalk (+20 per cent).

With so much competition in the capital, radio stations need to be more proactive in defining their proposition to listeners, according to Paul McCabe of MCM Communications.

"People now have access to new music before the stations and the stations are playing catch up to the consumers. Music radio needs to look at that issue."

David Tallon of Initiative Media expects the trend of falling listenership among young people to continue. "It's happening because kids have a greater number of channels to entertain them. Young people today are growing up in an era of self-created media.

"They're becoming increasingly unhappy having media content pushed at them and have the skills and technology to hand to create their own media sphere."

Tallon added: "While this is a worrying trend, it must be tempered by the fact that four out of five young adults still listen to radio every day, so radio remains a massive part of their lives."

Dave Winterlich of Carat noted that most of the decline in the youth demographic was accounted for by listeners in their 20s. "While 15-24s are down from 83 per cent to 81 per cent compared with 2006, there has been a decline among 25-34s from 87 per cent to 78 per cent. It is startling to see such a drastic decline over a 12-month period and the figures are hard to explain. There is no doubt that MP3 success has impacted on youth audience listenership figures, but it is unlikely to be the sole reason for such a decline.

"There will always be an ebb and flow in radio listening year on year. The real issue will be whether a small decline is sustained over a longer period, so we'll wait and see. Radio listening remains higher in Dublin and Ireland than in most of Europe, so we won't be hitting the panic buttons quite yet."

Paul Moran of Mediaworks predicts that, over the coming years, Today FM and RTÉ 2FM will find it increasingly difficult to grow audiences as a result of the establishment of new competitors like the new regional radio licences targeting under-35-year-olds, such as Beat FM in the southeast or Spin South West in Munster.

While the plethora of radio stations in Dublin gives listeners more choice, it pushes up costs for advertisers.

According to Gavan Byrne of Vizeum: "Segmentation allows us target more specifically and allows the message be more relevant. Fragmentation means the same specific audience is split across a number of stations, resulting in us having to buy more stations and increase costs and reduce relevance.

"However, radio reporting is very transparent. We can see how many tune in and for how long. The radio market is extremely healthy compared to other markets, and will continue to be so long into the future."

But MCM's Paul McCabe warns radio is in danger of pricing itself off schedules. "In the past I could use a small number of stations to achieve the coverage and frequency I needed. To get that same level of coverage now, I need to buy airtime on more stations. But the problem is the stations don't sell on a cost-per- thousand (CPT) basis . . .

"RTÉ 1 and Today FM both need to be currently upweighted on my plans in key areas. With new stations like Beat FM and Spin South West, the number of regional areas I need to upweight is increasing. With the launch of the new radio station i102-104 in the northwest, I guess I will have to do the same in that part of the country."

€10m Carat contract

Carat Ireland has been awarded the contract to buy all media for GlaxosmithKline. According to Carat, the account, which includes well-known brands like Lucozade, Panadol, Ribena and Sensodyne, is worth in excess of €10 million per annum.

siobhan@businessplus.ie