98 FM, with Dan Healy at its helm, is thriving, thanks to endless researchand formatting, writes Emmet Oliver.
Few people were smiling this week when the latest JNLR listenership figures landed. From RTÉ to NewsTalk 106, the news was either alarmingly bad or at best mildly encouraging.
Then again, from New York to London to Dublin, there have been very few media smiles this year. Last year represented one of the worst downturns in the advertising sector for decades, but 2003 has not been much better with one media business, Dublin Evening, going bust and several others looking a little shaky.
This week, 98 FM chief executive Mr Dan Healy was one of the few radio bosses able to manage a smile. The 40-year-old, who originally hails from Galway, was delighted with the station's performance. Its listenership was up 3 per cent to 22 per cent; its market share up 4 per cent to 17 per cent.
Figures that mean little to the general populace can make media executives such as Mr Healy tremble. Like circulation figures to newspapers, listenership statistics are the lifeblood of radio and you live or die slowly by them.
Mr Healy, ever since he worked in the Galway Observer back in the mid-1980s, has been obsessed with media businesses. Time spent in the Sunday Tribune, The Irish Times and trade publisher Felix Dennis has given him a rounded view of the industry and he appears comfortable talking about radio, magazines or newspapers.
But getting his hands on a reasonably sized radio station comes with its own pressures - the two biggest are pleasing shareholders and seeing off competitors.
While this week's figures gave the station's staff a boost, even more gratifying was the flat performance of FM 104, 98's deadly rival in Dublin.
Its listenership was down by 2 per cent to 19 per cent. While these are all small figures, the rivalry between the two stations has become so bare knuckled that every percentage point matters.
While the chattering classes of Dublin continue to haughtily regard FM 104 and 98 FM as vacuous and bland, both stations have proven to be durable, with endless research and formatting helping them to stay relevant to their audiences.
The research and formatting is disliked by radio purists but Mr Healy absolutely knows his listeners. He can even draw a profile of her.
"Our listener is a 30-39 year-old woman living in Lucan with two kids, whose getting her holiday to Lanzarote each year, she's driving a Ford Focus, she may take the kids to Eddie Rockets from time to time. That's who she is," he says.
According to its last set of accounts, to December 2001, the station, which trades as Radio Two Thousand, made a pre-tax profit of €408,697. This was up on the previous year when profits were €383,146.
In the year to December 2001, a management fee of €684,000 was paid to Mr Denis O'Brien's Communicorp. Radio Two Thousand also paid Communicorp in excess of €77,000 in rent for use of offices in Grand Canal Quay.
In an attempt to push up those profits, the station's inventive Fugitive campaign earlier this year won plaudits throughout the marketing world.
The public response was huge, with sightings of the "fugitive" reported all over the city. The idea was simple: spot the fugitive, phone up 98 and, if you're right, win a cash prize. While the cash prizes were the bait, Mr Healy believes the campaign was essentially about fun.
"It wasn't about money at all, if it was it would not have worked the way it did," he says.
Whether the Fugitive campaign is the reason or not, this week's JNLR figures put clear blue water between 98 FM and FM 104 - at least for now. That is good news for Mr Healy and Mr O'Brien, his ultimate boss.
Mr Healy believes that, for too long, Mr O'Brien has been unfairly pilloried as the ogre in the media jungle. He points out that foreign firms such as CanWest, Granada and Scottish Radio Holdings have come in and bought powerful assets such as TV3 and Today FM, yet the dominance of Mr O'Brien in radio gets far more attention.
"Denis O'Brien has control of 98 FM, has a minority interest in Spin, NewsTalk and East Coast Radio. And he ain't the big bad wolf out there.
"I run a radio station for a very supportive but aggressive board, who want 98 FM to do well," he adds.
Some of the antipathy towards Mr O'Brien no doubt comes from those who applied for radio licences and failed to get them.
While understandable to a point, Mr Healy is blunt on the issue: "How you win a licence, in my opinion, is you go to the BCI [Broadcasting Commission of Ireland\], the documentation is there. You can look at other people's bids. You can hear the answers people gave to questions in previous oral hearings. You can prepare very well for it. It's an exam. It's a 10-question exam paper, a written document - it isn't brain surgery. And in relation to Denis O'Brien and Lucy Gaffney and the board, these guys are good at winning licences. They win the licences because they do the homework."
With four more stations due in the Dublin market, Mr Healy is aware that keeping 17 per cent market share will be difficult.
"What we have put to our board is we are not interested in staying still. We are not interested in our market share fragmenting. So as 98 FM moves forward we see the listenership figures going north. On a week like this, when you get 17 per cent market share, you've got to be very humble because its swings and roundabouts, and next week it's gone."
