After 2FM’s “extensive public search for new and energetic presenters”, four voices will make their debut on the RTÉ radio station today: Benny Bracken and Helen Galgey at breakfast and Mikey O’Reilly and Demi Isaac in the early afternoon.
It’s all part of a “re-energised” weekend schedule introduced to complement the recently reconfigured weekday one, which now features two new-ish shows in 2FM Breakfast with Carl (Mullan), Roz (Purcell) and Aisling (Bonner) and 2FM Drive with Doireann Garrihy.
The four new additions all have industry backgrounds – actor Isaac, who will broadcast from RTÉ‘s Cork studio, will be well known to fans of comedy The Young Offenders, in which she stars – though their new roles could represent their trickiest task yet.
Irish radio listenership has proven remarkably resilient overall in recent decades, but being a national radio presenter in 2025 is not like being a national radio presenter in 1985 or even 2005. There is far more competition for attention, and not just with other radio stations.
This can be frustrating across the media, but on a youth-targeting music radio station where an upbeat, cheery tone is the default, the challenge of raising the spirits of listeners begins with keeping up your own. Radio presenting is a confidence game.
It’s also a remarkably perilous one, where presenters who are riding high one moment are shown the studio door the next. Over the decades, the knowledge that they often have no real tenure has occasionally manifested on air via subdued voices whose inherent energy has been snuffed out by friction with bosses and the feeling that they are not cutting through.
As for 2FM itself, the battle is a familiar one. It is trying to trumpet “fresh voices, fresh energy and fresh sounds”, but it is doing so from a national market share of just 5.8 per cent. Although it has tried various different things, that share – which relates to weekdays from 7am-7pm only – has consistently bounced around either side of the 6 per cent mark for a while now.
[ Demi Isaac Oviawe of Young Offenders: ‘I naturally have a resting bitch face’Opens in new window ]
RTÉ points out that 2FM’s share among its target 15- to 34-year-old age group is more than double its overall one, at 12.1 per cent. The station serves a not insignificant role as RTÉ’s route to reaching younger audiences – a role that is too easily dismissed by those who reflexively argue that it should be sold or shut down. Still, there is a sense that its 2025 refresh is a vital one for RTÉ.
That shouldn’t heap undue pressure on the young people, both on-air and off-air, who work at the station. It may be the case that no combination of presenters exists that can “re-energise” 2FM, and that this is simply the modest status it commands now.
