The most popular Radio Ireland programme appears to have been the morning Cliona Show, the one axed by the station last month. This emerged yesterday in the figures showing that Radio Ireland has achieved a market share of just one per cent in its first three months. Almost 80 per cent of people have never listened to the station, according to the first official radio listenership figures published by the Joint National Listenership Research report (JNLR).
A breakdown of the station's weekday schedule shows ratings of between 0 and one per cent, or fewer than 22,000 listeners at peak times. A figure of 79 per cent of people said they had never listened to the station.
The Cliona Show, axed by the station last month and presented by Cliona Ni Bhuachalla, attracted an average listenership of 21,000, the majority being single men between the ages of 20 and 24. However, for every one person listening to Cliona, 23 people were listening to Pat Kenny on RTE, which had an average of 479,000 listeners.
The evening show The Last Word then presented by Eamon Dunphy and Ann Marie Hourihane, attracted an average of 16,000 people, most of them married men between the ages of 35 and 44. This compared to an average of 156,000 listeners to Daily Record, the RTE early evening show.
And Radio Ireland's morning show Daybreak, between 7 a.m. and 9.30 p.m., had an average listenership of one per cent or 19,000, mostly male, single and aged between 25 and 34. RTE's Morning Ireland had 21 per cent, or 591,000 listeners, the majority being housewives and people over 35.
Daybreak attracted Radio Ireland's highest proportion of AB listeners - the advertisers' term for high-spending individuals. But these appeared to have switched off once the Cliona Show came on air.
The Eclectic Ballroom, the evening music show presented by John Kelly, attracted an average of 16,000 listeners, the majority being married men between the ages of 35 and 44.
The figures were based on listenership for the three months between April and June 1997. Asked whether they had listened to Radio Ireland in the last week, 10 per cent of the 6,660 people sampled said they had. This fell to six per cent in the last month.
On the basis of "minutes listened", Radio Ireland had a one per cent market share, compared to 32 per cent for RTE Radio 1, 22 per cent for 2FM and 45 per cent for local stations.
However, Radio Ireland's market share between 7 p.m. and midnight increased to three per cent.
The geographic breakdown showed the majority of listeners to the new station were in the Dublin and Cork areas.
The figures for RTE listenership between July 1996 and June 1997 showed a small drop in listeners to the Pat Kenny and Gay Byrne slots since the shows swapped times last September.
Pat Kenny has 16,000 fewer people listening than in 1995-1996, when the GB Show had the earlier slot.
And the GB Show with Gay Byrne and Gareth O'Callaghan has 317,000 listeners, or 4,000 fewer than when the Pat Kenny show was in this slot.
The JNLR survey is based on personal interviews with a sample of 6,660 adults over the age of 15.
