Sir, - Thank you to The Irish Times for its extensive coverage of the radio audience survey JNLR results (The Irish Times, August 23rd). I was, however somewhat, amused that Bernice Harrison (would think it's "bad news" for RTE Radio 1 to have a 40 per cent share of the radio market in Co Dublin. While Radio 1's national share is 27 per cent, we are more than happy that Radio 1 is the number one choice for Dublin city and county listeners and clearly the target is to increase our presence and audiences outside Dublin rather than to see the superb performance of Radio 1 in Dublin as a negative.
The results for Radio 1 in key areas outside Dublin, such as Cork, showed very clearly that Radio 1 is increasing its listenership there, up 2 per cent in this book (2FM was also up 2 per cent in Cork), and there were similar encouraging trends in other key local markets where very big local players showed losses for the first time in years. With a weekly listenership of over 1.3 million, Radio 1 has a very healthy future. - Yours, etc.,
Helen Shaw, Director of Radio, RTE, Donnybrook, Dublin 4.