Radio Land and the JNLR Update….
Wow, it’s been a mad week in radio land since the publishing of the JNLR results (check out our nifty top 5 here: http://wearestarcom.tumblr.com/post/56432196497/jnlr-top-5). First the sad passing on Colm Murray at only 61 years of age. Then the shock move of Pat Kenny over to Newstalk (we’ll have a full analysis of this soon!). For now though, let’s take a look at some of the listenership developments across the country.
First of all, radio is still a major part of the media landscape, and contrary to some arguments, it isn’t going anywhere, at least for a long time. 3,012,000 adults still listen to the radio every day (that’s a whopping 84% of the total all adult universe). Granted that number is down 11,000 book on book, fluctuations up and down are par for the course. But we don’t need to tell you the effectiveness and size of the radio landscape; it’s well documented and a tried and tested advertising medium.
Let’s start off where national radio always stars off: RTE Radio 1. The station saw a moderate growth of 3,000 adult listeners – nothing major but certainly a happy outcome all the same. Their shows still dominate the top 10, and their reputation among listeners is second to none. For building a strong coverage figure, Radio 1 is where us agency geeks nearly always tend to turn to. However, the IRS ‘Ireland FM’ platform now reaches a massive 1,536,000 listeners – wow! On a numbers game, it would seem like Ireland FM has become the first port of call for coverage. The only problem is that their portfolio of brands cater to so many different target audiences across the country, while Radio 1 have a more consolidated listener base, making it easier to reach a specific type of consumer. Hence it becomes a balancing act of minimising wastage while building coverage, but sure that’s Starcom’s bread and butter! Not to be forgotten, UTV Radio’s numbers come in at 1,154,000, and that’s with fewer than half the amount of stations of IRS. Suddenly national buying ‘national’ radio has become a little less easy to define. Also of note, the only other strictly national station to grow was Newstalk by a good 6,000 listeners, and that’s despite the departure of the highly successful ‘Off the Ball’ team. 2FM dropped quite a large amount (17,000), but here at Starcom we’re eager to find out how the station will fare in future books under Dan Healy (the same man who spearheaded the Ireland FM platform!).
Shifting the focus onto the local stations now, we can’t help but highlight Radio Nova’s continued growth. Of adults 20-44 in Dublin, they now sit at 6.3% market share. A decent number of its own accord but don’t forget Nova have been on air for less than three years! Of course their numbers are still very small when compared with FM104 (76,000 20-44 Dublin city and commuter area listeners compared to 229,000), but nonetheless they’re an interesting one to watch. Over in Munster, Cork’s 96 is still the major contender with Red FM in a distant second (over 100,000 Co Cork adult listeners between them). That’s no major surprise as 96 enjoys a great deal of respect among local listeners; through solid programming and actively trying to give back to the community (for example they raised nearly half a million euro in their Giving for Living fundraiser earlier this year).
Bar a couple major drops for Today FM and 2FM, this wasn’t the biggest JNLR book in terms of shock developments. As we begin to move into colder months, and more people are driving to work and staying in during the evenings, what we want to see is where Radio 1’s mid-morning numbers sit now that Pat Kenny is gone, and how 2FM continue to fare. Overall the quality of radio programming out there is great, well done to all. Now on to the next book...
