Day: 30 October 2013

The National picture for radio is still very healthy with 2,995,000 or 83% tuning in on an average day. But as the graphic shows the picture has been one of slight erosion over that past few surveys given that in 2009 radio’s reach was 87%.

The proliferation of technology isn’t exactly helping radio listenership as with technology comes other distractions like Facebook and Twitter etc which might well be eating into what was once radio time.

Radio listenership is much dominated by the early part of the day with the morning schedule between eight and ten taking the loins share of the listeners. The slowly drift away with a small spike at lunchtime and again during the evening commute. The last three surveys are plotted here and as you can see its fairly static.

 

In terms of individual performance some stations have fared better that others but all the stations took a fall in this survey. Any radio listening is down 57,000 on the same period last year (2012 Q3).

Station	13_3	c1	12_3	c2	+/-	+/-3	c3
Any Radio	83%	2995	85%	3052	-2%	-57	-2%
Any Region/Local/M-City	57%	2061	58%	2098	-1%	-37	-2%
Any National	45%	1624	47%	1681	-2%	-57	-3%
Home Local Station	42%	1523	44%	1605	-2%	-82	-5%
Any RTE Radio	34%	1231	35%	1260	-1%	-29	-2%
Any RTE1/2FM/Lyric	34%	1211	35%	1248	-1%	-37	-3%
RTE Radio 1	24%	861	24%	879	0%	-18	-2%
Today FM	13%	457	14%	493	-1%	-36	-7%
RTE 2FM	11%	384	11%	410	0%	-26	-6%
Newstalk	8%	294	8%	303	0%	-9	-3%
Other Regional/Local Station	7%	269	7%	253	0%	16	6%
RTE Lyric FM	3%	120	3%	124	0%	-4	-3%

RTE1 still very much dominates the listening with 861,000 average every day. Its closest competition is Today FM at 457,000 (13%) followed by 2FM.  

The big faller in the survey was Today FM dropping 36,000 or 7% of its listeners and most of those losses we outside the capital. Another faller was 2FM dropping 26,000 and 6% of its listenership year on year. These are figures are taken in isolation and really any radio trends should be viewed over time.

The graphic shows that while dropping in this survey, 2FM have put the brakes on the declines in recent surveys. Likewise, Today FM has performed marginally better in the more recent surveys.

Market Shares 

In terms of shares, there was very slight movement. The only highlights were that RTE Radio 1 gained 0.5% and Today FM lost 0.6% and 2FM dropped 0.4%. Outside that it was very much the same picture as last year.

Station	13_2	12_3	+/-
Any Radio	100.0%	100.0%	0.0%
Any National	47.0%	47.0%	0.0%
Any RTE Radio	33.0%	32.7%	0.3%
Any RTE1/2FM/Lyric	32.4%	32.3%	0.1%
RTE Radio 1	23.4%	22.9%	0.5%
RTE 2FM	7.3%	7.7%	-0.4%
RTE Lyric FM	1.7%	1.7%	0.0%
Today FM	9.1%	9.7%	-0.6%
Newstalk	4.8%	4.6%	0.2%
Any Region/Local/M-City	53.0%	53.0%	0.0%
Home Local Station	39.2%	40.5%	-1.3%
Other Regional/Local Station	4.9%	4.2%	0.7%

 

 

Over the day we have winners and losers in the different day parts. Below are four tabs showing this graphically. The first tab shows the whole day, which is a bit of a visual assault. The other three tabs break that down into easier to manage day parts.

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Overall listenership in Dublin dropped marginally by 8,000 to 809,000 and a reach of 80%. The Dublin landscape is very interesting and changeable each survey. Again the caveat here is certainly to take into account the comparison between surveys, but also to look at the bigger picture of where a station is trending over a few surveys.

RTE1 dominates the Dublin listenership with 286,000 listeners and a 28% reach. Its closest rival is FM104 at 207,000 (20%) down 19,000 on the same survey last year. Spin is a distant third at 13% or 135,000 back 23,000 on 2012 Q3 and 98FM is down by 33,000 to 81,000 and three percentage points as well.  Today FM still struggles in the capital only managing 77,000 as does 2FM with a none too spectacular 66,000

Station	13_4	13_4	12_4	12_4	13 v 12	13 v 12
RTE Radio 1	286	28%	285	28%	1	0%
FM 104	207	20%	226	22%	-19	-2%
Spin 1038	135	13%	158	15%	-23	-2%
Newstalk	122	12%	127	12%	-5	0%
Q102	97	10%	105	10%	-8	0%
98FM	81	8%	114	8%	-33	0%
Today FM	77	8%	84	11%	-7	-3%
RTE 2FM	66	7%	77	7%	-11	0%
RTE Lyric FM	49	5%	51	5%	-2	0%
Radio Nova 100FM	47	5%	45	4%	2	1%
Sunshine 106.8	30	3%	33	2%	-3	1%
Classic Hits 4FM	29	3%	21	3%	8	0%
Phantom 105.2FM	17	2%	15	1%	2	1%

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Market Shares

Station	13_4	12_4	+/-
RTE Radio 1	34.60%	32.80%	1.80%
FM104	12.80%	13.60%	-0.80%
Newstalk	8.30%	7.70%	0.60%
Q102	8.20%	8.10%	0.10%
Spin 1038	7.30%	8.10%	-0.80%
Today FM	5.80%	6.10%	-0.30%
98FM	5.40%	6.90%	-1.50%
RTE 2FM	4.80%	5.90%	-1.10%
Radio Nova 100FM	3.80%	2.70%	1.10%
RTE Lyric FM	2.70%	2.70%	0.00%
Sunshine 106.8	2.50%	2.60%	-0.10%
Classic Hits 4FM	2.30%	1.10%	1.20%
Phantom 105.2FM	1.00%	0.70%	0.30%
Region/Loc/M-C/D-C	0.40%	0.50%	-0.10%

The market shares have to be looked at in two ways, with and without RTE1 on the graphs because it’s dominance in Dublin somewhat distorts the picture:In this survey, in terms of shares, the big winner was Newstalk having gained to spots to third place in the share table and also RTE1 who increased their share by nearly 2% to 34.6%

 

If we remove RTE1 from the graph we get a better picture of the struggle underneath. The dominance of FM104 in the shares looks like it’s on the wane but none of the other popular stations seems to have picked up any share bar perhaps a small increase for Spin. Newstalk has been doing well in Dublin over the last few surveys and continues to make listenership gains. When the full force of Pat Kenny begins to reveal itself in the numbers, Newstalk will push on even further.

In the last survey in 2010 98FM held the highest share in the metropolis at 11.6% – they are currently at 5.4% and only marginally ahead of 2FM (the smaller station don’t feature in the graphic) – it’s staggering what can happen over a short period of time.

If you want to see how the stations perform across the day in Dublin, here it is graphically. They are split into graphs:

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