Without sounding the alarm bells, the first notable in the research this quarter was another fall in the overall radio listenership figure, to 82% or 2,977,000 people every day.
It dropped 27,000 on the year and 15,000 on the previous book. It’s still a very healthy figure and better than some of the other media stats facing a constant barrage of disruption, but the trend is most definitely downward and has been since around 2010.
The different stations have had varying degrees of success/failure. RTE1 had good quarter adding 4,000 on the previous book and 12,000 on the year leaving them at 880,000 (24%). Today FM dropped 13,000 (-3%) on the book and 56,000 (-13%) on the year. It leaves them sub 400k at 397,000 and an 11% reach (the percentage down from 13% last year).
Newstalk was in a similar position dropping 13,000 (-3%) on the book and 35,000 (-9%) on the year arriving to 367,000 (10%). For 2FM it’s yet another bloodletting with this book. Down 9,000 on the last book and 59,000 (-15%) on the year nothing in the revised schedule seems to be working. When you get to the individual slots you’ll see that some of the programming is simply not working with listeners abandoning them in their droves.
2FM dropped their listenership into single digits at 9% and are now the 4th most popular national station, out of the five on offer. It’s the first time ever they dropped into single digits and you can see from the graphics below that the trend looks set to continue.
Lyric were down 3% on the book but were 2,000 better than this time last year.
Graphic: Radio Listenership
It’s worth superimposing the Dublin radio reach on the National figure as it constitutes about 27% of the overall. You can see that the Dublin reach is falling at a much faster rate and has to be affecting the national figure.
Table : Radio Reach
| Year on Year | Book On Book | |||||||||||||
| Station | 2016Q3 | 2015Q3 | +/- | +/- | Ch | 2016Q2 | +/- | +/- | Ch | |||||
| Any Radio | 82% | 2977 | 83% | 3004 | -1% | -27 | -1% | 83% | 2992 | -1% | -15 | 0% | ||
| Any National | 44% | 1599 | 46% | 1652 | -2% | -53 | -3% | 44% | 1607 | 0% | -8 | 0% | ||
| RTE Radio 1 | 24% | 880 | 24% | 868 | 0% | 12 | 1% | 24% | 876 | 0% | 4 | 0% | ||
| Today FM | 11% | 397 | 13% | 453 | -2% | -56 | -12% | 11% | 410 | 0% | -13 | -3% | ||
| Newstalk | 10% | 367 | 11% | 402 | -1% | -35 | -9% | 11% | 380 | -1% | -13 | -3% | ||
| RTE 2FM | 9% | 335 | 11% | 394 | -2% | -59 | -15% | 10% | 344 | -1% | -9 | -2% | ||
| RTE Lyric FM | 4% | 136 | 4% | 134 | 0% | 2 | 1% | 4% | 140 | 0% | -4 | -3% | ||
Graphic: Gains/Falls
Graphics: National Reach
Table: National Shares
| Station | 16Q3 | 15Q3 | 16Q2 | +/- YoY | +/- BoB |
| Any Radio | 100.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| RTE Radio 1 | 23.8% | 22.3% | 23.6% | 1.5% | 0.2% |
| RTE 2FM | 5.8% | 6.8% | 6.0% | -1.0% | -0.2% |
| RTE Lyric FM | 2.0% | 1.9% | 2.1% | 0.1% | -0.1% |
| Today FM | 7.5% | 7.9% | 7.7% | -0.4% | -0.2% |
| Newstalk | 6.0% | 6.6% | 6.3% | -0.6% | -0.3% |
The share show little bar that RTE1 gained 1.5% over the year and 2FM lost1%
Graphics: Day Parts
Radio Decline
Just a quick look at the demographics at three year intervals. It charts the fall of Radio listenership scrutinised by demographics. It clearly shows that the younger cohort is moving away from radio rather rapidly.
