Radio in Dublin is up by 8% or 22,000 listeners on the previous twelve months and radio listenership now stands at 829,000 or a reach of 81% of its citizens. Book on book the increases are marginal growing only 3,000 in the twelve months.
You will see from the graphic below that Dublin radio listenership has declined over the past few books, as has the national figure. At one point, between 2010 and 2011, the national and Dublin listenership were roughly at the same level, hovering around 86%. Since then the National listenership has slowly declined to 83%, whereas the fall in Dublin listenership has been more pronounced, dropping to 79% in 2014 but tracking back to 81% in this survey. When the dust settles I might return to that differential between the National picture and the Dublin one.
| Year On Year | Book on Book | |||||||||||
| 15Q1 | 14Q1 | +/- | +/- | Ch | 14Q1 | +/- | +/- | Ch | ||||
| RTE Radio 1 | 297 | 29% | 275 | 27% | 22 | 2% | 8% | 285 | 28% | 12 | 1% | 4% |
| FM 104 | 184 | 18% | 194 | 19% | -10 | -1% | -5% | 187 | 18% | -3 | 0% | -2% |
| Newstalk | 174 | 17% | 137 | 14% | 37 | 3% | 27% | 170 | 17% | 4 | 0% | 2% |
| Spin 1038 | 147 | 14% | 129 | 13% | 18 | 1% | 14% | 142 | 14% | 5 | 0% | 4% |
| 98FM | 109 | 11% | 88 | 9% | 21 | 2% | 24% | 110 | 9% | -1 | 2% | -1% |
| Today FM | 99 | 10% | 74 | 7% | 25 | 3% | 34% | 88 | 9% | 11 | 1% | 13% |
| Q102 | 92 | 9% | 89 | 9% | 3 | 0% | 3% | 97 | 10% | -5 | -1% | -5% |
| RTE 2FM | 77 | 8% | 71 | 7% | 6 | 1% | 8% | 75 | 7% | 2 | 1% | 3% |
| RTE Lyric FM | 60 | 6% | 54 | 5% | 6 | 1% | 11% | 56 | 6% | 4 | 0% | 7% |
| Radio Nova 100FM* | 58 | 6% | 49 | 5% | 9 | 1% | 18% | 55 | 5% | 3 | 1% | 5% |
| Sunshine 106.8 | 45 | 4% | 34 | 3% | 11 | 1% | 32% | 43 | 4% | 2 | 0% | 5% |
| Classic Hits 4FM | 38 | 4% | 32 | 3% | 6 | 1% | 19% | 38 | 4% | 0 | 0% | 0% |
| Phantom 105.2FM | 22 | 2% | 15 | 1% | 7 | 1% | 47% | 20 | 2% | 2 | 0% | 10% |
* Yesterday this table went a little “t*ts up”, as they say in the tech trade. I had the completely wrong figure for Radio Nova making them look a lot less stellar that they actually are. I’m happy to amend and apologise for tarnishing their results in this book! Up 18% year on year and 5% book on book is the reality.
Turning to the individual stations and much like the National picture all stations felt the love and, bar two, all stations got a lift year on year. Again, that lift ranged from mild to a ‘hello boys!’.
The latter should be reserved for Today FM who over the year as they managed a spectacular 34% increase on their Dublin listenership. They now stand at 99,000 listeners (I’d be going for the “Ninety Nine Red Balloons” – its not one hundred but..) and 10% reach and just shy of half the new arrivals were in the last quarter alone.
RTE1 still dominates Dublin listenership with 297,000 listeners every day or a 29% reach. It’s up 8% on the twelve months and a modest 4% book on book and the station is still a massive 184,000 listeners ahead of its nearest rival FM104 and no sign of it being caught.
Mirroring its national increase, Newstalk also made gains in Dublin adding 37,000 listeners or 27% year on year. It brings them to a reach of 17% up from 14% on the previous year. It has the bragging rights of second place well in its sights having practically caught FM104 for that accolade. Its only 10,000 listeners behind FM104 and given that it was 57,000 listeners behind in the 14Q1 survey, that’s not a bad twelve months for them.
98FM made progress throughout the year adding 21,000 listeners and for the optics, moving into double figures with a reach at 11%. FM104 was one of the only stations to see a decline over the year dropping 10,000 listeners to 184,000.
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Again, it’s best to look at the reach over the last six surveys.
| 15Q1 | 14Q4 | 14Q3 | 14Q2 | 14Q1 | 13Q4 | |||||||
| RTE Radio 1 | 297 | 29% | 285 | 28% | 280 | 28% | 278 | 27% | 275 | 27% | 286 | 28% |
| FM 104 | 184 | 18% | 187 | 18% | 182 | 18% | 185 | 18% | 194 | 19% | 196 | 19% |
| Newstalk | 174 | 17% | 170 | 17% | 162 | 16% | 150 | 15% | 137 | 14% | 128 | 13% |
| Spin 1038 | 147 | 14% | 142 | 14% | 138 | 14% | 136 | 13% | 129 | 13% | 127 | 13% |
| 98FM | 109 | 11% | 110 | 9% | 103 | 9% | 101 | 9% | 88 | 9% | 85 | 8% |
| Today FM | 99 | 10% | 88 | 9% | 87 | 9% | 81 | 8% | 74 | 7% | 81 | 8% |
| Q102 | 92 | 9% | 97 | 10% | 82 | 8% | 91 | 9% | 89 | 9% | 87 | 9% |
| RTE 2FM | 77 | 8% | 75 | 7% | 73 | 7% | 70 | 7% | 71 | 7% | 72 | 7% |
| RTE Lyric FM | 60 | 6% | 56 | 6% | 61 | 6% | 57 | 6% | 54 | 5% | 55 | 5% |
| Radio Nova 100FM | 58 | 6% | 55 | 5% | 52 | 5% | 55 | 5% | 49 | 5% | 50 | 5% |
| Sunshine 106.8 | 45 | 4% | 43 | 4% | 38 | 4% | 35 | 4% | 34 | 3% | 33 | 3% |
| Classic Hits 4FM | 38 | 4% | 38 | 4% | 37 | 4% | 36 | 3% | 32 | 3% | 31 | 3% |
| Phantom 105.2FM | 22 | 2% | 20 | 2% | 20 | 2% | 18 | 2% | 15 | 1% | 15 | 1% |
The shares show that the RTE1 and FM104 dropped nearly two points each while Q102 and 2FM lost a point each. 98FM added 1.2% to their share and Newstalk added 0.8% – anyway, all the numbers are below!
| Station | 15Q1 | 14Q1 | +/- |
| RTE Radio 1 | 32.3% | 34.1% | -1.8% |
| FM104 | 10.7% | 12.5% | -1.8% |
| Newstalk | 10.5% | 9.7% | 0.8% |
| Spin 1038 | 7.2% | 6.6% | 0.6% |
| 98FM | 6.7% | 5.5% | 1.2% |
| Today FM | 6.3% | 5.8% | 0.5% |
| Q102 | 5.9% | 6.9% | -1.0% |
| RTE 2FM | 4.7% | 5.7% | -1.0% |
| Nova 100FM | 3.7% | 3.8% | -0.1% |
| RTE Lyric FM | 3.6% | 2.8% | 0.8% |
| Sunshine 106.8 | 3.4% | 2.7% | 0.7% |
| Classic Hits 4FM | 2.6% | 2.3% | 0.3% |
| TXFM | 1.2% | 1.0% | 0.2% |
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And finally a quick look at the quarters for the individual stations – split into two for ease of viewing.
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