A campaign by the recently rebranded RTÉ2 to improve its popularity with younger viewers is showing some signs of progress, with the second series of comedy show Damo & Ivor pulling in a reliable audience on Mondays and reality show Meet the McDonaghs getting off to a decent start on Thursdays.
Damo & Ivor, which features Andy Quirke in both title roles, was the most popular programme of the day for 15- to 34-year-olds on the first two Mondays of its current run.
The Parallel Films sitcom, which is broadcast at 10pm, pulled in an average viewership of 215,000 for its first episode, with the figure including any playback that took place within seven days of the broadcast.
This was up slightly on the opening episode of its debut last year.
About a quarter of 15- to 34-year-old viewers watching television in its time slot tuned into the show, which was also the third most watched on the RTÉ Player in September.
Meet the McDonaghs, a three-parter that documents the life of The Voice of Ireland runner-up Kelly McDonagh Mongan and her family, was watched by an average of almost 232,000 people in its first week in a 9.30pm slot.
This swelled to 245,000 once the seven-day, consolidated viewing was added. Around a fifth of the available 15- to 34-year-olds audience watched the Screentime Shinawil programme, which concludes tonight.
Reality series Connected is also winning a greater share of viewers for the later 10.30pm-11pm time slot when compared to the shows broadcast in the same period last year. RTÉ said it had attracted a consolidated audience of 80,800 in its first week, when it was stripped across four nights. It attracted a share of 10 per cent of available 15- to 34-year-olds in its time slot, which was 50 per cent higher than the average share for the slot last year.
Additional webisodes called Stay Connected have registered about 12,000 streams to date.
RTÉ2 channel controller Bill Malone, who is in his second full season in charge of its output, says Connected was commissioned as "a statement piece" designed to appeal to "younger viewers and those who think young".
The broadcaster will not comment on whether the show, made by Animo Television and Kite Entertainment, will be recommissioned next year until the current series concludes, but Malone notes there is "naturally great potential" in the format.
Malone says the overall performance of the channel is “very encouraging”, with its share of the 15- to 34-year-old audience up 35 per cent in the first week of the new season compared to the same period last year.
