Most of the State's best-known broadcasters have seen a fall in listenership in recent months according to the latest results from the JNLR/Ipsos MRBI survey.
The top ten most popular radio shows are still produced by RTÉ but broadcasters such as the Morning Ireland team, Liveline's Joe Duffy, Drivetime's Mary Wilson and Pat Kenny all lost listeners in the period July 2009 - June 2010, compared with the period April 2009-March 2010.
The 2FM morning slot occupied by Gerry Ryan until his death at the end of April saw a loss of 10,000 listeners when compared with the last survey. Colm Hayes and Lucy Kennedy took over the slot on May 10th, towards the end of the survey period.
Today FM's Ray D'Arcy was one of the few presenters to increase his audience when compared with the last survey. His morning show picked up 4,000 listeners. Marian Finucane gained 1,000 listeners for her Sunday morning show but lost 1,000 for her Saturday show, which is the third most listened to programme in the State.
Another weekend show, the radio review show Playback gained listeners as did The Business, presented by John Murray. This augers well for the presenter who will replace Ryan Tubridy in the daily 9am slot in the autumn. Tubridy will leave Radio 1 to present the slot previously occupied by Gerry Ryan on 2FM.
Morning Ireland, the State's most listened to programme lost 14,000 listeners in this survey when compared with the previous survey. Liveline retained its Number 2 slot but lost 8,000 listeners.
RTÉ Radio's managing director Clare Duignan highlighted the gains for weekend programmes and said the core weekday programmes had been in sustained growth for a prolonged period. "We are now seeing what is possibly a natural adjustment," she said.
Today FM overtook 2FM in market share in this survey, making it the second most listened to national radio station. Its chief executive Willie O'Reilly said this was "a fantastic achievement" in a very difficult economic climate.
RTÉ Radio 1 and 2FM recorded small decreases in market share, at 22.6 per cent (-0.3) and 9.3 per cent (-0.4) respectively. Newstalk increased its market share figure to four per cent, up 0.1 per cent while Today FM and RTÉ Lyric FM retained share figures of 9.6 per cent and 1.6 per cent respectively.
Newstalk chief executive Frank Cronin said the station was happy to achieve a market share of 4 per cent and he highlighted a year-on-year increase of 13 per cent for presenter Sean Moncrieff.
The survey results indicate that 86 per cent of the adult population listens daily to a mix of national, regional, multi-city and local radio throughout the country - this was unchanged since the last survey.
Highland Radio continued to have the biggest market share of the local stations, at 63.7 per cent but this was a fall of 0.4 per cent on the previous survey. Tipp FM's market share rose by 2.5 per cent to 57.8 per cent while Radio Kerry saw a two per cent increase in its share to 55.6 per cent.
In Dublin, 98FM again recorded the highest market share figure of the local Dublin stations at 10.9 per cent but this represented a drop of 0.7 per cent when compared with the last survey.
Increases in market share figure were recorded for Q102, Spin 1038 and Country Mix 106.8FM.
4FM, the new multi-city service increased its market share by 0.5 per cent to 2 per cent.
