Colum Kenny: Rabbitte's ear must tune to struggling radio stations
Despite a busy portfolio, the new Minister should focus on changes in broadcasting, says Colum Kenny
Pat Rabbitte is no stranger to the airwaves. But Ireland's new Minister for Communications, Energy and National Resources had better get used to listening to radio as well as talking on it.
Radio is popular in Ireland, as the latest research again shows. Each day last year, an average of 85 out of every 100 Irish people tuned in. By comparison, only three in every 100 people use the much-hyped Twitter daily.
Presenters such as Ray D'Arcy, Ryan Tubridy, Scott Williams and George Hook all have loyal followers. Many a listener tells researchers that radio "keeps me company". Irish people tune into radio for four hours every day.
But stations now battling to survive the recession want Minister Rabbitte to help their sector. Commercial stations suspect that his Labour Party loyalties make him sympathetic to RTE. But RTE worries that the cost of providing a wide range of public services is not fully understood by politicians.
Pat Kenny, Marian Finucane and Joe Duffy may be among Ireland's most famous broadcasters but they are not getting any younger, and the audience is fragmenting as more stations come on air. So RTE will fight its corner hard.
New figures show that just one in every three listeners on average is now tuned into any RTE radio service at any given time. This is a big change in 20 years, one that may be obscured by the fact that individual RTE programmes such as Morning Ireland are still very successful.
But at any given time of the day, on average, more people are tuned into local or regional stations than are listening to RTE.
And Today FM and Newstalk have devoured further slices of the market, enjoying between them a bigger share of the audience than both RTE 2fm and Lyric fm combined.
Last Friday, Damian Loscher, Managing Director of research company IPSOS MRBI gave advertisers and others a look "behind" the audience figures that are collected regularly as part of a broad sweep known as the Joint National Listenership Research (JNLR). Members of the public are asked each year to list what stations they heard yesterday and to state how long they listened to each one. Once the percentage share of audience is worked out, advertisers spend their budgets accordingly.
Loscher knocked on the head any idea that people are not reading newspapers and books this weather. More than one-in-three still read a book daily. And while talk of Twitter exaggerates its appeal, the photographs of Facebook help to ensure that four-in-10 of us say that we use that social medium "almost every day".
The JNLR shows that the single most popular station among all Irish adults is still RTE Radio 1, with nearly a quarter of all listeners tuned in on average at any given time. But when you combine all of the local stations you find that, on average, more than twice as many people are listening to a local station as are listening to RTE Radio 1.
Highland Radio in Donegal continues to be the most popular local station in its region, holding the attention of nearly two out of every three listeners in Donegal at any point. The other top five are Radio Kerry, Tipp fm, Shannonside and Midwest Radio. But even the 18th local station on the audience share list, East Coast fm, still commands a greater share of listeners in its area than does RTE Radio 1 nationally, and three times as many as RTE 2fm.
RTE Radio 1 holds its own in Dublin, where its share is above the national average despite intense competition. But RTE 2fm slips below its national average, as 98FM, FM104 and Q102 each attracts about 11 out of every 100 listeners at any given time. Smaller stations scramble to survive.
Newstalk works hard in the face of intense competition for talk radio from the relatively well-resourced RTE. The latter still manages to set national agendas when it comes to public affairs, and affords a platform for politicians and commentators whom it picks to include on its shows in a way that may be thought to make it unwise to cross the station.
Headline figures for audiences can also obscure emerging trends. People loyal to a particular station may be getting older, while its competitor with ostensibly fewer people tuned in is actually winning younger and future listeners who have greater spending power. And some audiences are exposed to far less serious current affairs, arts and feature programming than others, with the risk of a gradual dumbing down of broadcast-ing and society.
One problem for Pat Rabbitte, as he tries to come to terms with the complex world of broadcasting, is that he has so much else on his plate as Minister for Communications, Energy and National Resources. Whatever the merits of the Shell deal in Mayo, Mr Rabbitte is likely to want to ensure that Ireland doesn't lose out when it comes to its natural resources. And there is enough in that and other energy tasks alone to take his eye off the broadcasting ball.
Originally published in
