Marian Finucane was the big winner in the latest radio listenership figures with her total audience for the weekend rising by 75,000.
The veteran RTÉ Radio 1 presenter now has 382,000 listeners tuning in on a Saturday and 325,000 on a Sunday. The figures are up 58,000 and 17,000 respectively year-on-year.
Two of the station’s other flagship presenters, Ryan Tubridy and Ray D’Arcy, also saw big increases. Tubridy’s show now has 328,000 listeners (up 24,000) and D’Arcy has 220,000 (up 15,000).
The biggest leap among the station’s daily shows, however, was for Sean O’Rourke whose audience grew by 27,000 year-on-year to 322,000.
Joe Duffy’s Liveline was up 5,000 to 375,000 and Ronan Collins was up 17,000 to 220,000, The news was not so good for the station’s morning and evening news programmes.
While the News at 1 had a modest increase of 2,000 to 334,000, Morning Ireland’s audience fell by 10,000 to 421,000 and Drivetime’s fell by 3,000 to 223,000.
“RTÉ Radio 1 consolidates and builds its listenership – this is a tribute to the hard work of our programme teams and a roster of some of the best on-air talents in the country,” said Peter Woods, the station’s managing editor.
At sister station 2FM, Breakfast Republic jumped by 3,000 to 188,000 and Nicky Byrne and Jenny Greene’s audience rose by 7,000 to 155,000.
However, the biggest increase was for Tracey Clifford who now has 147,000 people tuning in, up 18,000. However, Eoghan McDermott’s audience fell by 2,000 to 134,000.
Referencing his station’s changing line-up which will see a number of notable departures over the coming months, Dan Healy, head of RTÉ 2FM, said: “Times are changing and we’re getting ready to change again. It’s exciting times for 2FM as we head into a new schedule this summer.”
At Today FM, the Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show now has 181,000 people tuning in. That is an increase of 18,000 year-on-year and gives him the highest total since 2014.
Matt Cooper also has cause for celebration as his Last Word programme has 152,000 listeners, up 14,000. Dermot and Dave (up 1,000) and Fergal D’Arcy (up 2,000) had modest increases to leave their totals at 163,000 and 106,000 respectively. Muireann O’Connell’s early afternoon show has 8,000 fewer listeners leaving her total on 93,000.
Newstalk had a relatively good set of results, albeit that its breakfast show lost 2,000 listeners bringing its total to 124,000.
Pat Kenny’s audience increased by 2,000 to 150,000 while Lunchtime Live with Ciara Kelly had a 1,000 increase to 100,000.
However, Sean Moncrieff and Ivan Yates were the big winners with the former attracting 14,000 more listeners year-on-year to bring his total to 97,000 and the latter up 28,000 to 173,000.
Finally, in Cork, Neil Prendeville on Red FM continues to hold the advantage over the Opinion Line with PJ Coogan on 96FM in the battle of the morning talk shows. Prendeville has an audience of 70,000 compared to 67,000 for his rival.
