On February 7th, 2018, the latest Joint National Listenership Research figures were published confirming Irish radio’s stronghold on the hearts & ears of Waterford audiences, with more than 60,000 people tuning into WLR every week, and 40,000 of those listening every day.
The station has recorded its best JNLR listenership book in almost five years, with significant growth recorded across the Monday-Friday prime time shows. The Big Breakfast Blaa is now in its third year on air with Mary O’Neill and Ollie Carroll every weekday morning from 7-10am. Their brilliant humour, up-to-date news and sport content, expert and entertaining contributors and great prizes, have proven to be a big hit with people in Waterford.
This book is the first to record a 12 month period of WLR’s mid-morning show, Déise Today with Eamon Keane, which began in January 2017. The figures confirm what the Waterford audience has been telling us since the show first aired; that Eamon Keane is the perfect presenter to take over from late WLR Broadcaster Billy McCarthy, who died after a short illness in November 2016.
The Lunchbox with Geoff Harris has also seen steady growth in the midday to 3pm slot. Meanwhile, The Drive Home with Teresanne O’Reilly has recorded the highest ever figures for a drive time show on WLR, proving her great mix of music, up-to-the-minute quick news and sports updates and down-to-earth personality are exactly what people in Waterford want to hear between 3-6pm each weekday.
On receipt of the latest figures, WLR’s Programme Director, Michael Byrne, said; “Radio is as popular now as it was twenty years ago. 83% of all-adults still listen to radio every day. That’s the highest in Europe. WLR has had an extremely good book. The figures released are the rewards for all the hard work and commitment the staff has shown to WLR over the last difficult 18-months.
Listeners have no end of choice for how they tune in to radio and last week saw another option added to the pile with Amazon’s Echo range of smart speakers.
Despite the plethora of options available, Irish radio audiences are still extremely loyal to their favourite radio station with 3 million people listening to radio for an average of 247 minutes a day.”
Here are 10 handy facts about WLR and radio in Ireland. #ChooseRadio
1. WLR now has 40,000 daily listeners.
2. WLR has 60,000 weekly listeners.
3. All 10 of the top 10 radio shows listened to in Waterford are on WLR.
4. Every 15 minutes, 10,000 people are listening to WLR.
5. 83% of people in Ireland listened to the radio yesterday.
6. On average, in excess of 4 hours is spent with WLR every day.
7. When it comes to any audio listening in Ireland, live radio rules with 87.6%. This compares to 8% of owned music and only 3.3% to Spotify.
8. Radio also dominates when compared with other media – 51% of all adults in Ireland used Social Media yesterday and just 40% read a national newspaper.
9. 364,000 people in Ireland listened to radio via either a radio station App or the Irish Radioplayer in the last seven days.
10. Irish radio’s strong on air performance is complemented across its digital platforms with over 9.2 million social connections.
Choose Radio JNLR 2017-4 from Orangeye Media on Vimeo.
