Overall listening to radio in Ireland is on the way down.
To see a trend you need to look back over the years which I have done and you can also.
In 1999, the JNLR Listened Yesterday figure for All Radio was 88%. The most recent JNLR reports that same figure as 85%. A drop of 3%.
It gets really interesting when you compare us to the UK market. In 1999 the RAJAR Listened Yesterday figure for All Radio was 89%. The most recent RAJAR reports that same figure as 92%. An …

FM in the UK continues its downward fall.
The latest RAJAR market trends released yesterday shows a market share for analogue (AM & FM) has fallen to 65.4% with the remainder of listening done on growing DAB and digital platforms.
The big winners are digital only stations like Jazz and Planet Rock. Absolute Radio have also done phenomenally well with about half their listeners tuning in on DAB, Freeview and online. Not bad for an AM licenced station!
What I also find interesting, is that this churn is actually driving an …

Last week a general email discussion has been going on talking about the costs of broadcasting online versus one-to-many broadcasting with FM or DAB.
JP Coakley, Director of Operations at RTÉ Radio made some very good points which I’m sharing with his permission. Please note these are JP’s personal thoughts and not necessarily those of RTÉ.
First things first. Let’s not demonise either side. This is neither a question of New Media refuseniks who are unable to see the tidal wave of the web coming toward them as they hold to a …

Good old FM has been knocking around since the 40′s and RTE have been broadcasting on it since the 60′s, However it didn’t become popular in Ireland for another 20 years.
That’s when, in 1981, an entrepreneur called Chris Carey made a decision to base pirate station Radio Nova firmly on FM. He sold the advantages of “clutter free” stereo FM and it was a huge success. So much so that in 1988 the government, when establishing the new legal independent radio sector, made a very big decision to go …

With the advent of the iPhone, Nokia internet radio and dedicated internet wi-fi radios, people keep telling me the internet is the future.Though I firmly believe the internet is a key part of the future, it will never replace broadcast radio for two key reasons.
The most important is establishing standards. As we speak there is no standard streaming method for online radio. It’s all a mix of mp3, ogg, aac, wma and so on. Worse, not everything will work on every computer, wi-fi radio or phone. The situation deteriorates when …

DAB continues to become a standard across the world with Toyota announcing it’s new Prius will include a DAB/FM radio in the standard spec.
This follows Ford’s announcement last year that DAB will be a standard in their Kuga Titanium range. DAB is already a popular option with most other UK car manafacturers.
For domestic radios it is getting harder and harder to buy a radio that does not have DAB as standard. As well as UK highstreet brands based here like Currys, Dixons etc Irish owned electronics stores such as Power …

Obviously the recession is bad news but the one thing we hear over and over is that it is essentially a crisis of confidence.
There are two ways of looking at this crisis. Go with the media’s never ending stream of bad news, baton down the hatches and hope for the best.  The other is to realise that while most people are pulling back they are leaving opportunity for others to pull ahead. Recession is often a time of innovation and the innovators reap the rewards.
Needless to say we are definately …