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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
— June – July 2013
A
SSESSING the performance of RTÉ
Radio in the talk-radio market
requires acuity. When it comes to radio,
Radio isn’t just paramount, it’s in a
class of its own, which can make comparisons
elusive and predictions treacherous.
With its broad range of what the vogue calls
‘marquee’ stars, its focus on serious issues - and
hard news - and its stranglehold on the talk-ra-
dio market, it is peerless in Ireland. While such
ascendancy may breed complacency, (BBC) Radio
it is not, however famously unfair it is to say
so. Where are the documentaries, behind-the-
scenes and foreign analysis, or even panel shows?
There are too many magazine programmes, too
much personality-led rumination, too much sport
(especially at weekends), traffic news (every bit
as tedious as Radio ’s ‘Shipping Forecast’, but
without any redeeming style) and – of course –
obtrusive advertising.
Of the other national broadcasters, Raidió
na Gaeltachta may have national coverage, but
its minority-language medium means that it
has limited reach and appeal. Otherwise, only
Newstalk makes any attempt to cater to talk
audiences. Newstalk pitches itself to a younger
audience than Radio ’s. In effect, this leaves
Radio with the older, more ‘serious’ audience by
default, while Newstalk occasionally indulges the
zanier demographic with offering programmes
such as the tonal and querulous Seán Moncrieff.
RTÉ dominates among the over-s, a market
left untouched by other stations. Newstalk, by
avoiding head-on competition with the behemoth
and choosing instead to chase - to -year-
olds, is left to fight it out with music-orientated
stations. from easy-listening AOR to contempo-
rary and current hits.
The trouble is, the kids aren’t all that inter-
ested in news talk.
Indeed, it’s notable that the best performing
Newstalk host is contrarian George Hook, hardly
a youngster, with a show that is more news radio,
less talk radio. Hook stands out in sounding like
he’s addressing an older audience, albeit with a
grumpier tone than a listener might hear on RTÉ.
What the BAI will make of his partisan stances in
light of their new guidelines on balance remains
to be seen. Such opinionatedness is never more
than implicit on RTÉ, establishment radio.
But despite Hook’s strong persona and per-
formance, Newstalk seems uncertain of its own
voice, barely tuned in. More talk than news, it
often sounds like FM without the music. All top-
ten most-listened-to programmes in the latest
Joint National Listenership (JNLR) Survey, are
on Radio One. Remarkably, only three of the Top
programmes –Ray D’Arcy, Ian Dempsey and
Ryan Tubridy, all one-time TV stars – are from
stations other than Radio . Hook, the only
Newstalk presence in the Top , barely scrapes
in at number , beaten into third in the drive-
time news wars, with Today FM’s Matt Cooper’s
‘Last Word’ at .
That said, the national flagship station does
show a regional bias. In particular, Radio owns
the dormitory belt, the large swathes of coun-
ties Dublin, Meath, Kildare and Wicklow with a
captive automotive audience. Four in ten com-
muters in the Pale tuned in yesterday to Radio
One according to the latest JNLR figures, cover-
ing the year up to the beginning of April ,
compared to a paltry % for Newstalk and %
for Today FM.
Meanwhile, it is striking how sharply Radio
listenership falls off the farther one travels from
Dublin (%), falling to % of over-s in the
southeast and northwest.
Listenership also waxes and wanes throughout
the day. Radio ’s first (and highest) peak comes
around am, falling off after am before peak-
ing again with the lunchtime news, a peak which
it carries through most of Joe Duffy’s ‘Liveline’,
before its final crest again during the first half
of ‘Drivetime’.
‘Morning Ireland’, with its major audience
share as Ireland goes to work Monday to Friday,
is still an agenda-setting programme. Roughly
half the two-hour slot is taken up with set-pieces.
media
RTÉ Radio 1:
anatomy of an
old friend
Pre-eminent but formulaic, it still dominates
listenership surveys
gerard cunningham
Too many magazine
programmes, too much
personality-led rumination,
too much sport, trafc news
and obtrusive advertising
“
(news headlines every half hour, weather, sports
news, traffic reports, business news, It Says in
the Papers, and the “And finally...” slot at the end,
but it still manages to fit in a ground-breaking
interview more often than not, either breaking
a story or – or more often – moving on a story
which broke in the newspapers overnight or in
the previous evening’s ‘Prime Time’. That story
will often dominate the news agenda through-
out the day, not just on RTÉ but elsewhere too.
Still, in contrast with the ‘Today’ programme
which performs analogously on BBC’s Radio ,
it is less broad-ranging, international, challeng-
ing or thoughtful.
The programming pattern is simple, perhaps
formulaic: a strong news programme, followed
by a lighter show, then back to hard news. So
‘Morning Ireland’ gives way to the John Murray
show – a wafer-light mix of lifestyle and human-
interest features that fails to exploit its host’s
range, before ‘Today with Pat Kenny’.
Kenny may lose radio as the morning
progresses (all radio does) but it still holds its
own as a flagship, carrying reactions to Morning
Ireland stories, as well as its own fixed features,
though in Kenny’s case the features aren’t daily
staples as much as regular items: an audio pack-
age from Paddy O’Gorman or Brian O’Connell,
intermittently excruciating ‘recipes’ with Pat,
the “Friday gathering”.
Kenny, always much more at ease behind a
microphone than in front of a camera, moves con-
summately – though he is weak on humour and
passion – through the weekly staples to lighter
feature interviews or breaking news, often from
Leinster House. And there’s more… In the longer
term, Kenny’s ownership of the mid-morning
slot poses its own problems for RTÉ planners.
He turned this January, and senior manage-
ment must be aware that he will eventually call
it a day.
News at One catalyses the second spike of the
day, and is the least mechanical of all RTÉ’s flag-
ship offerings. Apart from the initial headlines,
and brief business and sports updates, there
are no fixtures. It is pure news: a mix of reports
from correspondents and interviews. Its audi-
ence feeds directly to ‘Liveline’, which manages
to hold most of it as Duffy tuts his way ingratiat-
ingly through the nation’s problems.
‘Drivetime’ bookends Radio ’s daily news
coverage, and in many ways is a mirror image
of ‘Morning Ireland’. Like the morning show, it
has its stipend of fixed points: the mix of news,
weather, sports, traffic and business reports
at fixed slots. In between these are crammed a
mix of interviews, reports from RTÉ and other
correspondents, and regulars – from Olivia
O’Leary’s diary to the weekly provincial-news-
paper roundup.
The Radio schedule is extraordinary sta-
ble. Every few years, there’s a tweak here or there,
such as moving ‘Drivetime’ to an earlier start time
at .PM, but for the most part, even as new
faces take over, the flagship shows remain the
same. Behind the scenes, new producers soon
succumb to the rhythm of each show, getting
a feel for its particular mix of heavy and light.
Shows seem to have their favourites and the
range of voices is shown up by the more ambi-
tious catholicism of the likes of Vincent Browne’s
‘Tonight’ TV show.
Aiming for an older audience few other
radio stations have targeted as intently, Radio
remains in a class of its own. That makes for
very conservative radio. It’s not that the station
is politically cautious, though that criticism too
is levelled, but that it is predictable and con-
servative broadcasting. A documentary during
daylight hours is practically unheard of, and if the
listener comes upon one, then it’s a fair bet that
it’s either a weekend or a bank holiday. Specialist
programmes are also consigned to weekends and
late evenings, when listenership will have been
dropping dramatically since pm. Full-packaged
reports are rare, though not unknown: Philip
Boucher-Hayes produces regular pieces, and,
where a reporter has recorded interviews, the
format is more likely to be an interview, during
which the reporter introduces sound clips, than
a stand-alone report. The model for this may be
Pat Kenny’s regular pieces with Marie-Louise
O’Donnell, where the unchallenging senator is
sent off somewhere, and then reports back what
others told her.
Above all, there is the sense of studio-bound
news. Radio sits in Dublin, and the news comes
to it. When reporters go out, it is often to report
back on the alien creatures they have encoun-
tered, typified by Paddy O’Gorman’s bulletins
from dole queues and county fairs. Despite its
national reach, Radio One often comes across
not so much as a nation talking to itself as Dublin
taking to the nation, and perhaps that goes some
way to explain its lower listenership figures in the
southwest and northwest. Colourful, dangerous,
paradigm-altering, it is not.
Clare Duignan has moved on from four lugu-
brious years atop RTÉ radio, her attentions
characteristically diverted by the implosion
of FM’s certainties with the rise of local and
regional stations, such as FM and Nova in
Dublin, and Beat - in the South-East. Her
successor may find the precarious strengths of
Radio every bit as diverting.
At least no sign of Brendan O’Connor
All top-ten most-listened-to
programmes are on
Radio 1. Remarkably,
only three of the Top 20
programmes are from
stations other than Radio 1
“
