RTÉ Lyric FM Lost 12% of its Listenership in 2018
According to the latest JNLR figures, RTÉ Lyric FM lost 12% of its listenership in the third quarter of 2018 compared to the same period last year.
Lyric had 267,000 weekly listeners in July-September 2018, 27,000 less than 2017. The station now has 1.7% of the national radio listenership.
The music and arts channel receives the lowest funding of all four main RTÉ radio stations and its funding has been stagnant since 2013. According to RTÉ’s annual reports, in 2012 it received €7m. This dropped to €6m in 2013 and it has remained at this level since.
Currently, the most popular programmes are: Marty in the Morning with 40k weekly listeners, Lorcan Murray’s Classic Drive (39k), The Full Score with Liz Nolan (34k), Movies and Musicals (34k), The Hamilton Scores (27k), Niall Carroll’s Classical Daytime (26k) and The Mystery Train with John Kelly (22k).
Lyric’s schedule has focussed more on light classical music in recent years. In 2015, it dropped its traditional music and jazz programmes Grace Notes and Jazz Alley, which means it has no programmes dedicated to those genres. In 2015, it also dropped the popular Sunday morning early music progamme Gloria. In July 2017, Carl Corcoran left the Blue of the Night show after ten years.
In September 2017, Lyric relaunched John Kelly’s show Mystery Train, which had previously been broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1. The Mystery Train now has 8k fewer listeners than his previous daytime show, The JK Ensemble (30k in 2015).
For more on the JNLR figures for all RTÉ stations, see below.
