Over 3.1m people tune into a radio station every day, according to the latest figures from the Joint National Listenership Research figures. This is up 14,000 on the previous book and it equates to 83% of all Irish adults.
The JNLR also shows that radio’s share of audio listening among all adults equates to 87.6%. This compares with an 8% share for ‘own music’ listening, 3.3% for Spotify and 1.1% for podcasts/listen back services.
Such is the power of local radio that during the recent Storm Ophelia the Government decided to activate its emergency weather warnings by using all the radio stations around the country for its alerts, according to Gabrielle Cummins, chairperson of the #ChooseRadio initiative which is part of the Independent Broadcasters of Ireland (IBI).
“We saw first-hand with the recent horrendous weather conditions just how effective our medium can be when we work together and use all of our platforms to their maximum potential, to succinctly inform our large audience. As a collective, when we have an important message to get across, people will hear it and that’s a really powerful tool,” she says.
