MEDIA AND MARKETING:RADIO STATION Newstalk still lags its main rival RTÉ Radio 1 for listeners by a long way. But there is one area where Newstalk has the edge – providing employment for managing directors.
Broadcasting since 2002, the station has just appointed Frank Cronin as its fourth boss in seven years. Cronin formerly worked with the Goodman Group, the Sunday Tribune and Setanta Sport and he is making an immediate mark at Newstalk with a shake-up of the stations breakfast show.
For every radio station, the breakfast show is the most important of the schedule. Win the listeners in the morning and they are more likely to tune in later on. But from day one the Newstalk breakfast offering has struggled against the establishment might of Morning Ireland on Radio 1.
First David McWilliams, then Eamon Dunphy and most recently Claire Byrne and Ger Gilroy have all failed to make a significant dent in the opposition. The latest audience figures show 65,000 total listeners during the course of the Newstalk breakfast show compared with 437,000 for Morning Ireland.
From mid-May, Cronin is replacing Gilroy with Ivan Yates, the former Fine Gael minister who also finds time to run a chain of betting shops. Says Cronin: The new show will be faster paced with a crisper delivery of news and a much stronger business focus, particularly in earlier segments, and it will be more authoritative.
A loquacious Cork man, Cronin concedes that the Newstalk morning show will never match Morning Ireland on numbers. But he does want Newstalk to be in the mix of peoples choices as they flick the channels on their radio dial. “We have to get a greater share of that mix. The era of one station listenership is long over. We’re as well as, not instead of. Our ambition is to double our listenership in the next 12 months.”
Its almost two years since Newstalk began to broadcast nationally and it has been a slow burn making an impact outside the capital. For instance in Cork, Newstalk has a market share of just 2 per cent. According to Cronin: We have to nurture the relationship with listeners outside of Dublin. One plan we have is for George Hook to present his show from an outside broadcast unit on Patrick Street in Cork for a couple of weeks.
The Right Hook is Newstalks biggest draw, with 95,000 listeners across the drivetime slot. The afternoon show presented by Seán Moncrieff has a total audience of 71,000 listeners.
Another challenge Cronin is embracing is “getting all the staff to use their collective intelligence better”. He explains: “I want everyone to work more closely together to deliver better content. Im going to move producers around to work on different programmes. Content is king. We have to win our battle by delivering fresh intelligent content that reflects our younger profile.”
Not making Cronin’s job any easier is the recent launch of 4FM, the multi-city station which broadcasts a pleasing mix of chat, current affairs and golden oldies. Cronins belief is that Newstalk needs to shed some of its right-on aura to distinguish itself in a crowded marketplace.
Cronin explained that he would like Newstalk to deliver a “private sector, pro-business viewpoint that respects dynamic people”, as distinct from what he calls “RTÉ’s public service perspective”.
Newstalk’s latest filed accounts show accumulated losses of €19.1 million from inception to the end of 2007. Now the station is having to cope with the sharp drop in advertising spend affecting all media, and the station recently let 34 people go. However Cronin remains optimistic. “We made our sales target for the first quarter. People’s remuneration expectations are different and staff want to drive the station and make it work. It’s easier to motivate people now, and they are up for pushing the boundaries of their jobs so that we are successful.
“This downturn has caught everybody out. I have never seen anything like this before. There have been bad times before but we don’t know where this is going. However I think there are the first signs of green shoots.”
