The biggest casualty of the latest radio listenership figures is 2FM’s Ryan Tubridy who has seen the number of people tuning in to his morning show fall from 262,000 to just 175,000 since October of last year.
The collapse in his listenership contrasts with his main rival Ray Darcy whose morning show on Today FM saw its listener figures jump by 10,000 to 228,000 over the same period.
The Joint National Listenership Research (JNLR) figures which were published yesterday will also make for difficult reading for many of RTE's most high profile weekend broadcasters with Marian Finucane, Miriam O'Callaghan and George Lee also recording sharp declines.
Finucane saw the number of listeners tuning in to her Saturday morning programme fall from 403,000 last year to 335,000. The same number of people tuned into her Sunday morning programme, compared with 365,000 12 months ago.
O'Callaghan's Miriam Meets programme which is broadcast on Sunday mornings fell from 273,000 12 months ago to 255,000 this month while Lee's The Business saw a 34,000 year-on-year decline in listeners, down from 347,000 in October 2010 to 313.000 over the 12 months to the end of September.
Sam Smyth, who was controversially axed from his Sunday morning slot on the Denis O'Brien owned Today FM, earlier this month, also recorded a sharp decline in listeners year-on-year with his figures currently standing on 92,000 compared with 106,000 last year. While the yearly fall-off in listeners to his programme is significant, the number of people tuning in between July and October was static.
