Downtown presenters celebrate as station reports best set of audience figures in decades
Gary and Glen now have the biggest breakfast show in over 20 years!
Presenters at Northern Ireland’s first ever commercial radio station have reason to be feeling joyful today.
The latest audience figures (RAJAR) released for Northern Ireland show more and more people are discovering Downtown as the station records some of its best figures in over 20 years.
According to RAJAR, 312,000 people each week now listen to Downtown – the highest figure in a decade. Downtown also recorded 3.2million listening hours which is the highest since 2002!
Popular morning duo Gary and Glen have particular reason to celebrate, their Breakfast Show now has its biggest ever audience of 184,000 listeners and almost 700,000 listening hours – not only cementing their position as the Number 2 commercial Breakfast Show in NI but also giving them the biggest Breakfast Show audience and listening hours recorded for Downtown since Ivan and Richard presented the programme in the early 2000’s.
Commenting on the figures Downtown’s Content Director; Stuart Robinson said, “we are thrilled so many listeners are finding and loving Downtown, we’ve been working hard over the past couple of years to reinvigorate Downtown enabling the station to flourish in a modern media landscape while simultaneously being respectful of the stations long and rich heritage within Northern Ireland”.
Stuart added; “Gary and Glen have become household names in their own right in recent times and I’m thrilled people are enjoying their banter every morning. Radio is proving itself to be such a timeless medium and, in many ways, you could call it “the original on demand service” – when people need cheered up, entertained or information that is important to them, their “go to” – is still the radio. The stations that are doing well in an ever increasingly competitive and crowded audio market are the brands that have a clearly defined their offering. That offering then needs to be compatible with the audience’s expectation at any given minute of any day”. “The other major factor particularly in Northern Ireland is the emphasis on ‘local’ – relevancy is at the heart of what we do and that is why time and time again NI polls top across the UK in in terms of its local media consumption. These latest figures show that a record 94% of Northern Ireland’s adult population consume radio at some point over the course of a week (almost 1.5million people)
Downtown Country remains Northern Ireland’s biggest digital only station with 124,000 listeners helping edge the Downtown Network ahead of competitors to 380,000 listeners. The Downtown Network now has 4.2million listening hours – another record.
Meanwhile there is also celebration down the corridor. Downtown’s sister station Cool FM was revealed to have swept the board to reach No.1 in Northern Ireland on all counts.
For almost two years Cool FM has been outperforming its nearest rival (BBC Radio Ulster) in audience terms but for the first time ever Cool has also overtaken the broadcaster for the total length of time people spend listening.
The figures show that a record 538,000 listeners now tune into Cool FM for 5.1million hours each week across Northern Ireland.
Changes in platform listening over the past couple of years has helped Cool FM find new audiences. Almost a quarter of the station’s audience listen on a smart speaker such as Alexa while 61% of Cool’s total audience now listen via a digital platform.
Bauer Media Northern Ireland (Cool FM and Downtown owners) are now clear market leaders in Northern Ireland with over 30% share of the radio market. Bauer’s local NI stations have just recorded 856,000 listeners who consume 9.6milllion hours of the stations each week – it’s best ever set of results.