Lyric FM breakfast presenter Marty Whelan was especially chipper on air on Friday, and he had every right to be. “Thank you for the kind words this morning,” he told listeners. “You’re very, very kind.”
Whelan’s listeners are not just very kind, they are more plentiful, according to the Joint National Listenership Research (JNLR) survey for 2024. They show that Marty in the Morning, the RTÉ station’s breakfast show, now has 71,000 listeners, his highest figure to date. Whelan’s audience has climbed 15,000 year on year – significant growth in percentage terms and a notable achievement given the competitiveness of the radio market at that time of day.
Is this because none of us are getting any younger? Are more people simply coming around to the genial charms of Whelan? Or is there a touch of mood-correcting news avoidance at work?
Whelan hinted at the latter on a couple of occasions during his Friday show, noting the value in “adding to the gaiety and the craic” in difficult times. He alluded to the grimness and harshness of current events before opting to finish his show with a beautiful reminder that not everything is always terrible, playing Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World.
Whelan and his style of broadcasting may act as an audio salve for some listeners bogged down by the woes of the world, but his show is, of course, more than that. It’s a cultural home for listeners who appreciate a playlist that finds space for both Donna non vidi mai from Puccini opera Manon Lescaut and Everlasting Love by Love Affair from 1968.
“We’re glad that you’re there making a point of us being here,” Whelan told his listeners, later observing that “right across the schedule, you seem to be enjoying the station”. Indeed, Lyric FM’s current line-up of presenters – among them Lorcan Murray, Liz Nolan, Aedín Gormley, Niall Carroll and new additions Claudia Boyle and Simon Delaney – have each carved out solid audiences in their respective time slots.
With a 2.6 per cent share of listening on weekdays from 7am to 7pm, Lyric is a niche operation compared with other national stations, but in the role it serves in the lives of its listeners, it gently punches above its weight. Whelan won’t be the only one hoping this will long continue.
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