With the benefit of hindsight, the Australian consultant was a prescient individual. Not only did Today FM become a commercially viable entity, it gradually came to behave as if it had a “2” in its name — 2FM, in this case. The strategy has paid off handsomely: as the latest JNLR/MRBI listenership figures show, Today FM is now ahead of 2FM in the 15-34 age group, and equals it among 20- to 44-year-olds.
Given that Willie O’Reilly, Today FM’s chief executive, and three of the station’s top presenters — Ian Dempsey, Ray D’Arcy and Tony Fenton — are all 2FM veterans, this is perhaps not surprising. Relentlessly chirpy it may be, but Today FM is adept at chasing the kidult market with boyish-sounding older men.
2FM, on the other hand, offers a pair of ageing hipsters before lunch, then a string of achingly cool youngsters across the rest of the schedule, sending out highly mixed signals. The writing has been on the wall for quite some time for 2FM. It reads: change or die. Granted, Today FM was never meant to exist (it bears scant relation to the format originally licensed), but it does, therefore we have two national radio stations playing the same music. There is no public service argument for 2FM to continue doing so.
RTE Radio 2, as it was then, was set up in 1979 to counter the plethora of pirate operators that brought imported pop to officially ignored teenagers. But times have changed, and Ireland now needs state-run youth radio like it needs state-run burger joints. The commercial sector is falling over itself to cater for that market, because it is wealthy in a way undreamt of in 1979. Even more youth radio licences are on the way, there’s huge competition from the internet, and, as if to prove the point, 2FM has grown old anyway, and is no longer required listening for the typical teenager.
There is no disguising the station’s status as a tired cash cow, cheap to run but valuable in revenue terms, which explains RTE’s reluctance to impose radical change upon it. But, sooner or later, the 2FM’s public service function must be addressed. And it is no longer sufficient to say that it is growing RTE’s next generation of listeners, because clearly it is doing so with less success.
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So, instead of relentlessly pursuing thirtysomethings who like to think they’re twentysomethings, RTE should rethink 2FM’s remit. Clearly, there is no need for more speech, but musically, there is a huge sector that remains untargeted in Ireland, and that is from aged 40 and upwards. In Britain, BBC Radio 2 plays rock, pop, world music, jazz, traditional and folk for that age group — and it’s the most popular station in the country. RTE’s Radio 1 has just shed two fine specialist music presenters — John Kelly and Val Joyce. If RTE weren’t so scared of grasping the 2FM nettle, it could create a good place where they and others could flourish.