Framed by the town, Revlin, and the Old Abbey, with the magnificent Bluestacks in the background, passengers on the waterbus rush to photograph the dolphin as it performs its gymnastics on Donegal Bay.
Photo: Jason McGarrigle.

With a new station manager to be appointed Ocean FM needs to return ‘local’ to its programming

As predicted by Donegal Times, the listenership of Ocean FM had fallen from previous North West Radio heights when JNLR statistics were published at the end of August. While the ‘listened to yesterday’ percentage took a fairly modest plunge from 68 to 63, the more important ‘market share’ figure went into free-fall. This figure measures the amount of time that people actually spend listening to the station each day and is the one most watched by advertisers. Ocean recorded a 37% market share, down from NWR’s 55%.
Interviewed on Mid-West Radio on the day the figures were released, CEO Paul Claffey was asked what he thought of the Ocean performance. While conceding that their ‘yesterday’ percentage was ‘good’ , he declared that management at the new station should be ‘very worried’ at its market share. Mr Claffey claimed that the ‘yesterday’ figure could be attained by somebody simply tuning in for five minutes to the obituary notices – whereas the ‘market share’ indicated a long-term commitment to listening to the station.
Perhaps our own experience here in the Times office typifies this. Whereas before it would have been wall-to-wall listening to NWR in case we missed something e.g. a 21st birthday, 50th anniversary - or a request that would alert us to a special occasion – now we might tune in at 1pm to get the news - and then switch to another channel. There is no longer anything in it for us.
It’s in the local content that Ocean needs to improve - many of our people think it has become too city-slick. Specifically there are at least four areas in which the station would need to raise its game.

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