The Sunday morning sacred music programme Gloria, which was dropped from the RTÉ Lyric FM schedule in December, had 14,000 weekly listeners in 2015 according to the latest JNLR figures.

The removal of Gloria was the subject of some public criticism, with an online petition to reinstate it receiving over 3,700 names, letters appearing in the national press, and a statement by Senator David Norris in the Seanad. Norris at the same criticised the Sunday evening contemporary music programme Nova, arguing that Gloria had a much larger listenership, yet Nova had a comparable weekly listenership in 2015 of 13,000.

A statement on the RTÉ Lyric FM website from the Gloria team reads:

Tim and the Gloria team thank the many listeners for the kind and appreciative messages received when the lyric schedule changed at the end of 2015. Don’t worry, Tim looks forward to sharing his musical passions with you in other ways, in the not too distant future.

Grace Notes and Jazz Alley, which were also dropped from the schedule, both had 15,000 weekly listeners.

The Lyric FM listenership figures, supplied by RTÉ to The Journal of Music, show that Aedín Gormley’s Sunday Matinée was the most popular Lyric programme in 2015 with 54,000 listeners, followed by Liz Nolan’s Classic Drivetime on 51,000. Gormley’s other programme, Movies and Musicals, was the third most popular along with The Hamilton Score and Marty in the Morning – all on 47,000 listeners. Lorcan Murray’s Classic Drive and Culture File Weekly each had 44,000 listeners.

More results can be seen below. Overall, Lyric had 4% of the weekly adult listenership. According to RTÉ’s most recent annual report (2014), Lyric’s funding amounts to less than 2% (€6m) of RTÉ’s budget (€328.2m).

RTÉ Lyric FM 2015 Listenership
Weekdays, 7am to 7pm
Liz Nolan’s Classic Drivetime: 51,000
Marty in the Morning – 47,000
Niall Carroll’s Classical Daytime  – 38,000
The John Kelly Ensemble – 30,000

Weekdays, 7pm to midnight
The Lyric Concert – 17,000
The Lyric Feature – 15,000
The Astrolabe – 15,000
Jazz Alley – 15,000
Grace Notes – 15,000
The Rolling Wave – 15,000
The Blue of the Night – 14,000 

Saturday
Movies and Musicals – 47,000
The Hamilton Score – 47,000
Lorcan Murray’s Classic Drive – 44,000
Culture File Weekly – 44,000
Opera Night – 20,000
Trish Taylor’s Daybreak – 19,000
The Blue of the Night – 11,000 

Sunday:
Aedín Gormley’s Sunday Matinée – 54,000
Lorcan Murray’s Classic Drive – 44,000
Strike Up the Band – 22,000
Gloria – 14,000
Nova – 13,000
A World of Song – 13,000
The Blue of the Night – 9,000
Classic Kids – 2,000

For more on the JNLR figures, visit http://goo.gl/y1BQL2