Gerry Ryan vs Jim Carroll

MemEmee

Did anyone hear Gerry Ryan's programme last Friday? He took great offence at an article Jim Carroll had written in that days Irish Times Ticket magazine about 2fm and Gerry.

http://www.rte.ie/2fm/ryanshow/rams/2007/19Jan.smil

Listen here to Friday's show. About four minutes into this he gives Jim a bit of a lashing. Calls him "awful journalist" and "useless" and says it'll be his "theme" for the next few weeks "and Jim should get used to it".

This is Jim Carrolls Discotheque article. Looks fair to me. See paragraph in bold for offending bit.

http://www.ireland.com/theticket/articles/2007/0119/1169031131540.html


Wake up, it's time to change again at 2FM //Discotheque

IT'S THE best soap opera around. For the fourth time in two years, 2FM are changing their breakfast show line-up. Christopher Guest would get a great mockumentary out of the ongoing shenanigans as the station tries to find a palatable breakfast show team, Jim Carroll

After the ups and (mostly) downs of Ryan Tubridy, Rick O'Shea with Ruth Scott, and Marty "Bell Eleven" Whelan, the national pop station has given up and has reached for its cheque- book.

Pinching FM104's Colm Hayes and Jim Nugent was a no-brainer. Expensive probably - Hayes worked at 2FM during the 1980s so he must have relished the sight of John Clarke approaching on his hands and knees - but a no-brainer all the same. The FM104 duo have demonstrated an ability to do what 2FM can't do: attract and keep younger listeners.

During their tenure at Dublin's FM104, Hayes and Nugent were responsible for a show which pulled in 105,000 listeners every morning, according to the last Joint National Listener- ship Survey (JNLR) book. They did this in the most ruthless and cut-throat radio market in the country.

The trick for 2FM is to get those listeners to work out where the station is on the radio dial. Considering that most of those listeners probably never tune into 2FM and that two-thirds of the country has never heard of the duo, the nation's billboards are going to see a lot of Hayes and Nugent in the coming months.

Their move to 2FM means Ian Dempsey's hugely successful Today FM breakfast show now has some competition. Both shows will deal from the same pack, with easy-listening sketches and japes having as much prominence as the music and patter, so it will be interesting to note how this scrap develops.

Of course, the new breakfast line-up is just the headline story in the latest bulletin from Montrose. You really didn't think station boss Clarke, a man who rivals Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez when it comes to constantly tinkering with his line-up, would be content with just one change?

Legal eagle Will Leahy gets rewarded for pulling in oodles of weekend listeners with a daily drivetime show, while Irish radio's longest running star attraction, Larry Gogan, heads in the opposite direction. Rick O'Shea is moved yet again, this time to an afternoon slot, and Ruth Scott gets to call O'Shea's old evening shift her own.

Nikki Hayes, Damien Farrelly and Dan Hegarty must be wondering if their lack of movement is a sign they're doing the right thing or the wrong thing.

Yet the elephant in the corner, the one who keeps farting to attract our attention, remains in situ. Gerry Ryan is the DJ who is losing more listeners than anyone else on Irish radio (51,000 in 2005 alone). Every single JNLR book delivers more bad news for Ryan and his awful, dated show. Yet he continues to sit, Buddah-like, in the prime morning slot.

Rick O'Shea must be dizzy from all the moving about he has done at 2FM since joining the station. In the last couple of months, though, he found a groove on the evening show, helming a programme which was tight, focused and bright. Let's hope he will at least get to spin his Messiah J & The Expert CDs in the afternoons.

It has to be hoped that these are the last changes at 2FM for about two years. It takes time for new voices to bed in, anything from six months to a year, and for listeners to get accustomed to the changes.

It takes just as long for these changes to work their way through to the JNLR system and provide hard and fast data on which shows are working. Some observers might note that 2FM could use the latest batch of changes to excuse any poor JNLR showings in 2007. But only cynics like Discotheque. Everyone else knows 2FM would never do any- thing as lowdown or calculating as that.

jimcarroll@irish-times.ie

byte

Jim Carroll: Rep+1

Smurfpiss

Jim FTW.
I'd nearly listen to that a*sehole just to text in my opinion....but ehhhhhhh i wont.

DMC

Its the drum I've been banging for some time, the only change that will allow a full scale revamp on 2FM is to get rid of Gerry Ryan.

MemEmee

I'm going to email info@rte.ie which is their complaints office to let them know my opinion and to let jimcarroll@irish-times.ie know i'm right behind his right to review and comment without bullying.

Liam Byrne

Lemme get this straight......

Gerry does a radio show that Jim doesn't like, Jim gives out about it.
Jim Carroll prints something that Gerry doesn't like, Gerry gives out about it.

Seems fair enough to me, at least in principle. I'm not gonna sit through listening to Gerry to see if he was as fair and distanced as Gerry (in fact, I've previously queried why Marty got ditched for losing listeners while, when Gerry lost listeners, he just blamed Marty and was kept on).

Unfortunately, both are preaching to the converted; anyone reading Jim and The Irish Times is gonna be above Gerry's show, while anyone still listening to Gerry's show is gonna side with him.

Let 'em off at it.........

Mind you, doesn't RTE's Public Service Broadcasting remit have a clause that every discussion should be balanced and everyone should have a right to airtime to reply ?

MemEmee

you don't have to listen to ALL of the programme. Just about a minute of the programme, four minutes in.
It's not fair comment. It's just a veiled threat. Gerry is just a bully.

Belle Ende

Gerry Ryan knows that he has been given the very easiest ride for the last two decades, earning an undeservedly whopping salary each year, and all the while his jowly chins chuckling all the way to the bank. So very little talent, hours and effort for so very great riches, certainty and reward.

Any journalist who dares to publically point out that Emperor Slug 'has no clothes', so to speak, is naturally going to stir up the defensive ire within the priviledged fattened slimer. An instinct of self-preservation.

sudzs

Just had a listen... what a childish pathetic response.

and while I'm here, just how much bloody U2 can the slug play???

MemEmee

Just realised that Blogorrah have been covering this as well.

check out http://blogorrah.com/gerry_ryan/

MemEmee

Listened to beginning of Gerry's show today. Has anyone noticed that he's always 'dissing' the Irish Times front page as dry and irrelevant. He usually skips over any good story they have, or skips the paper altogether!

How pathetic is that?

Liam Byrne

MemEmee wrote:

Listened to beginning of Gerry's show today. Has anyone noticed that he's always 'dissing' the Irish Times front page as dry and irrelevant. He usually skips over any good story they have, or skips the paper altogether!

How pathetic is that?

Probably reflects the audience that he's aiming at - red-tops and tabloids make great fodder for wannabe shock-jocks and inane natter.

I'd generally rate the Irish Times or Sunday Business Post or Sunday Tribune as a bit too high-brow for me, but there aren't many options if you don't want the sensationalist headlines of the Daily Oirish Whatever or even the Indo's editorial bias.

The Irish Examiner just about manages to balance it, but even then its occasionally a tight squeeze to get your €1.60 worth out of it.

J.R.HARTLEY

he sounds like a prat trying to warn Jim Carroll to get used to his bullying, does he not realise so many people are sick of him and his inane ****e every morning.

DublinWriter

Rarely do I ever see an Irish journalist hit the nail on the head when reviewing the media, usually because of the cliquey nature of the whole thing.

Jim Carroll hit the nail on the head.

I love his reference to Gerry 'sitting Buddah like'. Meow.

MemEmee

I still think Gerry is childishly boycotting the Irish Times. Pathetic.

MemEmee

it looks like Gerry's attack on Jim Carroll has come back to bit him in the arse.

this is from the Irish Independent on 10th March

Think this article points out a lot of what is wrong with the show


http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=45&si=1791330&issue_id=15355

Saving Gerry Ryan

Treasured as the jewel in the crown of 2FM for nearly 20 years, station bosses are reluctant to move their star DJ, who, despite falling audience figures, has survived yet another reshuffle this week.DAMIAN CORLESS reports

It was musical chairs at 2FM this week as the pop station's management shuffled the time-slots of Rick O'Shea, Will Leahy and Ruth Scott, disgarded the old-hander Marty Whelan, and launched the froth-foaming Colm & Jim-Jim Breakfast Show. Presented by Colm Hayes and Jim Nugent, the double-hander was imported at lavish expense from Dublin station FM104 and represents the fourth attempt in two short years to stem an alarming exodus of listeners from 2FM's early slot.

According to the full-year figures compiled by JNLR/Mediaworks, the numbers listening to 2FM's breakfast show slumped from 111,375 in 1994 to 82,375 in 2006 - a fall of 29,000. However, in the same period, the audience for The Gerry Ryan Show, which immediately follows on the schedule, dropped from 231,916 to 194,333, a dip of 37,000. Where Ryan once held massive sway over the free-spending 15-34 listenership segment, he finds himself relegated to third place by his former 2FM colleagues Ian Dempsey and Ray D'Arcy - both now rivals at Today FM.

But while anxious station bosses have jumbled jocks and formats in an effort to tackle flagging audience figures, Gerry Ryan has remained the immovable object of the schedules since he settled into his 9am-12pm time-slot fully 19 years ago in 1988. When 2FM's latest action plan was unveiled some weeks back, it sparked an entertaining exchange of potshots between Ryan and one music critic.

Describing Ryan as "the elephant in the corner, the one who keeps farting to attract our attention", the heckler railed: "Every single JNLR book delivers more bad news for Ryan and his awful, dated show. Yet he continues to sit, Buddah-like, in the prime morning slot."

Ryan retorted on air that his critic was a "useless" and "awful" person.

Analyst Paul Moran of Mediaworks offers the reminder that while Ryan has been losing substantial audience share, he was starting from an exceptionally high base. Moran says: "He has been shedding listeners over the past three years, but he still has the biggest audience at 2FM. If I was doing the schedules for 2FM, I would exercise great caution about moving him."

Gerry Ryan's falling audience share is partly down to circumstances beyond his control. The Irish are amongst the world's most avid radio listeners. The proportion of the population tuning in every day is around 85%, far above the European average of 70%. The mass popularity of radio here means that the market for many decades has been operating at full capacity. But when you've got a market at full capacity, which RTE once had all to itself, there's no scope for anyone to grow that market. So any new competition had to take away listeners from RTE's big guns.

But even if there is justifiable concern at Montrose over Gerry Ryan's performance, the next question is what do you do with an under-performing superstar? Where do you shift him to on the 2FM schedule? Traditionally, when the pop station's presenters reach a certain wrinkle count, they migrate down the corridor to Radio 1, with Dave Fanning the most recent to take that stroll.

However, Paul Moran believes that the transfer option is not a realistic one for Ryan. Moran reflects: "Unlike Ryan Tubridy, who made the jump to Radio 1, I doubt if Gerry Ryan would be a success there because his style is more tabloid."

Exactly a year ago, RTE personnel were given a shock lesson that there is no room for sentiment in the harsh new competitive radio environment. Ana Leddy arrived at Radio 1 brandishing a new broom, and John Creedon, John Kelly and Myles Dungan found themselves swept overboard. Bowing to commercial pressures, 2FM's boss John Clarke dispensed with veteran Marty Whelan to make way for his new breakfast team, but Clarke has been around long enough to appreciate that Gerry Ryan, almost single-handedly, was the making of 2FM.

Launched in 1979, the station was a disaster for most of the 1980s, languishing in the doldrums with a dire shortage of listeners and advertising revenue. The breakthrough came in 1988 when Gerry Ryan was transplanted to a morning slot with the simple brief to listen to the listeners. His knockabout show was fresh and new and it worked the miracle the station desperately needed, bringing legions of new listeners to a station which had been widely ignored since its inception.

But that was then and this is now, and media analyst Dan McGuinness of the Catalyst agency believes that Gerry Ryan has got himself stuck in a time-warp. McGuinness argues: "At the start, all he had to do to draw an untapped audience was to be an alternative to Gay Byrne. Almost 20 years on he's still providing an alternative to Gay Byrne, while Gay Byrne and the rest of the planet have moved on. He's still the naughty schoolboy giggling at prurient jokes behind the school bicycle shed. These days, Podge & Rodge have moved that to TV, where they're ruder, and they're better comedians."

He contends: "He hasn't reinvented himself or his show. The format and content have remained pretty static for 20 years. One solution might be to shorten the show which is currently an overlong, lazy, three-hour ramble from Gerry about his schoolboy fixations. The show is tired and he sounds tired doing it."

McGuinness questions the "fear factor" at play in Montrose, justifying the payment of vast sums to big stars to stop them defecting to rivals, and taking listeners - and advertisers - with them. He points out: "When Pat Kenny or Ryan Tubridy go off on their long summer break, the dip in listenership is very small. I sometimes wonder what damage the loss of these highly-paid stars would really do, and whether or not the reality is that listeners listen to RTE because it is RTE."

There is no evidence that 2FM chiefs are thinking of moving Ryan, or that he's looking for new challenges elsewhere, and Paul Moran doesn't think that either development would be good for the station right now.

He reasons: "There are other things that need fixing at 2FM before you'd start looking at Gerry Ryan. The haemorrhage of listeners in the early slot is a priority, and they've moved again to tackle that. It's nine years since Today FM revamped, and the audience drift to that station should have stabilized by now - but it hasn't. There are more fundamental problems at 2FM than Gerry Ryan."

DMC

Good article, have to agree with a lot of it.

r3nu4l

Analyst Paul Moran of Mediaworks offers the reminder that while Ryan has been losing substantial audience share, he was starting from an exceptionally high base. Moran says: "He has been shedding listeners over the past three years, but he still has the biggest audience at 2FM. If I was doing the schedules for 2FM, I would exercise great caution about moving him."

Now while I don't like Gerry Ryans show myself you have to admit that RTE bosses should first look at revamping the show rather than chucking him outright. I don't think any station in the country would willingly dump their highest audience gatherer just like that.

RTE should seriosuly consider the format of the show and indeed try to convince Gerry to talk less about himself

MemEmee

would you like to be the one to have to tell blabbermouth Gerry to stop talkign about himself or 'Mrs Ryan'. Good luck to whoever has to bear that news or to tell him his show is stuck in the 1980's and is too long and rambling.

I think we're stuck with the farting elephant until he dies quietly in the corner as his figures continue to dwindle away.

Which brings to mind a previous article Jim Carroll wrote about Mr Ryan last year.

http://www.ireland.com/theticket/articles/2006/0224/39025399TK2402DISCOT.html

Ryan's airtime still leaking punters

Jim Carroll

IT'S as though the entire population of Waterford got up off their chairs at once, walked over to their radios and reached for the off button. Some 51,000 listeners said see-ya to 2FM's Gerry Ryan during 2005 and show no signs of coming back.

Some of them went from the left-hand side of the dial down to the right-hand side, where Ray D'Arcy resides (up 27,000 pairs of ears in the same period). Some went local. Some just put on a CD.

In the most recent book from the Joint National Listenership Survey (JNLR) on radio audiences, Gerry Ryan's demise stood out like a pair of baggy purple underpants on a clothesline. Ryan is supposed to be the station's ringmaster in a pair of muddy wellies, enticing audiences to roll up and enjoy the show. He may still get a crowd, but it's a crowd that is beginning to drift away in significant numbers.

The arrival of this bad news ensured there was much comment in newspaperland about Ryan's slide, in particular, and 2FM's poor showing in general. During 2005, the station lost 84,000 adult listeners. That's a full Croke Park with stragglers still sauntering down Clonliffe Road.

The station may have thought that Marty Whelan was the answer to its woes, but the general public feel otherwise. It seems that the punters have already copped what the station bosses have yet to notice: 2FM has an identity crisis.

There's absolutely nothing new about this. Discotheque first started writing about 2FM's identity crisis in 2001. Back then, though, the numbers were solid so many thought we were crying wolf. Not so.

While the station had some dance shows around the edges of the schedule featuring John Power, Mark McCabe and Mr Spring, the predominant daytime style still resembled the cominatcha sound of the 1980s.

Roll on five years and it's excellent indie jocks like Jenny Huston, Dan Hegarty and Cormac Battle who are now employed around the edges. In the middle? The same old same old. This time, however, people are hopping off the bus in droves and going elsewhere for their wireless shows.

It's a mistake, though, to blame this simply on the ageing profile of presenters like Gerry Ryan, Marty Whelan and Dave Fanning. The best jock on 2FM remains Larry Gogan, simply because he still cares about what he's playing and there's still a passion to find new music.

No, the problem is the content. Gerry Ryan's show is probably one of the best staffed and researched radio programmes in the land, but the ideas are just not good enough any more. It's a diet of the same tired topics featuring the same repetitive voices delivering the same reheated opinions in the same monotonous tone.

Even Ryan sounds bored by what he was to preside over these days. Maybe he knows too that a call to Willie O'Reilly at Today FM is not going to be much use any more, now that Ray D'Arcy is the jock on the rise.

You can see similar problems with dated, boring and unattractive content right through the 2FM schedule. Fanning's teatime chat show has become staid and unimaginative, the content stretched to its limits over five nights.

Whelan's show is a disaster, the presenter's patter unable to match or better that of Ian "I'm the king of the cornflakes chatter and don't you forget it, horse" Dempsey. It makes you almost wish Rick and Ruth were back on morning call. I did say "almost".

But the biggest impediment to change at 2FM is the fact that the station still makes a lot of money for RTÉ. He who pays the piper calls the tune and, until 2FM's advertising revenue begins to nosedive, the station can probably maintain its current shape.

It's when advertising cash and audience figures both begin to dip that the real problems begin. One of those is already sinking so the other can't be that far behind. Expect a re-run of this yarn in the papers when the next JNLR book hits the presses in three months.