Late Late Toy Show most watched programme on Irish television and Normal People most watched on RT player
Viewing to RT Player up 36%
8/10 programmes for 15-34's watched on RT Television
More 15-34 viewers watching RT and watching for longer
From lockdowns to working from home and remote learning, 2020 was a challenging time for everyone. Throughout, people across Ireland increasingly turned to television to stay informed, educated and entertained and RT was the nation's top choice across all genres with 43 of the top 50 programmes aired on Irish television in 2020. RT 's all day share of viewing increased by 7% to 27.2% for all channels. 15-34's share increase by 12%.
RT : Capturing the highs and lows
In a year when we were asked to stay at home as much as possible, RT brought people together. The most-watched show of the year was The Late Late Toy Show, which once again topped TAM Ireland's ratings with an average of 1.7million viewers tuning in for an unforgettable and uniquely Irish evening of joy for people of all ages. The second most-watched programme in 2020 was the then An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar's broadcast on St. Patricks Day, with 1.6million viewers.
RT : Delivering extensive news and current affairs
News and Current Affairs featured strongly in the most-watched programmes and a range of RT News bulletins, as well as Prime Time, Claire Byrne Live, RT Investigates and Election 2020 all feature in the Top 20. Sport continued to entertain us albeit from our armchairs rather than the stands; the All-Ireland Senior Hurling and Football Finals on RT drew huge audiences and ranked in the Top 10 most-watched programmes this year.
RT : Leading in home-grown programming
Families turned to home-grown programming in 2020. The most-watched shows included Room to Improve; the Dermot's Home episode which was watched by 776,600 people. Also featuring in the top 50 most-watched shows of the year were DIY SOS and The Great House Revival, while the documentary Gerry Ryan, A Legacy was watched by 568,200 last April. Dancing with the Stars, Operation Transformation and The Young Offenders, all feature in the Top 50 most-watched programmes of 2020.
RT : Bringing the nation together
Shine Your Light was a series of national moments of togetherness organised by RT , with millions of people across the country participating by shining a light in their windows, at their doorsteps or within their communities to mark important milestones for the nation. The most recent one took place in December on the eve of the 2020 solstice where once again RT brought the nation together for a moment of hope in a year of sadness and isolation for so many.
RT : Focusing on younger audiences
RT Home School Hub was the second most-popular programme amongst children after The Late Late Toy Show. For young adults (15-34), RT had 8 of the Top 10 programmes with RT News and Current Affairs and RT Sport featured strongly in their viewing preferences. The top show amongst this audience was The Late Late Toy Show, proving that you're never too young or too old relive your childhood.
Viewing to TV on the increase
Official TAM Ireland / Nielsen figures for 2020 show that television occupied much of our leisure time, with the average person in a TV home watching 2 hours 40 mins of TV every day, an increase of 1% on 2019.
Normal People: the number one on RT Player
RT Player proved popular this year, with viewing up by 36% in 2020. Normal People topped the polls with 818,000 streams for the top episode out of a total of 5 million streams to the programme series. Unsurprisingly, The Late Late Toy Show was the second most-watched show on RT Player with 575,000 streams. High-quality drama proved popular, with The Secret She Keeps (122,000 streams) and Love / Hate (109,000 streams) performing strongly, along with The Young Offenders (147,000 streams), The Late Late Toy Show Singalong (114,000 streams), and The Tommy Tiernan Show (65,000 streams).
Adrian Lynch, Director of RT Audiences, Channels and Marketing says: Looking at the Top 50 programmes, it's clear that Irish stories and content are the programmes that bring people together proving that live programmes, big events and home-produced content are hugely popular. 2020 was the year that pushed us to our limits as a nation, when we had to stay apart in order to pull together. But throughout this exceptionally difficult year, RT provided variety across all channels as Ireland's public service media, informing, entertaining and educating audiences of all ages and uniting the nation in those key moments both the highs and the lows that will stay with us for a long time.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Late Late Toy Show most watched programme on Irish television and Normal People most watched on RT player
