Yesterday saw the publishing of the latest round of quarterly Joint National Listenership Research (JNLR) figures. I'm delighted to report that Irish Beats went up from an average listenership of 11,000 people to 12,000! To the extra 1000 who've joined us in the last three months - welcome to the supercoolhappyfuntime club!!!

I won't get the detailed breakdown on the figures until later, but I'm dead chuffed with this. When I took over the show in September '06, the average figures were 9,000 for Saturdays show and 7,000 for Sundays. Since taking over, we seen steady increases each round of JNLR figures - we've almost doubled figures for Sundays!

I think there are a number of factors out there for this:

1. The quality of the music being produced by Irish acts is way above average. One of the hardest part of the job is deciding which tracks to leave out! Last night, I spoke with Roddy Cleere from WLR who's being doing an Irish show for 20 years. He talked about how years ago, you'd be hard pressed to get an hour together of new Irish music together. I do 4 hours a week - but could easily double that!

2. The lads at Beat are very supportive of the show. Most Irish shows are relegated to graveyard shifts and receive very little promotion. They're often seen as an annoyance by station managers - a requirement from the Broadcasting Commision. However, Leigh and Gabrielle at Beat have always been great champions of Irish Beats, give great feedback, help out with guests and allow me go off on flights of fancy. This kind of support is vital to growing the show.

3. Finally, there's the listeners. People know good music when they hear it and respond in kind.

So thanks to everyone for listening and I look forward to playing you more great homegrown music over the next while. Now, I shall celebrate this result with another cup of coffee. No expense spared here for merrymaking ...