Limerick Live 95

Logo of Limerick Live 95

Limerick Live is the most listened to radio station in County Limerick in the Shannon region of Ireland. As of 2025, more than 77% of Limerick adults tuned in daily and the station registered more than 88,000 weekly listeners. Limerick Live broadcasts on frequencies 95 (Limerick City) and 95.3 (Newcastle West), playing a mix of popular music spanning from the 1990s until today. The station was established in 1997 under the company name, Treaty Radio Ltd. Treaty Radio was initially supported by a consortium of investors, including PJ O'Riordan, Alan McEvoy, Martin Ryan, and Liam Woulfe. The station received its first broadcast license after Radio Limerick One lost its license due to breaches of contract (Radio Limerick One continued broadcasting as a pirate radio station until the early 2000s).


Limerick Live 95’s original moniker was ‘New95’, and the first song ever broadcast was ‘Dreams’ by the Irish band, The Cranberries (original investor PJ O’Riordan was the brother of Cranberries singer Dolores O'Riordan). The station’s name changed to the current, ‘Limerick’s Live 95FM’, in 2000. Limerick Live 95 is currently operating on a ten year broadcasting license that lasts until October 2027.


In addition to contemporary music, Limerick Live 95 provides news and sports content. Popular shows include The Breakfast Show with Mark Whelan & Catriona Tierney and Limerick Today with Joe Nash. Several shows are also available in podcast format, and the station provides news content and live streaming services on its website and the Onic Player App.


Ownership of Live 95 first changed in 2002 when Belfast-based UTV (Ulster TV) purchased the station for approximately €16m. At the time, original investors PJ O'Riordan, Alan McEvoy, Liam Woulfe, and Martin Ryan each held approximately 20% of the shares (though Woulfe was the largest shareholder with 21%).


UTV invested heavily in the station, helping increase its local market share from approximately 30% to 50% by 2007. UTV rebranded its radio business as the Wireless Group in early 2016. After selling its television assets (including its ITV franchise and UTV Ireland) to ITV plc, the company dropped the UTV Media name and adopted Wireless Group plc as its trading name from March 1, 2016 following completion of that sale at the end of February 2016.


In 2016, the WG’s holdings were purchased for £UK220.3m by News UK & Ireland Ltd., which is ultimately owned by US-based News Corporation (News Corp). News Corp’s largest single shareholder is Lachlan Murdoch. In 2025, News UK & Ireland Ltd. rebranded its Wireless Ireland Radio subsidiary as Onic Audio Limited.


In addition to Live95, Onic also operates six other Irish radio stations, including FM104, Q102, and LMFM. Onic also operates the commercial sales house, Urban Media, which works with two stations outside the Onic Group, Galway Bay FM and WLR. As of 2025, Onic stations reach 775,000 listeners weekly, representing 10.6% of the Irish radio market. Onic Audio Limited employs more than 200 staff in Ireland and recorded revenues of €23.375m in 2024, up from €22.4m in 2023.

Key Facts

Audience Share30.6% Local (Limerick) Audience Share (JNLR/Ipsos 2026 January 2025 to December 2025)
Ownership TypePrivate
Content TypeFree
Data Publicly Available
ownership data is easily available from other sources, e. g. public registries etc.

Ownership

Ownership Structure

Limerick’s Live 95 is operated by Treaty Radio Limited, which is owned by Onic. Onic was previously known as Wireless Ireland (ROI) Limited but rebranded in 2025. Onic is owned by News UK & Ireland, which is ultimately owned by US-based News Corporation (News Corp), a global media conglomerate listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
News Corp operates a dual-class share structure, in which Class B shares carry voting rights and Class A shares do not. In total, Class B shares represent approximately 33% of all shares outstanding and Class A shares the remaining 67%, but because only Class B shares carry votes, voting control is disproportionate to economic ownership.
As of September 2025, LGC Holdco LLC — a vehicle controlled by Lachlan Murdoch, son of News Corp founder Rupert Murdoch — holds approximately 33% of all Class B shares, representing around 11% of total shares across both classes. However, given the fragmentation of all other shareholdings, this translates into an effective voting power of approximately 39% at shareholder meetings, making LGC Holdco the single largest and most influential shareholder in the company. Voting control rests solely with Lachlan Murdoch through his appointed managing director.
The remaining shares are held by a broad range of institutional investors. The largest are Vanguard Group (~9% of total shares), BlackRock (~7%), State Street (~6%), and Independent Franchise Partners (~5%), alongside other asset managers and retail investors. These institutional shareholders hold primarily Class A shares, meaning their economic stakes are not matched by equivalent voting power.

Voting RightsVoting rights at News Corp are governed by a dual-class share structure, in which Class B shares carry full voting rights and are predominantly controlled by the Murdoch family, while Class A shares carry no voting rights. As of September 2025, Murdoch-affiliated entities hold approximately 72 million Class B shares, representing around 39% of all Class B shares outstanding, giving the family effective control over the company.
Individual Owner
  • Free Float

    The remaining shares in News Corp are publicly traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market, where they are held by a large and diverse range of institutional investors, asset managers, mutual funds, and retail investors. Collectively, these publicly traded shares represent approximately 61-89% of total shares outstanding, though the vast majority are Class A shares carrying no voting rights. The largest institutional shareholders among this publicly traded float are Vanguard Group (~9% of total shares) and BlackRock (~7%), which together hold approximately 16% of News Corp's total share capital. These are followed by State Street Corporation (~6%) and Independent Franchise Partners (~5%). A notable feature of this institutional ownership landscape is what is sometimes described as circular or interlocking ownership. Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street — the three largest index-fund managers in the world — are not only major shareholders in News Corp but are also significant shareholders in each other. Vanguard is the largest shareholder in State Street, holding approximately 13% of that company, and also holds around 9% of BlackRock. BlackRock in turn holds shares in State Street. This means that the same pool of underlying investors — the millions of pension funds, retirement savers and institutional clients whose money these firms manage — has indirect exposure to News Corp through multiple channels simultaneously. It is important to note, however, that Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street hold these shares in a fiduciary capacity on behalf of their underlying clients, not as owners in their own right. Their economic interest in News Corp is therefore indirect, and their voting behaviour at shareholder meetings is governed by their own stewardship policies rather than by any single controlling interest. Because they hold almost exclusively Class A shares, their combined ~22% economic stake in News Corp carries no voting rights, limiting their ability to influence corporate decisions despite the scale of their financial exposure.

Operating Company

Facts

Founding Year1997

Live 95 FM gained its first broadcasting license after another station, Radio Limerick One, breached its contract.

Founder
  • Liam Woulfe

    Liam Woulfe was a founding shareholder in Treaty Radio Ltd., the operating company of the Limerick Live 95 radio station. Woulfe was the largest shareholder in the company when it was sold to UTV in 2002, with 21% of shares. However, Limerick Live seems to be Woulfe’s only involvement with radio. His main business interest is the agribusiness sector where he has worked as an executive for more than 40 years . After selling his shares in Treaty Radio, Woulfe founded Grassland Agro, a fertiliser distributor with factories in counties Cork, Limerick, and Meath. Woulfe remained at the helm of Grassland until 2024, when he retired as managing director. He remains a senior advisor at the company.

CEO
  • Joe Nash

    Joe Nash is the long-time station director of Limerick Live 95. In addition to his executive role, Nash also presents the show, ‘Limerick Today’, which carries top current news stories. Nash—‘A man with a voice recognised in every home and office across Limerick’—was awarded a Gold Award by IMRO as the ‘local/regional Speech Broadcaster of the Year’ in 2025.

Editor-In-Chief
  • Gillian Devlin

    Gillian Devlin is head of news at Limerick Live 95. No further information is available about their professional background.

ContactRadio House
Richmond Court, Dock Road
Limerick
info@live95.ie
+353 (0) 61 461 900
www.live95.ie
RevenueMissing Data
Operating ProfitMissing Data
Advertising (in % of total funding)Missing Data
Market ShareMissing Data
Headlines
Meta Data

Historical Information about Live95 was obtained from a variety of news sources, including the Irish Times and the Limerick Post. Information about local market share gathered from Joint National Listenership Research (JNLR) https://info.ipsosmrbi.com/jnlr.

Ownership and financial information was gathered from annual filings with Core https://core.cro.ie/.

Information about the original founders was obtained from profiles in news articles.

Accurate estimation of national market share was not possible because reporting on income levels in Ireland is typically done at the group level rather than the individual title level. Additionally, overall revenue details for the market as a whole are not available. Onic Audio Limited does not disaggregate the revenues of its individual stations in its annual filings.

Audience share is based on the report published by Joint National Listenership Research/IPSOS B&A in February 2026. It covers the period from January to December 2025. The latest results show 3.47 million listeners (15+) tune into radio every weekday – that is daily radio listening at 78.1% of all adults. Listening levels in the past week stand at 89.7% of the population. A total of c 16,750 people were interviewed during the survey period by Ipsos B&A, on behalf of JNLR - Joint National Listenership Research - that is commissioned by all national, regional and local radio stations, AAI, IAPI and Coimisiún na Meán.Accurate estimation of audience share at a national level cannot be derived from published figures as Limerick Live operates in a local market.

Sources
Documents (PDF)
  • Financial Statement Treaty Radio Limited (2025)
    Link File
  • 2025 Proxy Statement: Notice of annual meeting of stockholders
    Link File
  • Joint National Listenership Survey (2025)
    Link File