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Saturday, 27 February 2021
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Friday, 26 February 2021
Harold Forster, The Art of Advertising 1920's Radio. The Marconi Hero
Today the real success of an advertising campaign can be reflected in
how memorable their campaign was. Coca – Cola’s musical ads, ‘I’d like to Teach
the World’, their reappropriation of Santa Claus from his original green out
fit to the Coke colours of red and white are instantly identifiable, ‘For Mash
get Smash’ or ‘It’s Martini’ are still fondly remembered. In the 1920’s the
print media was the main weapon of the advertisers to reach the public but in
the early part of the roaring Twenties, a new pretender to the advertising
crown was making it way to market, radio.
The Marconi company led the way with innovation in both transmitting and
receiving, producing the most popular ‘listening-in’ devices for the wireless. To
deliver their message, the Marconi Company used the newspapers and trade
publications. In order that their products stood out from the crowd, in 1923
they commissioned a series of drawings used in newspaper ads encouraging
purchases of their radios sets. They showed how valuable they were to enrich
the lives of those who invested in the new medium.
They contracted an illustrator and artist to capture the ‘joy’ of radio
listening and his work created a sensation in the newspapers and for their
readers. Radio became a must have. The graphic illustrations, portrayed in an
art deco style were stylish, appealed to the emotions and illustrated how radio
could make like better. Advertisers were selling a dream; the world of radio was
elegant no matter where you were or what you did. Many of the Marconi portrayals
were of upper class people in decorative, modernist settings, creating a utopia
often far from the lives of working class post war Britons. The purchase of a
radio set was far beyond the financial reach of many of those who were still
recovering from the First World War. Homemade crystal sets were extremely
popular with working class listeners. Marconi’s advertisements exuded luxury
and created a theme that the new medium of radio would offer everything
including music, weather forecasting and information talks.
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The illustrations displayed a modern affluent Britain. The surroundings
are plush set in drawing rooms, with quality furniture and fittings. The men
are smartly dressed, with nearly all of them smoking a pipe or a cigar. The
women are drawn in elegant dresses and crafted hairstyles. The ballroom scenes
exude affluence and a rich lifestyle and spell the end of the live music era
replaced by music through the wireless. Radio is a unifier of the family unit
as the drawings feature parents and their children, even the children enjoying
the radio broadcasts with their grandparents. One depicts what appears to be a
teacher and her children outdoors being educated by the radio broadcasts. In
one scene a couple have gone to the country to have a picnic in their
automobile listening to the radio while the enjoyed their moment yet if you
look closely, they are not alone as another man watches on from the tree line.
The radio set is shown as the perfect accompaniment indoors or outdoors. The reality however for many living in the UK
in the early twenties, all of this high-brow living was aspirational.
By 1923, the British Broadcasting Company had just been formed and had
taken over the running of the various stations around Britain operated by
wireless set manufacturers. On 18 October 1922 the British Broadcasting Company
Ltd was incorporated with a share capital of £60,006, with cumulative ordinary
shares valued at £1 each and six major shareholders,
The shares were equally held by six companies:
·
Marconi's
Wireless Telegraph Company
·
Metropolitan
Vickers Electrical Company
·
Radio
Communication Company
·
The British Thomson-Houston Company
·
The General Electric Company
Marconi was at the heart of transmitting and
manufacturers radio sets. They wanted to cement their position at the forefront
of radio, in a crowded field of manufacturers. Harold Forster was employed to
produce a set of illustrations that would be used in the newspaper campaign for
their premier product ‘The Two Value Marconiphone’. The campaign, which was broadcast
at a national and local level, helped the Marconi Company maintain its lead as
the main seller of ‘listening-in’ sets in the UK. The illustrations used in the
advertisements had two different styles often used deliberately in the
publication they were placed in to appeal to various classes. The more
elaborate drawings appeared in national newspapers and trade publications, and
often as half page advertisements while the darker, less crowded portraits
appeared in regional newspapers.
Forster, in his late twenties in 1923, would have
an illustrious career as an illustrator and an artist. He did not confine
himself to the Marconi work, illustrating many products and brands. He was responsible for pre-war Black Magic
chocolate illustrations. He produced a number of the famous World War Two
posters commissioned by the British Government including the ‘Keep Mum, She’s
Not So Dumb’ and ‘Forward to Victory’ posters. He would also produce iconic
movie posters including for the Jack Hawkins action film, ‘Angels One Five’.
Wednesday, 24 February 2021
Have You Heard Your Local Pub Advertised on the Radio?
With over seven thousand businesses across Ireland excluded financially from the lucrative radio advertising market in Ireland, in 2021 is it possible to attract their advertising revenue into the world of radio?
While many of us know that soft drinks, Nappies, Beauty products and
holidays are regularly advertised on the various Irish radio stations, these
are often agency campaigns for domestic or global businesses targeting Irish
listeners nationally. ‘Great Irish Radio Ads’ postulated,
‘Of all the mediums
available to marketers, radio is the most powerful tool to tell a great story.
Storytelling works superbly through voice alone and it’s an impactful way to
create a strong connection with the listener’.
This is a question that you may ask yourself when thinking about your recent
radio listening,
‘when is the last time you heard and
advertisement for your local public house?’
In 1996 I was the General Manager of the Portobello public house and
after a major refurbishment, we purchased a radio campaign on 98FM. It was a
major investment in announcing our re-opening but was unsustainable
on a longer term basis due mainly to costs. The campaign was paid for from a
promotional budget to target listeners who would enjoy our newly built
nightclub along with a subsidy from one of our major suppliers. In order to promote
the newly built Hotel attached to the pub, a national radio campaign to market our
product proved too expensive and cheaper options in targeting possible guests was
through regional and local newspapers. The initial radio campaign was extremely
successful as a promotional code delivered on the radio was used as an entry
payment to the new nightclub, delivered large crowds. Radio works.
In 2003, when I ran my own pub in the centre of Dublin city, I did some basic local market research on which station my potential customers listened to. This basic market research ranged from asking locals, to listening to what was being played on car radios in the area. As a result, I purchased a Sunshine 106 campaign. This was for two reasons. Firstly, it was in the top five most listened to stations in the catchment area of the pub and secondly it was the least expensive of those five. The campaign which had a radio ad aired over two weeks, that I was never overly happy with, also included a live OB from the pub. This proved extremely popular. The word of mouth reaction was excellent, the local newspaper was there to photograph the event and I believe that the post publicity from the actual campaign was of more value to my business than the radio advertisement itself. [1]
Pubs are the conduits by which companies like Guinness, Smirnoff and
Heineken sell their products to the public. The publican acts as a middle-man
and these major companies with extensive advertising budgets encourage the
consumer to visit the pub to partake of their goods. It is generic advertising
for the pub and not specific to any particular public house.[2]
A public house radio advertising campaign for a pub in Dublin 4 is of little
interest to someone living in Dublin 13. If that publican purchased advertising
on a national or regional radio station, his pub would not resonate with a
listener in Tralee. Even to advertise on a commercial Dublin station is
probably not targeted enough to make much sense unless it is the launch of a
nightclub or as part of an entertainment package. Community and neighbourhood
radio would be the ideal route for that publican but in Ireland in 2021 there
are limitations on the number of advertisements allowed on community radio[3]
and none allowed on temporary licensed stations.[4]
A forerunner of legal local and community radio was pirate radio with many cities, towns and villages across Ireland had at least one pirate radio station entertaining and informing the local community. With advertising relatively cheap, many pubs used the pirate radio stations to reach their clientele whether it was their food offering, the upcoming entertainment, their new beer garden or an event being held there, radio was the perfect vehicle for publicans and their businesses. Since those days of the 1970’s and 1980’s the rules on advertising alcohol have changed and tightened including the blurb ‘Drink Responsibly’ added to the end of both radio and television advertising. The public house has been excluded from the airwaves During that period of illegal radio broadcasting numerous stations were located in public houses including in 1945 at the Beehive pub in Ardara, Donegal which was the location for Radio Nuala. Radio Milinda was famously located above the Diamond Pub in the Gloucester Diamond area of Dublin in 1972, while in the eighties during the golden era pf pirate radio several pubs were located in public houses.
Centre Radio initially
operated from Prosperous, County Kildare above Larry’s public house in the town
going on air in September 1985. In 1983,
Big Tree Radio became a short-lived station based above the Big Tree public
house on North Main Street, Swords. Radio Glenfarne was operated by Paul Graham
and Eamon Brookes from the County Leitrim village of Glenfarne for the local
Festival beginning in 1980 based above a public house in the village and in the
same county Radio North West began life above a pub in Drumshanbo. One of the
so called Super Pirates Radio Leinster went on the air using a
five-kilowatt transmitter on April 29th 1981 broadcasting from a
site behind Lamb Doyle’s public house in Sandyford. The community based station Radio Ringsend who broadcast for the
duration of the local festival from 1982 until 1988, was located in various
venues around the village including a room above Sally O’Brien’s public house
on Thorncastle Street. Dublin’s Westside Radio was based above a pub on James’s
Street in 1982 and Laser 89 in Waterford was also based above a pub. In the UK,
a station Boogaloo Radio began broadcasting from the beer garden of the pub.
Following the imposed and extended Covid 19 lockdown[5]
restrictions, which has seen many pubs closed for more than a year, there will
come a moment when publicans need to reconnect with their client base. Some major
pub chains will have advertising budgets but as revenue has been starved from
them for over twelve months, how those budgets are spent will be tightly
controlled. For the smaller, single business publican, the needs are different
and in neighbourhoods and small villages across Ireland in urban and rural
settings, an avenue to advertise their business will be critical as they meet
the challenge from other pubs in close proximity to theirs. For targeted
advertising many publicans have turned to social media and have purchased ad
campaigns from companies like Facebook and Twitter. They also rely on sharing
and retweeting but as the country re-opens and in twelve to eighteen months as
the tourism sectors begins to regain momentum, pubs will need to spread their net
for business wider. The issue for social media platforms is that they have
attracted negative publicity with the rise of so-called ‘fake news’. The bonus however
is the targeting, as advertisers can minutely target the audience they are
after. This requires a certain amount of tech skills which is attractive for
younger publicans but can be somewhat of a minefield for more traditional
publicans. Radio will be key to the success of the recovering economy and is
still one of the most popular mediums for the Irish consumer with 85% of all
adults listening to radio every day.
Radio is popular in the car during the commutes in the morning and
evenings with this reflected in the increased radio advertising rates during
those periods. The evening commute is often the period when listeners decide
where they will be socialising later that evening or over the forth coming
weekend. Radio is used by those exercising and by demographics including stay
at home parents, the elderly and sports enthusiasts. The definition of the term
‘radio’ has changed and expanded in the past decade as technology advances.
Radio station broadcasts or audio content deliverers are now available not just
through the tradition analogue linear broadcasts on AM and FM but via station
apps, online providers such as Tune-In, Radio Garden and radio.ie and through
media players located on station websites. The use of devices to access online radio
and the increasing use of smart speakers like Alexa is a growing market. According
to marketing.ie[6],
‘The digital tools used
are for the most part a mobile device (11.9 per cent), with the PC/laptop used
by 2.6 per cent and smart speakers used by 1.9 per cent. Despite widespread
media content, platforms and devices, Irish radio maintains strong audiences, with
the report showing 3.2 million people now tuned in to radio each weekday – 81
per cent of over-15s.’
Radio.ie at http://radio.ie/streams/ streams over 160 Irish radio stations on its service with over half of them only available to listeners online such as Birdhill Radio or Scariff Bay Community Radio. According to the services founder Brian Greene for the twenty days up to February 20th 2021, there had been over 50,000 listens to radio on his service alone. He also demonstrated how easy it is for online radio stations to add adverts to the streams.
With my own personal passion for radio, one of my favourite stations is
an American Old Time Radio operator called ‘The Crime and Detective
Channel’ which broadcasts programmes from the golden era of US radio, from the
1930’s to the 1950’s. During the interval between programmes, a number of
adverts are aired not directly by the US station but through Tune-In. This
advertising is helpful to the operator to offset the costs of streaming. The
adverts that I heard, as distinct to a listener from Cork City, were targeted
due to the analytics used identifying my interests including numerous
advertisements for Tesco, where I regularly shop and use their free Wi-Fi when
I am in store, identifying me as a potential recipient of the advertisements.
To me that was good value for money. This could also be used to target my
socialising habits. If I live in a particular area, the local public house
adverts could be targeted to my listening habits. These analytics could also
identify any Pub or restaurant when I checked in online, commented on through
social media or used a search engine to identify.
Pubs and publicans will need radio, should use radio in a targeted,
efficient manner and ultimately will reap the rewards of using such a dynamic
and diverse medium as radio. Ad agencies such as Audio One should be encouraged by bodies such as the LVA and VFI to present proposals to
the licensed trade to both boost their survival upon reopening and to give
publicans a chance to understand how digital radio works and what it can do for
them. The pubs need affordable access to the media not just as an industry but
as individuals serving very diverse communities across the country. One size
will not fit all.
“ALCOHOL ADVERTISING AND RETAILERS
A retail advertisement containing alcohol will be
subject to either Full Alcohol restrictions of Part-Alcohol restrictions.
Full alcohol restrictions are the same restrictions
that apply to a branded alcohol advertisement. Part-Alcohol restrictions apply
to the period of 6am to 10am on all Radio and Television channels, RTÉ
programming and the “Big Big Movie”.
Advertisements are considered Full Alcohol unless
the majority of the products being promoted are non-alcohol. For example, a
retail advertisement which includes offers on three products can only be
regarded as a part alcohol advertisement if two of the products are
non-alcoholic. A four product promotion would require that three of the
products are non-alcoholic in order to avoid additional time and station
restrictions applicable to branded alcohol advertising.
It is important to note that in addition to the number of different products being promoted if there is excessive emphasis on the alcohol element or a disproportionate amount of alcohol featuring within the advertisements then full alcohol restrictions would apply.”
[1]
Other Campaigns
[2]
Unless the pub itself is featured as a location in the advertisement.
[3]
BAI Rules applying to Community Radio 4.5: Advertising The time to be given to
advertising in any clock hour shall not exceed a maximum of six minutes.
[4]
BAI Rules applying to Institutional and Temporary Radio Broadcasters: 4.8
Advertising & Teleshopping Spots Broadcasters licensed further to Section
68 of the Broadcasting Act 2009 may not carry advertising, including teleshopping.
[5]
Some pop up radio stations appeared during the Lockdown broadcasting from
closed public houses including ‘Covid Radio Swinford’ which broadcast from the
front lounge of the White House pub on Chapel Street, Swinford, Co. Mayo.
[6] https://marketing.ie/vast-number-of-irish-adults-tune-into-fm-radio/
Monday, 15 February 2021
Hello Residents of Mars! Are You Listening to FM104?
With the increased interest
in the planet Mars, with several space missions reaching the Red Planet in 2021
from China, the United States and the UAE, the attention of this planet in our
fellow solar system occupant, is not knew. Was there ever a possibility that life on Mars was tuned into earth radio, even Irish radio? Are they listening to FM104 today? The search for the unknown has led
to science fiction, rumours, panic and a media frenzy that dates back almost a
century. The science fiction of HG Wells in his Martian attack of Earth in the
1898 book War of the Worlds, would influence the human view of the far off
planet.
Over a decade before Orson Wells caused real world panic with his War of the Worlds radio broadcast in 1938 and with radio broadcasting in its infancy, radio signals from Mars picked up on a radio set was a major story. Two years before Ireland got its own radio station, 2RN in 1926, the newspapers were full of stories of signals going to and coming from the dwellers on Mars. The excitement enveloped the amateur and the serious scientist alike.
As more and more people began
to listen-in, distortions and natural interference with the airwaves, such as
sunspots not understood at the time, were identified as signals from outer
space. Inventor and one of the father’s of radio broadcasting Nikola Tesla[1]
picked up strange signals on his receiving set and immediately speculated that
they were coming from Mars. Even the great Marconi himself claimed to have received
signals from outer space. Much of the excitement culminated with events in
August 1924. A renown astronomer and physicist Professor David Todd was at the
forefront of ‘radio from Mars’. As early as October 1919, newspaper headlines like
‘Dr. Todd Revives Astronomers' Old Hope of Talking to Mars’ was earning him
vast publicity both in the United States and worldwide as the new medium of
radio was evolving. Todd was an academic at Amherst University.
In an article written by
Todd in the magazine ‘Wireless Age’ he posed the following questions,
‘Did the Martians try to radio to us on earth? Could the mysterious signals reported when Mars was closer to the earth than it has been for 120 years have been from Mars? Is there any physical condition on Mars that would prevent the Martians from having radio? If the Martians have mastered radio is there any basic reason why they should have fallen into the use of dots and dashes?’
By 1924 Radio and Mars
reached a new peak. A radio signal they believed would take 4minutes 21 seconds
to reach mars from Earth and a similar amount of time for earth to receive any
reply from the creatures and spacemen on the Red Planet. In the book Haunted
Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television by Jeffrey Sconce he writes,
‘In
a story from 1923, ‘The Great Radio Message from Mars’, an operator formerly
interested in wireless contact with the dead turns his attention to the red
planet. Using a special crystal taken from a meteorite, the experimenter makes
a weak connection with the ‘Martians’, who tell him in a garbled message that
the ‘negative animal magnetism’ of his family is interfering with their
transmissions. The experimenters hasty solution is to kill his entire family
with an axe. That same year, Hollywood’s first attempt at a 3D feature ‘Radio Mania’
also released as M.A.R.S, Mars Calling and the Man from Mars, told the story of
a starry eyed inventor who believes he has made two way radio contact with Mars
only to discover in the end that it was all a dream’
On Thursday August 21st
1924 with Mars at its closest point to the earth for nearly ten years, most US
radio stations, that cluttered the airwaves, agreed with Professor Todd’s
request to go silent for nine minutes from the 50th minutes of every hour from
midnight on the 21st for thirty six hours to make receiving a Martian signal
easier to hear. Todd’s assistant in the
experiment was Charles Jenkins who was instrumental in the US in the invention
and expansion of television.
The mission to hear Mars
spread beyond the US border. The British Western Mail newspaper reported on August
24th under the headline ‘Has Mars a Wavelength?’ it reported,
‘Preliminary
experiments made at 1.30 on Thursday morning[2]
at Dulwich village in connection with the reception of possible signals from
Mars. Two wireless sets were used, the 24 valve PW set and a six valve set.’
A 65 foot aerial was used with members of the listening
party taking it in turns to keep watch on the 30,000 metre wavelength from
1.30am to 2.30am.
According to Henry
Woodhouse, the President of the Aerial League of America,
‘This
Mars Radio Check-up may give the world more knowledge about the
"ruddy" planet than has been obtained by astronomic study since
Aristotle made his first observation of Mars 356 years before our era, or 2280
years ago. All that Professor Todd needs from radio fans is a record of the
radio strength at the time they listened to whatever happened to be on the air,
with the approximate time when it was strong or faint. Reports covering a day
or longer will be most helpful, but those covering an hour in a day will have
value. These reports should be addressed to Professor David Todd, Chairman of
the Mars Check-up, Aerial League of America, 280 Madison Avenue, New York City’.
One newspaper reported
that attempts in wireless communications with Mars would take place from
Jungfranjock, Switzerland with extremely powerful wireless sets ‘in the hope of
picking up any messages that the Martians may be sending us’ Professor Low from
the Royal Observatory in Greenwich speculated that the Martians are more likely
to receive messages sent by smoke or light than wireless. Professor Eddington,
an astronomer at Cambridge University called the experiment to contact Mars as ‘absolute
nonsense’.
After a weekend across
the world attempting to make contact with Mars, the experiments were deemed a
failure but almost a century later Mars is still the focus of attention from
the humans on earth.
Sources
Amherst University
Archive
Scientific American
Wireless Age Magazine
New York Times Archives
American Radio History
British Newspaper Archives
Irish Newspaper Archives
Transmitting the Past:
Historical and Cultural Perspectives on Broadcasting
edited by J. Emmett Winn,
Susan Lorene Brinson
The Dissertation of Emily
M. Simpson for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History of Science
presented on June 12, 2018. Title: Mars and Popular Astronomy, 1890-1910
Tuesday, 2 February 2021
For Good or Evil, the GAA Embraces English Culture in 1923 via the Airwaves
For decades Rule 42 of
the GAA[1] rulebook forbid the
playing of what was seen as British sports, like soccer, rugby and cricket at
GAA grounds across the island of Ireland including its headquarters at Croke
Park in Dublin. In 1923, after several years of uncertainty due to the War of
Independence and the Civil War, the GAA urgently needed to generate funds to
pay off debts for the development of Croke Park. The ground had become
synonymous with the events of Bloody Sunday 1920 and was a beacon of Irish
nationalistic traditions. The anti-English sentiments had spilled over into the
new Irish Free State but the GAA were desperate to fund their operations at the
headquarters on Jones Road.
In June 1923, it was
decided to hold a Fete or festival spanning the first two weeks in June opening
on the second. Apart from sporting competitions on the field of play, markets,
dancing competitions and stalls were installed on the grounds, all with one aim,
to gather in as much money as they could from the paying public. The Fete was
opened by Dan McCarthy TD, the president of the GAA and he suggested the
optimistic plan to bring the Olympics to Croke Park. This sentiment was echoed
by the then Postmaster General J.J. Walsh, both men veterans of the previous
battles against the British. This launch on the steps of the main stand was the
first time ever that the speeches were delivered via a loudspeaker system
installed by James Kearney and his Irish and Continental Trading Company. The
‘broadcasting’ of the speeches to those gathered on the pitch was described by
the Irish Independent as ‘arousing much curiosity’ and ‘the first fete in
Ireland where this microphone system was used’.
The installation of the
system led to a bitter exchange between Kearney and another TD and veteran of
the fight against the British going back to the Easter Rising, Sean McGarry[2]. McGarry, an electrician
and businessman, seemed to under the impression that the loudspeaker system
required a licence but it didn’t and he also complained that the equipment used
was imported from Britain instead of being guaranteed Irish. Kearney wrote that
McGarry did not know the difference between ‘broadcasting’ and ‘listening-in’.
In a letter to the Irish Independent signed by ‘Fair Play’, who most likely
worked for McGarry, wrote,
"
As a member of the staff of an electrical manufacturing firm with a branch in
Dublin which employs electrical engineers and salesmen and pays a large amount
of money annually in wages, rates, and taxes in Ireland, I would like to know
why permission for the reception of wireless broadcasting is refused
to legitimate manufacturers and dealers of wireless apparatus and granted to
people who have no connection with the electrical industry. I see by the papers
that the Postmaster-General refuses to grant any further permits, and the
following day permission is again granted to certain, individuals."
It may or may not have
been a coincidence that in the midst of the Fete on June 15th, the electrical
supplies shop on Andrew Street owned by McGarry was broken into, ransacked and
a money box taken. While the GAA leadership and membership rallied against
anything English, they were not against using very specific British
institutions to generate cash for the organisation, cash was King.
One of the most popular
attractions at the Fete and one that required a ticket in addition to the
ground entry fee, was also organised by Kearney and had received a license from
the PMG Walsh. For four hours of ‘wireless listening-in’ to British radio stations,
attendees paid an extra one schilling per head. Underneath the main stand a
wireless receiving set was set up with ‘perfect acoustics’ and over two weeks
thousands of Dubliners enjoyed the then unique experience of listening to the
wireless. In 1923, there was no Irish station to listen to, so the radio was
tuned into English stations relaying concerts, gramophone records and even live
sports. The Belfast station had yet to go on the air and while Cardiff and
Aberdeen were both audible in Dublin, the audiences at the GAA were only treated
to English stations. The gramophone records were ‘risqué’ for many of the
Catholic church faithful and didn’t really sit well in the proud Irish music tradition
but the younger generation flocked to the wireless room he hear the more ‘decadent’
modern music played by the English stations.
The Dublin Evening
Telegraph reported on June 6th,
‘Last
night[3] a most enjoyable programme
was listened to by appreciative audiences. First, we had Manchester[4], which entertained us with
music and song, then we switched to Newcastle to avoid a lecture which was not
of great interest. From Newcastle[5] we had some fine dance
music admirably rendered. When this station announced it was closing down at
10.30, we switched onto London[6]. After some orchestral
selections we got news straight from the ring about the Ratner-Todd fight[7]’.
While the GAA held their
fierce anti-English attitude, they saw no wrong in their embracing distinctly
British culture broadcast over the airwaves. The GAA inadvertently had both created an interest in the new medium of radio broadcasting and for all thing culturally English. The organisation would however go one to achieve radio success as the new Irish Free State station 2RN became the first station in Europe to broadcast live coverage of a field sport when they aired the commentary of a match from Croke Park in August 1926.
[1]
Gaelic Athletic Association
[2]
McGarry served on the Dail’s Wireless Committee
[3]
June 4th 1923
[4]
2ZY
[5]
5NO
[6]
2LO
[7] Roland Rodd enjoyed a points victory over Augie Ratner (USA) at Kensington, London on 4 June 1923,