Ten Irish Radio Facts You May Not Know

 

Ireland has had a long, colourful and unique place in broadcasting history and as we enter a decade of radio centenaries, we look back at some of the facts that you may not be aware of that brings Ireland’s broadcasting history to the fore.

1.     The first public demonstration in Ireland of the new medium of Wireless Telegraphy took place on March 8th 1898. In front of an invited audience at the theatre of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS), a lecture was delivered by Monsignor Gerald Molloy titled ‘The Principles of Electric Signalling without Wires’. Also on stage with the cleric was the man who was at the forefront of Wireless Telegraphy development, Guglielmo Marconi. Marconi who proudly celebrated his Irish heritage through his mother Annie Jameson, a member of the whiskey distilling family.  A demonstration took place with a transmitter placed on the stage under the control of Monsignor Molloy and Marconi’s assistant William Lynd. In the gallery was Marconi with the receiving set and morse messages were sent through the ether in the theatre. That theatre today is the main chamber of the Irish parliament, Dail Eireann where the now Minister for Communications delivers his speeches.

2.     “One of the first places taken possession of by the insurgents was the Wireless School over Reis’ shop at the corner of Abbey Street and here during the night the wireless apparatus was re-erected complete with aerials”.

Thus, the Freeman’s Journal reported on events in O’Connell Street, April 1916. Rebel Radio ‘broke down the walls of silence built by the enemy’. The rebels’ launch of their very own radio station in April 1916 was a real and tangible success during the Easter Rising. This group of innovators broke new ground barely a decade after the invention of radio. Their actions, often under intense fire from their enemy, beat the odds and the British censorship blanket in Ireland. The radio station, located opposite the rebel headquarters in the GPO, was expertly planned and executed and it became a world’s first as the Irish Republic became the first State to be declared globally by radio. It was the first instance of battlefield propaganda being broadcast to the general listener. As the first Director of Irish Broadcasting the proclamation signatory (and later executed leader) Joseph Plunkett led a group of extraordinarily brave rebels. His charges included Fergus O’Kelly, John ‘Blimey’ O’Connor, Liam Daly and the Hollywood star Arthur Shield’s.

“To Officer in Charge Reis's and D.B.C. The main purpose of your post is to protect our wireless station. Its secondary purpose is to observe Lower Abbey Street and Lower O'Connell Street. Signed. James Connolly, Commandant General”.

3.     For many when 2RN, the forerunner of RTE Radio took to the airwaves on January 1st 1926, it was the first but before 2RN and even Belfast’s 2BE, Irelands first licensed radio station 2BP took to the airwaves for three days August 14th -16th 1923. It would be the first time that listeners in Dublin could hear Irish voices singing and playing Irish traditional airs.

4.     Much has been written and it is still fondly remembered that Tolka Row, first broadcast on RTE in January 1964, was the stations first foray into producing a soap opera but in fact it was the BBC who stole the march on the Irish broadcasters by first broadcasting Tolka Row on radio in October 1957 and on BBC TV in March 1959. RTE would eventually broadcast the Dublin based soap for five series.

 

5.     The two Irish language broadcasters TG4 & Raidio na Gaeltachta both had pirate incarnations before becoming legal entities. Radio Saor Connemara was a forerunner of the Irish language service on radio while Telifis na Gaeltacht in Rosmuc in 1987 promoted our native language on TV, before the arrival of TG4.

6.     First commercial use of radio was by the Goodbody family in Clara, County Offaly. The family and fellow businessmen were early investors in the Marconi wireless invention. The wireless system in the town connected wirelessly their flour manufacturing plant with their sack producing building.

7.     First use of radio for sports journalism in the world was by Marconi at the 1898 Dun Laoghaire regatta. Marconi transmitted radio signals from the tug The Flying Huntress in the bay giving details of the progress of the yacht races in the Kingstown Regatta to his assistant who manned the receiving equipment in what is now Moan Park House, Dun Laoghaire. The information was then telephoned to The Dublin Express newspaper who published results of the races shortly after they ended. This event represented the very first use of radio in journalism and sports broadcasting.

 

8.     In 1964, the famous pirate ship Radio Caroline was fitted out as a radio station in the County Louth harbour of Greenore by Dublin born Ronan O’Rahilly, whose family owned the port. The station, now with an Ofcom licence still broadcasts from the Ross Revenge ship off the Essex coast.

9.     Radio 2000 who lost out on the national franchise applied for one of the two Dublin licences, which he duly won along with Capital Radio. The franchises for Dublins independent local radio stations were awarded Radio 2000 and Capital Radio on March 2nd. At 8am on July 20th Capital Radio went on the air broadcasting from the St. Stephens Green Centre on 104mhzFM becoming the first of the new licensed radio stations. Radio 2000's station 98FM was launched from the former home of the pirate station Q102 in Mount Street broadcasting on 98mhzFM. Both stations had stolen the march on the nationally licensed Century Radio this despite Century's protests that the success of the national station depended on Century being on the air before the local stations. Capital Radio was launched at the Berkley Court Hotel with the first voice heard on the station being that of Scott Williams. Dublin's Lord Mayor Sean Haughey officially declared the station open before handing over to the studios and Colm Hayes who played the station's first record, Phil Lynott's 'Old Town'.

 

10.  The Hurdy Gurdy Museum in the Martello Tower in Howth has one of the largest collections of antiques radios and equipment from Irish radio history. The brainchild of the late Pat Herbert, the museum according to its website derives its name as ‘a homage to a remark made by Taoiseach Seán Lemass, who asked an RTÉ radio controller in the 1950s "How's the hurdy gurdy?".