‘Hallo hallo hallo, aye aye aye,
hallo hallo hallo’ were the first words spoken by Seamus O’hAodha (Seamus
Hughes). This was followed by,
‘Se seo staisiun 2RN Baile Atha
Cliath ag triail’ (This is 2RN Dublin Testing)
By 7.45pm, according to an article on the front
page of the Sunday Independent, a large crowd had gathered at Hogan’s wireless
shop on Henry Street to hear the first transmissions.
Almost fifty years ago RTE launched a new experiment in local radio broadcasting that while it brought local communities their own pop up radio station, unwittingly RTE created a monster as these local communities saw the benefit of having their own radio station and soon after the RTE’s mobile van departed, in that town, village or community, a pirate station opened to replace it. By the mid-eighties while RTE were still travelling the highways and byways of Ireland with their small radio station, a pirate radio boom swept the country with as many as one hundred and fifty illegal stations on air each weekend across the nation. In 1975 the Dublin inner city locality of The Liberties was the location of the first in this unique decade long experiment from the national broadcaster. For the duration of the local arts festival, RTE would bring their new mobile radio van which not only contained a studio but also a small low powered transmitter. While the technical elements would be overseen by RTE, all the programming from research to production and presentation would be conducted by a committee of locals. The on-air presenters too would be local voices often inexperienced but many were caught by the radio bug. The concept was originally credited to the then Director General of RTE George Waters. For many years the man tasked with being the go between with RTE and the committee was Paddy O’Neill. Paddy was born near Skibbereen in County Cork and after a brief career as a national schoolteacher he became involved in the Abbey theatre from where in 1951 he joined Radio Eireann. At the station he became a producer, one of his most influential roles as producer was for the popular Din Joe’s ‘Take the Floor’.
Paddy was also a greyhound enthusiastic both racing them and being involved in the organising of races. Under the alias ‘Paddy O’Brien’ he became Radio Eireann’s greyhound racing commentator later taking up the role of Chairman of Bord na gCon in 1983.
At 10am on Friday May 9th 1975, Radio Liberties came on the air on 96.6mhz FM (or still described in 1975 as VHF) and would stay on for the next ten days. The transmitter had a two mile radius. They would broadcast twice a day, in the morning from 10am – 12.30pm and in the afternoon from 3pm – 5pm. The RTE van was based across the road from the church on the High Street and two of the main presenters were Harry McGurk and Eileen Reid, a well-known Showband singer. Interviews with locals were conducted by legal secretary Maura Ryan and house painter Tony Clabby. The station was a tremendous local success. While initially the van carried only a FM transmitter by 1977 they had also added a medium wave transmitter on 202metres.
The RTE van would visit one hundred and forty venues staying for between three days and one week until their final outing in October 1987 when the RTE Community radio station visited Dun Laoghaire as Radio Phobail Dun Laoghaire.
According
to the Nenagh Guardian,
‘Radio Liberties opened at 10 a.m. last Friday morning. It came on the air from nothing more sophisticated than a white caravan, parked on a street corner between decaying buildings and obstructive blocks of flats, with a slight Liffey aroma in the background. It was a complete definition of the word Local’.
The then recently appointed new RTE Director General Oliver Maloney invited members of the national press to Montrose for a free lunch and they were then bussed into High Street to see the mobile station in action. Apart from the national newspaper reports, other media coverage came from another Dublin media broadcasting experiment when a crew from Ballyfermot Community Television arrived in the Liberties to conduct interviews with those who were on the air in the mobile van on the High Street.
The following year RTE were back in the Liberties. RTE Community Radio Liberties went on air on Saturday May 15th and would continue until May 23rd. This year the broadcasting hours were 3pm – 5pm and 7pm to 10.30pm. What was unusual about this visit was that on the day of their first broadcast and despite being technically operated by RTE, Radio Liberties was the only legal station on the air in Dublin. A strike by thirty carpenters who worked for the State broadcaster meant that the rest of the stations staff refused to pass the pickets and RTE was closed. As the strike continued to black out RTE Radio and Television, Radio Liberties was gaining a wider audience as their low powered FM transmissions were being relayed on the main Dublin medium wave frequency. The strike would last thirteen days before a settlement was reached.
This would not be the last time RTE’s Community Radio service would visit the Liberties as their final visit was in April 1981 but they would travel across Ireland to towns and villages and city suburbs to provide the impetus for local community radio and unwittingly creating that golden era of pirate radio in the 1980’s. The Liberties would have their own pirate radio station in the late eighties Liberties Local Community Radio (LLCR).
I took my Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to New York, eager
to explore the role that radio played in the 2024 campaign and to ponder the
question, “Did radio really make any difference in the outcome?” Since John F.
Kennedy’s 1960 presidential election campaign, television has undoubtedly taken the lead
in campaign influence, from commercials to debates. Yet, radio, which predates
television, continues to play a significant role in the daily lives of people
across the United States. While I’ve visited New York countless times before,
this was my first experience during an election season. Prior to my departure
from Ireland, the predictions were uncertain, and there was a palpable tension
surrounding the outcome, speculation of violence loomed if the results were
contested. To prepare, I started my research while still in Ireland, tuning
into various New York radio stations accessible online and through the Radio
Garden app.
US Radio seemed to reflect the US national mood. The unsettling and tribalization
of audio output. While the visual media dominates US politics, the aural input
and influence needs analyzing. In a multi-billion-dollar industry with large
audiences and attached advertising revenue, could traditional radio and the more recent
phenomenon of podcasting, direct or re-direct the course of an election, nationally or
locally.
On voting day, I spoke to two campaign workers outside the
school, PS049 on the edge of Juniper Park on 80th Street in Middle Village, New
York. Giovanni was a Harris worker while Meridith was a Trump supporter. They
were having some friendly banter when I approached and introduced myself.
‘Would
either of you know how influential radio has been to this election?’
They looked at each other and both shrugged their shoulders. ‘No’ was the consensus opinion, they had agreed on something.
I had come to New York to see how radio rather than
television had shaped the campaigns.
‘Their
voices were also in our ears like never before.’[1]
Firstly, I had to acquaint myself with the rules as defined
by the Federal Communications Commission with regard to election broadcasts.
The rules are clear but as I researched by listening to numerous stations,
these rules seemed vacuous. The two main rules are,
1. FCC[2]
rules seek to ensure that no legally qualified candidate for office is unfairly
given less access to the airwaves – outside of bona fide news exemptions – than
their opponent. Equal opportunities
generally means providing comparable time and placement to opposing candidates;
it does not require a station to provide opposing candidates with programs identical to the initiating
candidate.
2 The FCC has
campaign advertising rate rules because the law seeks to ensure that legally
qualified candidates for office are not disadvantaged by facing unfairly high
advertising rates during the ends of a campaign or rates that differ from their
opponents. The FCC rules require that
broadcast stations and cable systems can only charge legally qualified
candidates the “Lowest Unit Charges” and “Comparable Rates” for their
advertisements.
For example if a Democrat candidate purchases an advert on
‘Radio Anything’, the Republican candidate must be offered similar airtime at
the same fee. The issue is that on many radio stations both to the left and the
right, editorially the supported one side or the other and the listening
demographic favoured similar therefore while Republicans took out ads on WABC,
knowing that Harris supporters would not be listening and while they were by
FCC rules offered similar airtime, they did not take it on.
WABC 770 is no longer operated by the ABC TV[3]
channel, it is in fact owned by John Coatsimdas and his Red Apple Media
company. As an outsider, this came as news. On this side if the Atlantic, the
three main networks NBC, CBS and ABC would be seen as reliable and responsible
when it comes to news reporting, the fact that WABC was independently owned
came with an element of surprise. On Friday November 1st on the Dominic Carter
show during the first ad break, which lasted for seven minutes, there was an
advert for the new book ‘Blessed’ and Goya Black Beans but repeatedly the
voiceover said how the book and its author were proud Donald Trump supporters,
followed by ads were for Resort Living, a Florida based property company and
the American Patriot Insurance Company. Then an advert for the Trump's candidacy,
announced as a ‘paid advert’ and ‘endorsed by the candidate’, followed by a
plea for Republicans to vote for the party ‘Down the Ballot’. This was followed
by some station idents then an advert for Mercedes Benz and finally mattresses
from the Juni Collection Company. These adverts targeted a certain listening
demographic that aligned with Republican ideals and status.
The next adbreak featured ads for Trump's own book, his
former ally Roger Stone selling Colonial Medals and FOX News presenter Judge
Janine speaking about illegal weapons in New York under the democratic
administration of Mayor Adams. In one hour there were three seven minute breaks
without any paid advertisement from the Harris Campaign. FCC rules allow 18.5
minutes of ads per hour not including station advertisements on news and talk
stations, while music genre stations are allowed 14.5 minutes per hour.
In the swing state of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, WURD is
a predominantly African American station. On the afternoon show on the day
after Kamala Harris had addressed a crowd in Philadelphia, the station left
their listeners in do doubt that they wanted them to vote Democratic but also
broadcast the blurb that ‘opinions and comments on the station do NOT reflect
those of the owner of the station. In that one hour there were three ads for
Harris, none for Trump and a request to all their listeners ‘to go out and
vote’.
This impassioned plea seems to fall on deaf ears. In the
2020 election between Biden and Trump there were 231,593,000 adults over
eighteen eligible to vote. The turn out however was just 66%.
When all votes were counted, Biden had 81,283,502 and Trump
had 74,223,975 but the second largest group were those who chose not to vote,
76,085,524.
On voting day numerous stations focused on the weather
forecast which was an unusually warm November day. On the news channel WINS
1010, the channel covered the two campaigns, announcing that early voting in
this election was up 50%. The channel's mantra is ‘you give us 20 minutes and
we'll give you the world’. Every twenty minutes listeners were treated to
rolling news, weather, business and traffic and while there were ad breaks
there was not one campaign advertisement. The two campaigns were treated to exactly
the same amount of time for news but there were other news items covered, all
domestic including the possibility of a drought in New York, that the subway
carried its one billionth passenger of 2024 and a New York policeman suspended
after a shooting.
Radio in New York fits into three categories, traditional AM
& FM, satellite radio mostly through Sirius and finally online only radio.
I visited East Village Radio, an internet station with a shop front studio on
1st Avenue. I spoke to Brian, the station owner, who told me they decided to
provide an alternative to the non stop political battle by just playing music
with their only nod to the election, pleading with their listeners whomever
they supported to go out and vote. I spoke with New York based author, radio
producer and pirate radio archivist, David Goren, who told me that even for him
listening to Caribbean pirate stations in New York city that the election
invaded the illegal airwaves. He played me a recording of a station
broadcasting entirely in Creole and beamed at the Haitian community, where
David said it was the first time he had heard the English language used on the
station when the presenter broke into a rant in English trashing Trump and
imploring his listeners to vote for the Harris/Waltz ticket.[4]
While these interventions are important to note, by their nature the pirate
stations primarily based in Brooklyn and the Bronx are low powered operations
and therefore their reach is limited. Many of their listeners are illegal
immigrants and therefore not entitled to vote but the fear of Trump's rhetoric
to deport illegal migrants fed into a number of the pirate station's output
with the hope to influence those listeners who may be able to exercise their
franchise.
According to Nielsen[5] US radio reaches 92% of
Democrats, 93% of Republicans and 92% of swing voters. But in all cases
traditional AM/FM radio is behind Digital radio in reach but ahead of linear
and cable television. It also highlighted that younger voters were migrating
away from television because there were too many advertisements. But when it
came to the major events of the campaign, it was the visuals, whether it was
the Presidential debates, major news programme interviews or even assassination
attempts, it was television that won the media battle. There were no tailor
made radio events for the main campaigns. Third party candidate Jill Stein of
the Green Party struggled to get her message across to the electorate dominated
by the two major parties[6]. She
took part in a third party candidate debate broadcast on the cable news channel
C-Span and her access to radio airtime included an interview on the Ray
Hannania radio show broadcast on the Arab News channel relayed by WNZK in
Detroit and WDMV in Washington. Stein was reduced to interviews on community
radio stations including WMNF in Florida.[7] Fearing that a vote for
Stein would help elect Trump, the DNC took out negative radio ads saying that a
vote for Stein was a vote for Trump.
Meanwhile, according to Jacobs Media who surveyed 300,000
radio listeners, 94% of those who spend the majority of their time with spoken
word audio fall into the “very or somewhat closely” will follow the election
period. 83% of those who predominantly listen to music genre stations responded
to the same. Jacobs Media President Fred Jacobs shares his belief that the
numbers show how powerful an advertising medium AM/FM radio can be for
political campaigns.
In recent campaigns the voting populace have been polarized
and they migrate to TV and radio that reflects their views only and so they are
unable to see an alternative point of view. Such is the division, health
officials believe that many suffer from election anxiety and as a result there
were a number of infomercials that offered help and direction to health care
providers to get more help to treat their election anxiety.
“What
is pathetic about the freedom to express opinions on talk shows is the new lack
of respect for the truth and facts,” says New Orleans based WWL talk show host
Scoot Paisant. “Why are talk show hosts
allowed to go on the air and speak total nonsense about crucial topics
concerning a presidential election? Station management allows talk show hosts
to say whatever they want to say; and it becomes the audience, or responsible
talk show hosts, to call out the abuses of freedom of expression.”[8]
The
WWL Radio host then argued that there is a
mirage of someone telling a truth simply because they have their own
news/talk radio show, isn’t real.
Once the polls closed and results began to come in, the mood
on radio changed. In New York there were two distinct feelings, gloom and
euphoria depending on where you sat on the political fence. On WBLS, a
primarily black station that features the likes of Steve Harvey, the morning
after with Trump then projected to win back the presidency, the morning
presenter said there was ‘nothing to be happy about today'. Listening to
various stations on that Wednesday morning the theme was recriminations for the
Democratic Party and retribution was the by word of the victorious Republicans.
According to AdImpact, 8% of dollars spent by the two main
political campaigns were spent on radio. It was estimated by them that by
election day $45 million would be spent on radio time. While most adverts were
simply the audio of the television ads, some were specifically made for radio
including two one minute ads made for the swing state of Wisconsin. One
featured former talk show host Charlie Skyes while the other featured longtime
former Republican Representative Liz Cheney.[9]
According to Audacy, while radio was expected to have an
influence on the 2024 election, the use of social media had increased
significantly since the 2022 midterm elections. The rise of politically
focussed podcasts also affected radio’s reach. This can easily be seen from the
online reaction to Harris’s appearance on ‘Call Her Daddy[10] and Trump's interview on
Joe Rogan’s [11]
podcast. According to Steve Johnston, a former COO at
FlexPoint Media,
‘2024 will
be remembered as the Podcast Election. Not because podcasts are new (they're not) but that this was the first time
presidential nominees and their running mates leveraged
them in a meaningful way.’[12]
The numbers speak for themselves according to Edison
Research[13] one
hundred million Americans listen to at least one podcast per week. Further
researchers point to the fact that it's a younger generation, still accepting
audio, that are listening to audio on demand like podcasts rather than
traditional scheduled radio programming. There is a reported sea change in how
Americans consume information, where they get their news from and how divided
politically the nation has become. In this changing landscape, traditional
radio was going to suffer. Radio is fighting a losing battle against podcasts.
The Joe Rogan podcast, which has 14.5m Spotify followers and 17.9m YouTube
followers gained an extra 400,000[14]
YouTube subscribers after the interview with Trump. The fact that you could see
and hear the interview blurred the lines between traditional radio and
television and today's audio visual experience. Call her Daddy figures were not
immediately available but the power of her podcast is illustrated that in
August 2024, SiriusXM spent $100 million on the rights to her podcast[15],
three years after Spotify paid $60m for exclusive rights.
Audacy cited the 2022 election of Democratic Senator John
Fetterman. They said,
‘Fetterman’s campaign allocated 20% of media dollars to
radio and generated a 10% lift from radio above the local TV campaign amounting
to 676,000 additional votes at no extra cost. Fetterman defeated his opponent
Dr. Mehmet Oz by less than 300,000, a testament to radios pivotal role.’[16]
In a study by Nielsen’s (citation) they concluded
Their main takeaways in their study in advance of the
election campaign were
Radio still has an important role to bring the news to the
public. The major TV news networks like Fox CSpan, Bloomberg, NPR and CNN have
radio versions of their output. The top five most listened to stations in New
York are all music genre stations and they all carried radio adverts for both
candidates[18].
Two of the most listened to News radio stations in the United States are based
in New York, WINS 1010 and WCBS 880 both on AM and both owned by Entercom Inc.
The top five rated radio shows, which are syndicated and not only available on
linear radio but also as podcasts were all conservative commentators including
Sean Hannity, well known from his Fox News shows.[19] The impact of satellite
radio such as SiriusXM is significant primarily as their offerings are on a
paid subscription service and operated commercial free. Also available in New
York is HD Radio as operated by the NPR station WNYC. On their 93.9 frequency
with the right receiver you can switch between their regular programming,
classical music or a relay of their 820 AM schedule.
The financial impact of the campaign and bearing in mind
that radio and TV stations must sell their airtime to the candidates at their
lowest selling price, the Democrats[20] spent $1.2 billion while
the Republican party spent $653m.[21]
While the main focus of attention was the Presidential race, there were also
campaigns for the Senate, House of Representatives, Governor races, Assemblymen
and local referendums. According to NPR News[22]
‘Altogether, $10.5 billion has been
spent on campaign ads in the 2024 election
cycle, on races from president down to county commissioner, according to data compiled by the ad-tracking
firm AdImpact and analyzed by NPR.’[23]
According
to Inside Radio 3.5% of that amount would be spent on radio advertising.[24] That $10 billion is larger
than the GDP of fourteen countries including Tonga and Samoa.
As the visual media has fragmented from the traditional
analogue and digital station, to streaming services, cable and satellite TV and
even YouTube, the audio equivalent has also fragmented from traditional AM/FM
stations to digital and satellite services such as SiriusXM, to Spotify and
podcasts. There is also the rise in money spent on social media platforms like
X and Facebook.
Of the two main candidates for the White House, Harris made
more use of radio. There is however in the choice of talk radio a skewing of
the choice in favour of Conservatives/Republican shows and stations as opposed
to Liberal/Democratic choices. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution of
the estimated $31m spent by Harris on broadcast and digital media, $7m was
allocated to radio ads as compared to Trump's $560,000.[25] They also reported that from July to October
Vice President Harris spent $456.3m on radio ads in seven key states while
Former President Trump spent $204.3m in the same states. According to Open
secrets.org the two largest media beneficiaries of campaign spending primarily
by the PACs were FOX News Corp with $299m airtime purchased on TV and iHeart
Media Inc with $298m on radio. IHeart Media have 860 radio stations in 160
cities and towns.[26]
There was some fallout for radio in the aftermath of the
election result. There was a raft of redundancies across numerous radio markets
including in New York where iHeart’s layoffs included the widely respected and
experienced Len Berman at WOR Radio.
Did radio materially affect the outcome of the 2024 US Presidential election? No. Will its influence diminish in future campaigns? We will have to tune in four years from now to answer that.
[1] Travis Clark in the Current Blog
[2] Fcc.gov
[3] Currently owned by Disney
[4] David Goren, the Brooklyn Sound Map
[5] Inside Radio February 2024
[6] A candidate must be polling at 15% to be
included in the main television presidential debates.
[7] September 17th 2024 interview with Meghan
Bowman
[8] Barrett Media Reporting
[9] The Boston Examiner
[10] October 6th 2024. Interviewed by Alex Cooper.
Episode available on YouTube
[11] The Joe Rogan Experience October 25th 2024
[12] Reported in The Current Blog
[13] Reported in April 2024
[14] Sophie Clark in Newsweek October 28th 2024
[15] Conor Murray, Forbes Magazine
[16] ‘Radio Gets Votes’ by Idil Cakim, SVP and
Head of Research & Insights, Audacy
[17] Optimizing Polictal Campaigns to Win in
November by Tony Heresy, Nielson
[18] Top 5 as of December 2023, 1. WLTW (Lite FM
106.7 owned by iHeart Media) 2. WAXQ (Q104.3 Classic Rock owned by iHeart
Media) 3. WBLS 4. WHTZ FM (Z100 owned by iHeart Media), 5. WCBS 101.1FM
[19] SwinginWest.com
[20] Originally Joe Biden’s campaign and then
Kamala Harris
[21] This figure includes the money spent directly
by the campaign and by the Super PACs (Political Action Committees)
[22] National Public Radio
[23] Media includes TV, radio, online platforms,
social media and newspapers
[24] Inside Radio August 19th 2024
[25] Radioink October 15th 2024
[26] Stations in New York where I was based
include WOR 710, Power 105.1, Lite 106.7 and the largest Z100
