A CENTURY OF IRISH RADIO 1900- 2000
1.
The Introduction
2.
In the Beginning
3.
Rebel Radio
4.
The Fledgling Twenties
5.
The Evolutionary Thirties
6.
The Troublesome Forties
7.
The Flat Fifties
8.
The Swinging Sixties
9.
The Sensational Seventies
10.
The Revolutionary Eighties
11.
The Celtic Tiger Nineties
12.
Northern Ireland Legal and
Illegal
13.
Appendix
While every attempt has been made by the author to be as accurate
as possible, because of the nature of some illegal radio broadcast activities
some of the facts are open to interpretation and are open to correction for
future editions. Contact theirishbroadcastinghalloffame@gmail.com
The history of
Irish radio broadcasting in the twentieth century is one of invention,
innovation, creativity, world’s firsts, criminality, fraud and death yet with a
little sprinkling of humour. From the very early experiments of Marconi, to the
momentous events of the 1916 Easter Rising and the first embers of propaganda
broadcasting, the playing of the music of the savages, the delivery of local deaths
announcements on radio to wartime broadcasts, paramilitary broadcasts and
pirate radio, Irelands radio colourful radio landscape has one hell of a story
to tell. The following pages is full of political intrigue, state and church
interference, law breaking, madness and sadness as the Irish airwaves have
created, reflected and reported social, political and economic change in
Ireland for over a century.
In times of war
and strife it was a consoling constant companion, in peace it helped drive the
agenda of change, created debate and as news delivery fragments with a tsunami
of technological advances, radio has maintained a unique, dominant position to
shape Ireland in the twenty first century at home and abroad.
From the single
goal of independence and the launch of a broadcasting monopoly, this small
island nation on the edge of Europe in the Atlantic
has evolved into a multi cultural society with a multitude of radio stations. Many
of the stories that follow are full of endeavour, hilarity, violent threats and
challenges to the state. The ingenuity of using discarded scraps to create
living breathing transmitters, the launching of border blasters and the
hundreds of broadcasters both legal and illegal who have been contributing to
the natural resource of the ether and Irish solutions to Irish problems.
Following the
closure of a Dublin pirate radio station, the engineer who built the station’s
transmitter had not been paid for his work.
He enlisted the assistance of another pirate broadcaster to recover
equipment he believed was rightfully his. As his policeman father waited patiently
outside in the car, the two men illegally entered the property to retrieve the
equipment. The station owner arrived at the house brandishing a shotgun this despite
the presence of a policeman outside his door. In this bizarre scene from a
Hollywood movie, the trespassers were eventually allowed repossess the equipment.
The ether of the
radio airwaves carry not only news and entertainment broadcasts but this natural
resource also allows pilots communicate with Dublin air traffic control, allows
ships to safely berth in Irish ports, allows secure Garda communications to
keep our nation safe, provides Irish troops with communications to perform
their duties at home and abroad, enables house bound citizens to take a moment
out of their lives to listen to Mass from their local churches and truckers
communicating along Irish motorways on CB radio.
Important Editors Note:
This is the story of the century 1900
– 2000 and does not include the stories of those stations and broadcasters that
have aired since 2000 to present
The Introduction
From 1926 until
1989 broadcasting in the Republic
of Ireland Dublin Ireland in the early part of the twentieth
century and mainly due to its location as an island on the edge of Europe was at the forefront of wireless broadcasting. One
of the men who was credited with the invention of radio Guigelmo Marconi used
Ireland as a hub to make contact with the expanding world of North America. In
1916 Ireland made a failed bid to free itself from British rule but then a
subsequent successful War of Independence and a civil war stifled the development
of the radio industry and technological advances left Ireland in its wake.
Ireland had fallen
behind most of Europe as radio broadcasting and the associated technology advanced.
It would be one of the last countries in Western Europe
to open its own domestic radio station and use up the resources of the
airwaves. This was all the more unusual as Ireland and those who fought for its
freedom had shown innovative and foresight when using the new medium of radio
to disseminate their message during the 1916 Easter Rising. The station
launched by the rebels was in the truest sense the world’s first pirate radio
station and it would later be ironic that pirate radio would dominate the
history of Irish Broadcasting.
While wounds from
a civil war (1922-23) took many generations to heal, a younger nation emerged and
this youthful population demanded more from the national State broadcaster but
a lack of leadership within and from Government the choice of listening remained
static. The authorities relied on the effectiveness of the Department of Posts
and Telegraphs and the 1926 Wireless Telegraphy Act to control the airwaves.
This Act was used in 1936 to prosecute a Limerick
based pirate radio station. During the Second World War, Ireland remained neutral but those opposed to
the political settlement with Britain
that created the Irish Free State in 1922 sought to aid the Axis powers by
declaring war on Britain Ireland as a base to spy on British army and
naval movements and that these reports were being transmitted from Dublin to Berlin
Technological
advances especially after the Second World War allowed experimenters to build
cheap yet effect broadcast transmitters. In the late 1950’s political pirate
radio stations emerged but these were haphazard and short lived. The freedom of
the 1960’s and the creation of global communications made the world smaller but
Ireland
