The Irish Pirate Radio Rivalries - Of the 1930's

For many, the great pirate radio rivalries in Ireland were ERI and South Coast in Cork, Nova and Sunshine in Dublin in the 1980’s or the Radio Dublin and Alternative Radio Dublin’s battles from the seventies but a pirate radio rivalry erupted on the airwaves in the 1930’s between stations in Limerick and Waterford.

The 1926 Wireless Telegraphy Act was introduced in November 1926, nine months after the official launch of 2RN. The Act would regulate the airwaves, write the rules on licence fees and deem what should and should not be broadcast. The Act was supposed to be a deterrent to illegal broadcasting but that did not stop illegal stations broadcasting taking to the airwaves. One man in Limerick would break all the rules. Jim O’Carroll attended the Technical Institute on O’Connell Avenue in the city and developed a keen interest in electronics. As a result while experimenting, he built a crystal receiving set that allowed him to listen to 2RN, the BBC and with improvements he began to listen to Short Wave broadcasts from America and Australia.

In early 1935, O’Carroll added an oscillator to his receiving set and turned it into a crude transmitter that was powerful enough to be heard all over the city. After testing its limitations, O’Carroll had to find a home for his new station, as living with his sister was not an ideal location for secrecy. He eventually found a location on the third floor at the home of his friend Charlie O’Connor at 84 Henry Street. The station began broadcasting in February 1935 on 360m, very close to the powerful transmitter in Berlin, Germany broadcasting on its allotted frequency of 356.7m, which meant that both signals interfered with each other  and often the Limerick station had to wait until the Berlin transmitter was turned off to get a good signal out across Limerick City. By April, reports of a Limerick ‘Mystery Station’ was reaching the national newspaper headlines.

The station was now named The City Broadcasting Station (CBS) as O’Carroll had been listening to CBS broadcasts from across the Atlantic and liked the sound of the name. He went on the air playing whatever gramophone records he could lay his hands on. On the air most nights from 7.30 – 10.30pm, the station continued with Billy Dynamite (O’Carroll) and Al Dubbin (O’Connor) at the controls broadcasting a mixture of speech, gramophone records, and relayed programmes from American radio, including the news and even swimming lessons on the radio.

The Limerick Leader reported on April 6^th,

‘The operation of a mysterious broadcasting station in Limerick for some past time had the citizens and officials agog. Listeners-in are occasionally startled when they hear an unofficial announcer make reference to local matters and some well-known personalities.’

The Liberator newspaper in Tralee on the same day reported,

            ‘The annoyance caused by this is distinctly perturbing to owners of sets.’

The appearance of CBS on the airwaves of Limerick was greeted by a variety of different headlines. The Irish Examiner (6/4/1935) headlined their article ‘Wireless Nuisance’, The Kerryman (13/4/1935) spoke of a ‘Secret Radio Station’ while the Irish Independent described them as the ‘Mystery Station’. The station continued from February to October with the only change being its location, when the station moved to the home of Michael Madden at 25 Wolfe Tone Street who had been providing the batteries for the station’s transmitter. The station went from strength to strength and became the first station in Ireland to carry a paid commercial rather than the sponsored programming aired on the national station, when the Wolfe Tone Dairy began to advertise its products. The owner of the dairy was John Toomey, who ran a successful grocer/dairy/vegetable shop and was the proud owner of an ice cream machine, selling homemade ice cream cones. Summer was coming and ice creams would be a popular seller. O’Carroll said after,

‘As I began to get a little bolder, I discreetly canvassed for commercials. My first contact was the owner of the Wolfe Tone Dairy, Mr. Toomey. He had a fine grocer's shop but, in addition, he made delicious ice cream on the premises. I told Mr. Twomey that I knew a man who could contact the elusive Pirate and arrange to have his delicious ice cream mentioned on the air. He was to make no payment until he heard the broadcast. He offered the incredible sum of £10 if I arranged this transaction. Ten pounds was about a month's wages at the time. For a schoolboy one could almost retire! Needless to remark, as far as I know, that was the first radio commercial in Ireland.’[1]

There were queues down the street for the ice cream encouraging John Toomey to invest in a second machine to keep up with the demand.

‘An enduring sight in my mind's eye is a very long line of people reaching in the direction of what was then Gleeson's public house waiting to purchase cones and wafers from a delighted Mr. Toomey[2]’ said O’Carroll

The station began carrying ads for Clohesy’s Pub on Charlotte Quay, one of the most popular pubs in Limerick at the time. O’Carroll also added in an interviwe with the Limerick Leader in 1976, that

‘a committee running a sports outing in Castleconnell asked us to advertise their sports meeting, we had a ‘What’s On Guide’ in Limerick cinemas’.

 The advertising revenue was beginning to pay off for the radio entrepreneurs. The station would carry local news bulletins and because they broadcast late at night, they would collect the following morning’s national newspapers arriving in Limerick railway station at nine o’clock and broadcast the headlines for their listeners much to the displeasure of the Irish dailys, and this was replected in their coverage of the station.

Meanwhile in Waterford City another broadcaster was taking to the airwaves. The ‘Waterford Broadcasting Station’ was heard broadcasting on 280m medium wave and were on air from 11.15pm for an hour. On Wednesday April 17^th , the broadcast to the listeners of Waterford, which was described by the Irish Independent correspondent as ‘a most enjoyable broadcast’, included ‘gramophone records, vocal and instrumental items’ but ended with an unfavourable critique for their Limerick rivals. The announcer bemoaned that,

‘an amateur in Limerick had broadcast programmes which were injurious and objectionable.’

He added,

‘I would like listeners to understand that I disapprove wholeheartedly and condemn abuses by this amateur of the powers his transmission station gives him’.

The spat over the airwaves reached the newspapers the following day when the Irish Press on their front page headlined ‘Another Mystery Station, Radio Rivals’. Some of the issues related to newspaper reports that O’Carroll’s signal was interfering with listeners enjoyed of concerts from the Berlin station.

Further broadcasts from the Waterford station were noted on July 28^th at 2pm, when a thirty -minute broadcast of music was interspersed with announcements in Irish that there would be further broadcasts to follow.

In Limerick on October 31st, Halloween, while Michael Madden was on the air, the station had been tracked down and was raided by the police and an engineer from the Post Office Walter Dain. Madden was arrested and the equipment confiscated. O’Carroll partly blamed the raid on Madden himself, who had been drinking in local pubs boasting the fact that he was ‘the radio pirate’ and that information was relayed to the Gardai in Limerick. O’Carroll was in Dublin on the day of the raid visiting his mother and the day after the Limerick raid his mother’s house in Milltown was ‘ransacked’ according to O’Carroll as Gardai searched for links to a suspected IRA transmitter that was also broadcasting in Limerick.

Even before the court case following the 1935 raid had reached the courts, a radio station was reported on the Limerick airwaves in early February 1936. The station was advertising a local dance and encouraged listeners to support the event. Following a court case on February 28th 1936 Madden was convicted and fined £1 and 2 guineas costs. During the case Garda Lenihan said that,

‘during the illegal broadcasts names were mentioned and scandalous remarks used’.

It would be the first conviction under the 1926 Wireless Telegraphy Act.

In June 1936 another station was reported by the Irish Independent as being on the air, calling itself ‘The Curraghrock Station’. The newspaper reported two females were heard on air followed by a gramophone record programme. By July 1936 the tone of the station was causing problems for the authorities in the Limerick area and in Government circles in Dublin. The issue for the authorities this time was more urgent as the broadcaster was now broadcasting IRA propaganda. The announcer was reported as telling listeners that the station was set up ‘to disseminate Irish republican Army propaganda’.  This time the station used a frequency used by the Munich station and again like the station the previous year would have a better range once the Munich transmitter fell silent. The station was probably located in the Barrack Road area hence the confusion in the name as there is no ‘Curraghrock’ in Limerick.

This station was seized on September 4^th 1936, when a house on Newnham Street was raided by Post Office Engineer William Carroll and Garda Lenihan. Despite this raid, another Limerick pirate transmitter was back on the air by September 16^th, on the 360m frequency ‘treating listeners to a programme of gramophone records’ but while there were announcements, there was nothing of a political nature.

At the subsequent court case on December 4^th, Edward Quin of Clancy Strand was prosecuted for maintaining illegal transmitting apparatus contrary of the 1926 Wireless Telegraphy Act. The State prosecutor stated that the items seized were,

‘one medium wave oscillator, one low frequency amplifier, one carbon type microphone, and one short wave oscillator’

Garda Lenihan stated in evidence that Quin tried to pocket a value from the transmitter which he later claimed he took because he had it sold and didn’t want to lose it. Lenihan disclosed that he had spoken to Quin on a number of previous occasions about the need to stop illegal broadcasting. All the wireless articles found in the house were produced to the Court and the GPO engineer Thomas Carroll then described what had to be done to test the-apparatus. The test broadcast worked ‘quite satisfactorily’. According to a GPO Inspector he had received a test message from the transmitter and the ‘message was quite distinct’. His finding was corroborated by another engineer Mr. T. White. The prosecution was determined to achieve a conviction and were willing to call several experts to ensure the result. They wanted to send out a message to propagandists who wished to use the radio waves to propagate their messages that they would close them and that the only broadcaster allowed to broadcast in the Free State was Radio Eireann.

While Madden and O’Carroll in Limerick were pirate broadcasting for entertainment purposes, a more sinister type of broadcasts had appeared on the airwaves in Dublin. On Friday October 25^th 1935 at 2.30pm listeners on medium wave reported hearing a ‘mystery transmitter’ announcing that it was

            ‘Radio Phoblacht na hEireann, The IRA broadcasting studio.’

The station’s announcer gave a lengthy statement on the Irish Sweepstakes and announced a list of winners. The station then played some gramophone records including those of the famous Irish born tenor Count John McCormack.  The broadcast lasted about forty minutes. But the illegal broadcasting of entertainment programmes or occasional broadcasts from subversive organisations would become the least of DeValera’s problems as the nation faced into neutrality during the Second World War.

Greater rivalries would consume the Irish airwaves in the decades to come but these stations proved that the battle for hearts and minds on the radio could consume time and newspaper columns. 

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[1] From an article by Jim O’Carroll on Limerickcity.ie

[2] In O’Carroll’s story John Toomey was written as ‘Twomey’ but his death notice in 1951 denoted Toomey as the proper spelling.

The Archaeology of Irish Radio (Part One)

Across Europe and further afield the arrival of radio created a new sense of national identity and nations displayed their national pride by building ornate architecturally stunning broadcasting houses but not in Ireland. At a Transnational Radio Seminar in Luxembourg in 2018 organised by Andreas Fickers and Richard Legay, one of the speakers at the event was Maryam El Moumni of the Brandeburg University of Technology spoke of the Archaeology of Radio and I pondered what the Irish experience of this was. 

Radio arrived in Ireland north of the border in Northern Ireland with the opening of 2BE in Belfast. The station which first went on air on October 24th 1924 was originally located in a converted warehouse in cramped rooms. Following a decade of violent turmoil, a new Irish Free State turned its attention to broadcasting. Two years after the Belfast launch, a new Dublin station 2RN went on air. The studios were located in a terrace of houses on Little Denmark Street in the heart of the city centre with the studios linked to the makeshift transmitter site at the nearby McKee Army barracks. The Dublin station was followed by 6CK in Cork City.

The success of radio stations across Europe was continuing upwards and nations felt a sense of pride in beaming their transmissions not just to a national audience but transnationally across borders. It was often a sense of national pride which after the postage stamp demonstrated to the world that a nation was truly independent. Elaborate, ornate and architecturally wonderful buildings were being created across Europe from England to Germany. 

       Nauen Germany 1920                                        BBC HQ

                 Radio Normandie in France in the 1930s

When the decision was taken that a Irish Free State radio station would be state controlled rather than a commercial entity, a location was needed for the studios and transmitter. The overriding issue for the fledgling state broadcaster was the lack of finance and this would dictate what could be afforded for the launch. There would be no spectacular ‘broadcasting house’ built instead when the station was launched on January 1st 1926 the stations studios were located in the inner city of Dublin on a narrow market street on Little Denmark Street. Number 36 was a four storey over basement building constructed of concrete and steel with a red brick finish and slated roof[1]. There was single studio and one actor who appeared in numerous early radio plays Harry Brogan remembered that they used their coats hanging on the studio windows to keep the noise of shouts from the street traders out. 

The locating of the transmitter in a wooden hut in the grounds of McKee Barracks was for two reasons expediency and security. McKee Barracks named after Richard McKee who was a key IRA operative for Michael Collins during the War of Independence with Britain. He had been captured in November 1920 and after being tortured he was supposedly shot dead as he tried to escape from his captives in Dublin Castle, the then British Government in Ireland headquarters. Originally called Marlborough Barracks it was built by the British Army in 1888. When Ireland became the Irish Free State in 1922, the British gave the barracks to the Irish forces and named after McKee 2] .

The McKee Barracks Hut (c) British Pathe News

By 1928 the small and cramped Dublin studios had become unfit for purpose and the station and its personnel were moved to the first floor of the iconic GPO (General Post Office opened in 1818) on O’Connell Street with one former presenter describing the corridors décor as reminding him of a public house gentleman’s urinal.

JJ Walsh the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs announced in the Dail,

‘The station is in the McKee Barracks, and the broadcasting headquarters, or studio, as it is usually termed, is in Great Denmark Street. The items set out here include furniture and equipment for both places. Under the heading relating to miscellaneous expenses, which amount to £850, we have such items as postage, stationery, and copyright royalties. Copyright royalties in broadcasting are not only difficult of arrangement, but are also expensive. We have also under this particular heading provision for weather reports and news services, and also such items as we may from time to time be called upon to provide in the way of extra musical equipment, gramophone records, and matters of that kind.’

Now, it is intended that this sum of £14,385 shall cover the period up to the end of the financial year. Thereafter the broadcasting estimates will take their place in the annual estimates and be discussed as separate items. It is not intended that these estimates should be included within the sphere of the Post Office proper.’[3]

Following the destruction of the GPO during the 1916 Easter Rising, it’s rebuilding was not completed until 1928 and when it was reopened the fourth floor was taken over by 2RN, later to be renamed as Radio Eireann, who now had three studios instead of the one at Little Denmark Street. In the 1950’s two more studios were built and in 1956 six more studios including a continuity suite were added on the third floor. But the GPO was never designed as a broadcast centre and the station suffered from the lack of sound proofing.[4]

When it came to put a second station on the air, Ireland’s second city Cork was to the location for 6CK. Once again the station was to be located in a second hand building, the former Women’s Gaol in the city. Today the Irish Radio Museum is located in the building where 6CK was broadcast from. Work on the Goal commenced in 1816 and the building of the prison proper started in 1818, The building having been designed by William Robertson. It opened to prisoners on 1824 and became a women’s only prison in 1878. The Goal closed as a prison in 1923 after the events of both the War of Independence and the Civil War. In 1927, the upper floors of the Governors House became the home of 6CK.

(c) Radiomuseum.org

The major expansion for Radio Eireann was the installation of a new high powered transmitter in the midlands near Athlone. The decision was taken at Cabinet level in November 1931 to build a high-powered transmitter in Athlone. Since the inception 2RN wanted to be heard nationwide and the Government desired that Irish broadcasts and programmes should be heard further afield, to be on at least a par with some of the European stations that were now quite popular in Ireland. They wanted to counteract the broadcasts of 2BE and the BBC networks although the BBC had been quite helpful directly to the staff and management of 2RN. This included the relaying of certain broadcasts including St. Patrick’s Day broadcasts and sporting events including the motor racing from the Phoenix Park. A large powerful transmitter would be geographically located in the centre of Ireland. Engineers identified both Athlone, County Westmeath and Birr County Offaly as possible locations. In 1931 a site was purchased at Moydrum Castle on the outskirts of Athlone for the transmitter. The Department of Finance set aside resources for the building of the infrastructure and the purchase of a 100 kilowatt transmitter from the Marconi Company in England. A four hundred and twenty-five aerial was erected and when DeValera came to power in February 1932 a new impetus was injected to have the station operational in time for the Eucharistic Congress being held in June 1932.

The first Eucharistic Congress was held in 1881 under Pope Leo XIII. The congresses were organised by a Papal Committee for Eucharistic Congresses to increase devotion to the Eucharist as a part of the practice of faith, and as a public witness of faith to Catholic population at large. The 31st International Eucharistic Congress was held in Dublin, 21-26 June 1932. It was the premier international Catholic event. The 1932 Congress provided the platform for the Irish Free State Government of DeValera to assert their position as a leading Catholic nation. It would be the largest public gathering in twentieth-century Ireland until the 1979 visit of Pope John Paul II. There was even an act passed by the Government specifically for the event titled the Eucharistic Congress (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1932.

Congresses were often linked with anniversaries or other events special to Christians and in particular to Catholics of the country in which they took place. The 30th Congress which took place in Carthage, Tunis, commemorated the death of St. Augustine. The Dublin congress commemorated the death of St. Patrick, Ireland’s patron saint.

The new Irish State mobilized its meager resources in order to meet the challenge posed by this show case event. The arrival of the special Papal Legate, Cardinal Lorenzo Lauri at Dún Laoghaire Harbour at the beginning of Congress Week was greeted by thousands along the harbour piers and the Papal Mass in the Phoenix Park six days later was attended by over 1,000,000 of the faithful. The event was considered to be an outstanding success. The Irish State had successfully entertained literally thousands of churchmen and laity who came to Dublin from every corner of the globe to pray.

The Congress was a logistical nightmare for the under resourced radio station. The station carried out a number of major outside broadcasts from across Dublin for the event. These programmes were relayed by landline to Athlone whose transmitter was operating at sixty kilowatts allowing coverage over much of Europe and more importantly the powerful transmitter allowed for coverage across Ireland. For those with radio sets it was a massive improvement in quality but the broadcasts were relayed on receivers in churches and halls across the country allowing everyone access for the first time to listen to 2RN. The Congress marked the first time that the overwhelmingly Catholic population heard the voice of the Pope relayed over the Athlone transmitter on the final day of the Congress. Reaction to the broadcasts in the print media was positive and commended the station on their achievements.

The Athlone transmitter was officially opened by Eamon DeValera on February 6th 1933 but some complaints remained that the station was too Dublin orientated as the studios and all of the programmes produced came from the GPO Studios in the capital. In January 1937 the Athlone transmitter power was increased to the full 100 kilowatts. Radio Athlone began life on 413m but the Lucerne Conference altered that to 513m medium wave. With the opening of Athlone, the Dublin transmitter was closed down and the station became known as Radio Athlone rather than 2RN. 

The Athlone transmitter building (c) Joe Guilfoyle

Although no longer in use, the building houses the oldest working 1930's Marconi transmitter

On December 31st 1961 a new television channel began and Radio Eireann became Radio Telifis Eireann. The television studios were located at Montrose in Donnybrook. The site at Montrose was originally bought by University College Dublin in June 1949 as a University Campus but in a swap UCD moved across the road to Belfield and the State took over the Montrose site. On the land was a house once lived in by Guglielmo Marconi, the father of radio whose mother Annie Jameson owned Montrose House. Jameson was related to the famous distilling family before she married Marconi’s father. 

  

In June 1960 Michael Scott of Scott, Tallon and Walker architects was appointed architect to design the new RTE television centre at Montrose. Scott had won acclaim as the architect of the Dublin central bus station Busaras. The contract to built the television studios was signed on October 3rd 1960 with the Government, RTE and Michael Scott with the builders E Stone of Thorncastle Street. The company had previously built the new stand at Lansdowne Road. The studios were the first building in Ireland to use pre-cast concrete and flat slab structure.[5]

A 380 ft a self supporting lattice steel tower in the grounds connected with transmitter site at Kippure in the Dublin Mountains. Following a tender process the contract to build the tower was awarded to Anderson & Martin Capital Equipment in association with Huso Verft and Mek of Tronsberg Norway with an estimated cost of £20,000. Working on behalf of Radio Eireann was Chief Engineer J. J. O’Keefe, A. G. Tobin head of transmitters which were built by Pye Limited.

By the end of the decade the GPO was now unfit for purpose as a broadcasting centre and a new purposely built radio centre was to be built at Montrose after almost a half century of radio broadcasting radio in Ireland was to get its first dedicated radio studios.

 RTE on top, Illinois Institute of Technology on the bottom, 

it's hard to tell the difference

Ronnie Tallon (1927 – 2014) of Scott, Tallon and Walker was appointed to design the RTE Radio Building.[6] Tallon was an admirer of Mies Van Der Rohe (b.1886 Germany d. 1969 US Citizen) who designed unornamented steel and lass skyscrapers.[7] The architects had previously worked on the building of the Illinois Institute of Technology and there is no escaping the similarity.

Work on the Radio centre commenced June 9th 1969 on 8 acres formerly used as the sports ground of nearby St. Andrews College. The original budget was £650,000 but eventually cost was over one million pounds. The final broadcast came from Henry Street on November 8th 1976.

When new legislation in 1988 created an independent commercial radio sector for the first time a national licence was granted to Century Radio but like the early days of Radio Eireann, they were located on the floor of an office block across the street from the iconic and historic Christ Church Cathedral. Located at One Christchurch Square, High Street, the station went on air on September 4th 1989 but due to financial troubles was gone within two years. To get on air the station’s owners had purchased the pirate radio transmitters and site of Sunshine Radio on the Northside of the city.

       Mornington House, Trim County Meath where the studios 

and offices of 252 were located.

The Transmitter building at Clarketown, Co Meath

When the joint venture of RTL (Radio Luxembourg) and RTE on longwave 252m, Atlantic 252 was launched and located in County Meath. The stations studios were located in a three-storey period building known as Mornington House on Summerhill Road in the town of Trim. According to the auctioneers[8] the building consisted of

Accommodation: ground floor, entrance hall with ornate stairs to first floor, production room (sub divided into smaller offices), boardroom, kitchen with filled floor and wall presses. ladies & gents toilets. First floor, four offices, reception, three studios. Second floor, two offices, landing office, library and links room.

This was not a purposely built radio station but an adapted studio facility. The stations powerful transmitter and aerial system at nearby Clarkestown were the subject of a number of High Court appeals by local residents and an active campaign to prevent its installation and operation. After the demise of Atlantic 252 Mornington House was bought by Meath County Council for their own uses in 2002 for € 750,000

Pirate radio had a long and colourful past and some locations for the stations have included Georgian Houses in the Dublin City Centre, garden sheds, attics and caravans. While no pirate radio station built a purpose built studio and broadcasting facility some stations purchased portacabins to broadcast from as they were easy to locate and to soundproof. Perhaps the largest and most successful pirate radio station was Radio Nova (1980 – 1986) who were initially located in a Georgian building on Herbert Street on the south side of Dublin city near the Grand Canal. 

There transmitter site was located at a nightclub complex in the foothills of the Dublin Mountains near Rathfarnham known as Green Acres. Following a number of raids on the station and the jamming of their microwave link from Herbert Street to their main transmitter, the station moved to Rathfarnham where the nightclub was renamed Nova Park. Q 102 also broadcast from the basement of a Georgian House on Upper Mount Street until the closure of the majority of pirate radio stations in December 1988 when new tougher legislation was enacted and a new Independent sector was created. Other stations because of their illegal nature found themselves located in Caravans, farm sheds and garages. 

When the independent franchises were awarded the national franchise was awarded to Century Radio, who located their headquarters in an office block in the shadows of Christchurch Cathedral on High Street. Their transmitter network was leased from RTE which two medium transmitters and their sites were bought from former pirate stations Sunshine Radio in Dublin and ERI in Cork. Century was a short lived station, closed to due crippling financial losses but the two successful Dublin candidates 98FM and Capital Radio were launched in 1989. Initially 98FM were located in Studios in a shopping centre on St. Stephen Green, while Capital Radio was located in the former Q 102 headquarters in a Georgian house on Upper Mount Street. 98FM would later move to a former granary silo building on the banks of the Grand Canal while FM 104 as Capital Radio was re-branded and moved to the upper floors of an office block in the docklands. The floors would be shared by FM 104 and a legal Q 102 who were both owned by the same parent company. In 2017[9] 98FM would move once again moving to its parent company’s new headquarters on Digges Lane, known as Marconi House.

Marconi House in the compact office block on Digges Lane

The only indication that the headquarters of FM 104 & Q 102 are located in the office block are name plates on the front entrance intermingled with other renters in the building.

The replacement for Century Radio was launched on March 17^th 1997 as Radio Ireland from studios located in the centre of the city at 112 Upper Abbey Street. Radio Ireland was rebranded as the nightly successful Today FM and would be purchased by 98FM’s parent company Communicorp. Today FM moved to Marconi House in 2007 followed by fellow stations 98FM and Spin 1038. The quasi national news channel NewsTalk also moved into the building from its original location on the upper floors of an office block on Upper Mount Street. The building also housed the failed Phantom/TX FM before its closure.

In Cork when 96 FM (originally known as Radio South) were awarded the local franchise for the city in 1989, the station set themselves up in the former pirate radio station ERI’s location in White’s Cross. In 1991, a merger took place between 96FM and the Mallow-based County Sound 103FM and some years later, the station moved premises from the rural Whites Cross (the former Radio ERI studios) to a city centre location at Patrick's Place, in a building which was formerly the location of Christian Brothers College. The station named its new premises 'Broadcasting House', but this building name is rarely referred to on air, except by Emmett Kennedy in the evenings.

                                 

As a number of the local franchises became more established and their contracts renewed by the overseeing Broadcasting Authority of Ireland[10] they began to move from second-hand premises seen as unfit for purpose, to purposed built broadcasting centres. The stations making that move include Waterford Local Radio (WLR) who moved from a building on George’s Street facing onto the quays in the city to a building at Ardkeen. Work began on the €3 million 10,000 square feet project began in 2002 with the new studios the following year but the cost had spiralled to over five million[11]. The official opening was performed by the then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern TD The station sold their former home in the city centre to property developers[12]. With WLR in the broadcast centre was the youth radio franchise for the South East, Beat 102-103. The station claimed that their new studios were the first purposely built radio studios since the development of Montrose for RTE Radio[13].

This was an exaggerated claim as LMFM serving the north east franchise area moved into their purposely built radio centre in 2001 with the official opening performed once again by the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in January 2002. When the station opened first in 1989 it’s main studio was located in the Boyne Centre in Drogheda with a satellite studios located in the Navan shopping centre[14] and Williamsons Mall in Dundalk. For LMFM, with their success they could financially absorb a move from rental accommodation to a dedicated studio and office facility.

One of the most popular and successful regional stations was MidWest Radio based in Ballyhaunis, County Mayo. Led by Paul Claffey who had run the pirate version of the same station up to the new legislation in 1989, MidWest moved into new fit for purpose premises on Clare Street in the town in 2000, a decade after they had been awarded the licence on a ten year basis. The station when it was awarded the licence was located on nearby Abbey Street.

Highland Radio first broadcast in March 1990 with the franchise for the North West of Ireland. Despite a challenge to their license in 2014, Highland Radio has been located in the same premises in the Pinehill Industrial Park on the outskirts of Letterkenny. While the building was built as a storage area by the Boal family and never envisaged as a broadcast facility, the station has created a permanent location for the station in the building.

© Google Maps

© Radio Today

One of the few purposely built radio buildings in Ireland was that of Radio Na Gaeltachta in County Galway in 1972. When the Government gave the go ahead for the Irish language channel which would primarily serve the Gaeltacht areas, its headquarters would be situated in the main Gaeltacht area in County Galway. The architect firm of Nolan and Quinlan on Pembroke Street, Dublin were employed on the design and James Stewart Limited were awarded the contract for the build. The main single storey studio building consisting of three studios, two control rooms and sundry office space would be built at Derrynea in Connemara while a transmitter site five miles away was located at Bealadangan. The Government allocated a quarter of a million pounds for the building project and a further ninety thousand for transmitters. Satellite stations were to be built later in Kerry and Donegal.  

End of Part One

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[1] James North Auctioneers description 1956

[2] Dublin City Corporation

[3] Dail/Oireachtas Historic Debates 1926

[4] The RTE Archive

[5] The Irish Times December 4^th 2010

[6] archiseek.com

[7] Free Dictionary

[8] Sherry Fitzgerald Auctioneers in 1972

[9] Radio Today June 11^th 2017

[10] Formerly known as The Independent Radio and Television Commission (IRTC) & The Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI).

[11] Waterford News and Star April 9^th 2004.

[12] The Irish Independent October 3^rd 2002

[13] Waterford News and Star April 9^th 2004.

[14] The Dundalk pirate radio station Radio Carousel also had a studio located in the Navan Shopping Centre