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

---

[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

The Introduction to 'A Century of Irish Radio 1900 - 2000' by Eddie Bohan on Sale Now

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 was a legal monopoly. On January 1^st1926 2RN officially went on air in Dublin transitioning over the decades into Radio Athlone, Radio Eireann and as it is today Radio Telifis Eireann following the addition in December 1961 of a single television channel. In 1989 new legislation broke that monopoly with the introduction of legal commercial broadcasting. Despite a seemingly slow route towards deregulation, 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. The IRA, as their predecessors had done in 1916 sought assistance from Germany and while not officially pro-German the IRA was most certainly anti-British. The Irish Government did not know that German sympathisers were using Ireland as a base to spy on British army and naval movements and that these reports were being transmitted from Dublin to Berlin. The same transmitting equipment was then used to broadcast IRA propaganda to a wider audience. The British were asked to supply detecting equipment and the search for the pirate broadcasters led to the creation of G2 the Irish army’s intelligence department. The broadcasters were caught and imprisoned but one of the men sacrificed his life on hunger strike while in jail.

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’s and its leaders especially Eamon DeValera had a very insular protective view of their nation. The grandson of an Easter Rising veteran Ronan O’Rahilly would try to break the dominance of the BBC in the UK with the launch of Radio Caroline. Pop music for the younger generation was now at hand. Inexpensive transistor radios allowed Caroline to go on the move with their listeners while their parents sat around the fireplace with their large Pye or Bush radios afixture in the living room. In the so-called swinging sixties small pirate radio stations began to appear on the Irish airwaves playing American artists rather than showband and Irish traditional music as heard on the State broadcaster. The stations were hampered by a limited radius using homemade transmitters and broadcast sporadically for an hour or two mainly on Sundays.

How Many Facebook/Twitter Followers Does Your Station Have? Have You Been Conned?

Social media such as Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter are at the heart of Irish radio station media presence as they keep listeners involved. Their online presence is another advertising revenue stream and can influence advertisers as they decide where to locate their cash. On Sunday December 3rd 2017, as the stations in a very competitive broadcasting landscape ramp up their Christmas advertising packages, we took a look at some of the Irish radio stations online presence and found some surprising results. These results do not include every radio station in Ireland just a representative selection and they are listed here in order of their Facebook Likes

Station		Facebook		Twitter
98 FM	Dublin	695,923		145,000
iRadio	Munster	580,816		102,000
Beat FM	Munster	555,680		70,600
FM 104	Dublin	496,558		123,000
Today FM	National	439,501		235,000
Spin 1038	Dublin	414,541		329,000
4FM	National	401,900		13,100
RTE 2FM	National	393,461		241,000
Spin South West	Munster	262,941		81,800
Q 102	Dublin	172,237		15,300
Galway Bay FM	Galway	135,279		11600
Newstalk	National	121,794		203,000
Cork 96FM	Cork	111,853		34,900
Christmas FM	Temporary	102,063		89,700
Radio Nova	Dublin	101,291		11,200
Sunshine Radio	Dublin	98,015		2,645
WLR	Waterford	70,629		16100
RTE Radio One	National	42,257		110,000
Midlands 103	Midlands	37,282		3,839
MidWest Radio	Mayo	31,719		11,400
Northern Sound	Ulster	27,838		6,506
LMFM	Louth	24,846		17600
KFM	Kildare	23,322		10,700
Raidio Na Gaeltachta	National	22,114		17,800
Ocean FM	Sligo	20,561		6,920
Phever	Pirate	12,473		1,634
Radio Maria	Online	11,764		14,100
8Radio	Temporary	9,620		6585
Klub FM	Pirate	9,420		624
Spirit	National	9,408		2,097
Tonik	Pirate	8,362		353
RTE Gold	Digital	6,885		1,921
Radio Na Life	Dublin	6,818		7,727
Dublin City FM	Dublin	6,111		8,454
Near FM	Community	4,894		4,024
Radio Snowflake	Online	3,018		571
Dublin Digital Radio	Digital	2,694		1308
Cork Community Radio	Community	2,573		19

98FM have over 695,000 likes for their page that equates to 58% of Dublin's population. To put that into perspective according to recent JNLR figures (Q1 2017) 820,000 people in Dublin listen to the radio every day. According to those figures 110,000 listen to 98FM on a daily basis that is just 1/6th of their facebook followers. The top ten stations were

Cork based pirate radio station Klub FM have more followers than Spirit Radio which broadcasts across the country and more followers than RTE digital station RTE Gold that has been receiving extra press coverage recently.

Twitter is another measurement stations can use to entice advertisers to their station. The more twitter followers your station has the more popular they are, right? Well NO. 

The top ten Twitter accounts from the above list were 

Spin 1038	Dublin	329,000
RTE 2FM	National	241,000
Today FM	National	235,000
Newstalk	National	203,000
98 FM	Dublin	145,000
FM 104	Dublin	123,000
RTE Radio One	National	110,000
iRadio	Munster	102,000
Christmas FM	Temporary	89,700
Spin South West	Munster	81,800

Spin topped the twitter top ten but that's not the full story. Spin 1038 was the second most listened to station after FM 104 in the Q1 JNLR figures with a 13% share (FM 104 had 16%) and they have 88,000 more twitter followers than the national state broadcaster's music channel 2FM. This should be music to an advertisers ear but when you drill into the 'followers' just like RTE Radio earlier this year when it was discovered that the 'followers' were padded with non existent followers (https://twitter.com/rtesecretpro/status/926051160972255232)then there is a fraud been perpetrated on advertisers and legitimate followers. These are screen shots of some of their phantom followers

Surely it should be the responsibility of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland to ensure that their licensed stations are not conning the public and businesses.