‘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).
2BE, the Launch of Belfast Radio in 1924
“that it will not now be necessary for broadcasting
station to arranged in the Free State. There will one in Belfast from which the
programmes can heard free any charge. Let us hope the station in question will broadcast
some really educational programmes”[1]
These words were the thoughts of a radio listener-in from Belfast in 1924. After the openings of stations on the British mainland, in 1924 it was Belfast’s turn to join the growing list of stations under the control of the British Broadcasting Company[2]. In March 1924, the BBC announced that station call sign 2BE broadcasting on 435m medium wave would take to the airwaves later that year. The BBC were already available in London (2LO), Birmingham (5IT), Bournemouth (5BM), Cardiff (5WA), Manchester (5ZY), Newcastle (5NO), Glasgow (5SC) and Aberdeen (2BD).
The opening of either new regional stations or relay stations for the
BBC slowed as the company struggled to find new and clear frequencies. On March
7TH 1924 it was announced by the British Broadcasting Company as it
was still known as that the Belfast station had been given ‘official sanction’
and that the wavelength for listeners in Ulster was 435m medium wave. The
Belfast Telegraph reported,
‘The power the station will kilowatts and a
wave-length metre of 435 will be used. The call sign will be 2BE. A site has
yet been found for the station, but the company hopes that it will be opened
from two to three months’ time.’
By the end of March, Harold Bishop[3] the
assistant chief engineer arrived in Belfast to lay the groundwork for the new
station.
The studios and offices of 2BE, were to be located at 31 Linenhall Street, a central position in the city, while the aerial and transmitting plant to be erected at the Corporation Electricity Station at the East Bridge Street. The aerial was of the" sausage " type, and the ends were supported by the two tall smoke-stacks of the generating station, the halyards already being in position.
In 1919, 31 Linenhall Street was sold by Linen company of Daniel Currell and Sons.
It was purchased
by British Thomson Houston Limited a manufacturer of wireless valves. The
company also had offices as Suffolk Street in Dublin. It would be their upper
floors that would be used as the studios and offices for 2BE.
According to T.P. Allen in Popular Wireless Weekly
“The space now occupied by the offices and studio was originally one large flat, and this had to be divided off into the various rooms necessary for the staff. The studio itself is approached through a winding corridor, which divides the various offices, all of which are situated on the second floor and above the B.T.H. Company's Belfast premises. The corridors are liberally placarded with requests for silence, and a waiting -room is provided for artistes; those wishing to listen -in while waiting their turn may do so. The studio is treated in the same way as those " across the Channel," and is draped and carpeted, and has a canopy of light fabric, all with the idea of reducing echo. As a matter of fact, the draping was not finished when the station commenced its present experimental transmissions.”
In advance of the station opening Walter Montagu Douglas Scott was appointed as the Station Director. He was the cousin the Duke of Buccleuch, educated at Eton University, and described as widely travelled as both a traveller and a diplomat. An accomplished linguist, he was also keenly interested in musical and dramatic art and declared upon his appointment that he hoped to make making the Belfast station one of the most successful in the BBC system. Scottish born Edmund Thompson was appointed as his assistant. He had been educated at Edinburgh University. A Territorial officer, at the age of 21 was promoted to Major, He was in charge of a siege battery in France during the First World War and was awarded the Military Cross in 1919. Local man Godfrey Brown was appointed the musical director with his assistant named as Thomas Corrin.
After a week of nightly tests for one hour, on Monday September 15th, 2BE went on the air. The first voice to be heard on the airwaves was that of twenty four year old William Tyrone Guthrie. Guthrie was born in 1900 at Tunbridge Wells, Kent in England. He had just joined the BBC and his later career would be producing plays for radio and as a theatrical director. His second cousin was the Hollywood actor Tyrone Power.
The introduction of ‘Hello Hello this is 2BE, the
Belfast station of the British Broadcasting Company’ got programming under way
at seven o’clock. The Orchestra then played the National Anthem but shortly
after the airwaves fell silent as a technical hitch put 2BE off the air for thirty
minutes. The reaction to the first night was mixed. Former Director General of
the BBC Tony Hall recounted on the nineth anniversary of the opening of 2BE
that one writer to the newspaper in Belfast said that,
“I see from the papers that there is a large increase
in the sales of radio sets. After last night’s programme I am selling my set
too.”
The station’s director Douglas Scott spoke to his audience just before
the close down,
“Belfast calling. Thanks to the efficiency and energy
of our engineering staff, the Belfast Broadcasting station is established and should
have commenced working at 7 this evening but owing to a technical fault we were
delayed until 7.30. The official opening of this station by his Grace the Governor
of Northern Ireland will take place in October upon a date which will be
published later.
Our future endeavours will be to offer all our
listeners an attractive programme. In all the British broadcasting stations there
is a common keenness to offer the best. The wavelength to this station has been
fixed in conjunction with the Northern Government authorities, also having regard
to the wave-lengths of our existing stations. We trust that everybody will be
satisfied and that this opportunity to claim indulgence for any sins of omission
or commission and we also wish to express our hope that those listening at
Bellevue this evening will have enjoyed the programme’.
This is the Radio Times listing of the first week of 2BE.
The BBC’s assistant controller for Scotland Millar Craig and the BBC’s chief
Engineer Peter Eckersley were both in studio for the first night’s broadcast. The
Freeman’s Journal reported listening-in to the first night’s broadcast but
started their article with less enthusiasm than listeners north of the border.
“The first words spoken from the new broadcasting station in Belfast last night
reached Dublin in a very English accent. It was the precise, careful modulation
of Southern standard English, made familiar to listeners in this country by the
official announcers from the English stations. I had just been listening
through Glasgow to the sturdy accent of the Clyde and had expected from Belfast
the accent of the Lagan, which, despite all our differences would have been more
welcome than the intonation of the foreigner.
But just at present Belfast is more English, than the English themselves, and perhaps the choice of an announcer was motived by that consideration. Another straw showing the present direction of the Belfast wind was the fact that while the British, stations are content to finish their programmes with God Save the King, Belfast began its first programme with what most of its inhabitant’s regard as that good party tune.”
Not everything went smoothly in that first week, the Irish Sunday Independent on Sunday 21st reported, Edward Dillon wrote,
“I tuned in the other night to the transmission from the newly completed Belfast station. Sure enough, shortly after seven 2BE came through with almost startling clearness and called, though with a very English accent, "Hello, everybody Belfast calling! This is the Belfast station of the British Broadcasting Company”, who are opening one station a month and then " Silence . . . And more silence. Had the station been blown up? Had the chief engineer started to discuss the Boundary Question with the Director of Programmes, with unhappy results to the microphone? Anyway, tune as we might not a sound from 2BE could we pick up after.”
After a month on the air, the station was officially launched on Friday October 24th at a major event and outside broadcast from the Ulster Hall. Hundreds gathered in the hall, while thousands listened across Ulster and many more turned in as the opening was simultaneously broadcast across the BBC network.
The band of the Seaforth Highlanders provided the music including the playing of the national anthem that announced the arrival of the Governor of Northern Ireland, The Duke of Abercorn[4]. Apart from the Duke’s speech, there were also speeches delivered by Lord Gainford, chairman of the BBC, Sir James Craig, the Northern Ireland Prime Minister, Sir William Turner, the Belfast Lord Mayor who acted as MC for the event and Dr. Livingstone, Vice Chancellor of Queens University. Also in attendance was John Reith the chairman of the British Broadcasting Company.
Each of the speeches were received with sustained applause but the biggest cheer and roar was reserved for the end of the night when the news bulletin was relayed from London stating that the then self-styled President of the Irish Republic and commander of the losing side in the Irish Civil War, Eamon DeValera, had been arrested in Newry.
At the end of the gala evening it was Antrim born Archibald McKinstry, a director at the British Broadcasting Company through his role at Metropolitan Vickers, that motioned a vote of thanks to the Governor and his wife Lady Abercorn.
In his speech Craig humorously intimated that the reason that the station was known as 2BE was that the station was in the Second city of the British Empire. This was a titled often spoken of as Dublin prior to the War of Independence.
In March 1935 the station was renamed as the
Northern Ireland Regional Service. After the Second World War it was renamed
the Northern Ireland Home Service and today 2BE is known as BBC Radio Ulster.
[1] Radio Notes Belfast Newsletter July
1st 1924
[2] It did not become the British
Broadcasting Corporation until 1927
[3] 1900 – 1983, Bishop was awarded a
CBE for his services to broadcasting
[4] James
Albert Edward Hamilton, 3rd Duke of Abercorn (30th November
1869 – 12th September 1953
Two years before the
launch of the national radio service 2RN, the power of radio and the dispersal of
information was illustrated in County Kerry, the furthest distance from Dublin
and the establishment of the radio station.
March 1924 was a turbulent month in Irish history with the Curragh mutiny and the possibility of a coup against the new Irish Free State Government. The mutiny was an Irish Army crisis that was provoked by a proposed reduction in army numbers in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. The events made the front pages of British newspapers on Sunday March 9th and was covered in the news reports on the British Broadcasting Company’s stations including 2LO, London, 2ZY in Manchester and 5NO, Newcastle.
Meanwhile as interest grew in Ireland with wireless broadcasting, Dublin based wireless set sellers Dixon and Hempenstall had brought in a wireless van to demonstrate wireless broadcasting around Ireland. They travelled County Kerry and on to Tralee in entertain the locals.
On Sunday afternoon a
large crowd gathered on Edward Street at the CBS School and while they were entertained by the novelty of concerts and music from England, they were also privy to news reports provided
by the Manchester Guardian Newspaper which included news of the Curragh mutiny.
The Liberator Newspaper reported that
‘the broadcasting wireless system enabled Tralee people to learn of the Army trouble long before the Monday daily papers reached the town.’
While in Kerry,
broadcasting was also demonstrated in Listowel and Killarney, two years before
2RN.
We have harvested wood and bogs to heat and cook, we’ve tamed rivers to
provide electricity and now we have harnessed the wind, the oceans, and the sun
to create renewable energy but the ether has been a natural resource that we’ve
utilized successfully, using it to communicate and entertain ourselves for over
a century. The radio waves that help us land planes on the Aran Islands and
listen to the Cranberries have also been harnessed. According to the most
recent JNLR ratings 80.2% of the adult Irish population listen to Irish radio every
day. It is our heritage.
Our love affair with radio has propelled Irish radio history onto a
global stage. From Marconi’s Irish mother encouraging her son to experiment, to
the rebels of 1916 ensuring that Ireland became the first nation in the world
to be declared by radio to Clondalkin born Ronan O’Rahilly helping to
revolutionise radio with his Radio Caroline, we have a rich tapestry in radio
and it continues to evolve from analogue to digital to online.
We are now entering a celebration
of Irish radio milestones. 1923 and Ireland’s first licensed radio station 2BP
takes to the airwaves, 2BE is launched by the BBC in Belfast in 1924, the new
Free State inaugurates 2RN in 1926, while Cork sees the arrival of 6CK in 1927
and 1932 sees radio take the Eucharistic Congress to a global audience.
Are we remiss in not exhibiting our immense radio history? How will
scholars of the future discover how and why in this modern age of social media
that analogue radio listenership is still over eighty percent? Unlike many
nations of a comparable size, Ireland does not have a centralised radio archive
or museum both open to both donations and research. Our disregard of our
broadcasting heritage is shameful. The memories of those in front and behind
the microphone seems lost in the mists of time.
The largest radio and audio archive is RTE’s. While not complete, the
only recorded snippet of the opening nights broadcast comes courtesy of the BBC
who rebroadcast part of the opening night to the UK, it is an invaluable resource
but spending cuts within the broadcaster has seen its staffing levels and
importance reduced. An independently funded body should be put in charge of
maintaining, updating and making available all radio archives, including RTE,
commercial, local and community radio.
We have the archives; it
is scattered to the four corners of the island. We have a unique collection of
invaluable Irish radio artifacts gathering dust on shelves in the Cork City
Gaol Museum, a passion of the late Paddy Clarke, degrading as I write this
impassioned plea. Without County Louth born Fr. Nicholas Callan and his work on
the induction coil in the mid-19th century, Marconi may not have ended up
leaving Italy, his archives are in Maynooth University. Without the work of the
Irish Radio Transmitters Society to save the work of Colonel Meade Dennis, the
world’s first radio ham, another remarkable story would be lost. His equipment
was donated to the Computer and Communications Museum at NUIG. The RTE scripts
of the past are located at UCD. The Hurdy Gurdy Museum in Howth, a personal
achievement of the late Pat Herbert is a treasure trove of Irish radio history.
The Irish Pirate Radio Archive is located at Dublin City University. There is
the RTE archive, totally under resourced and haemorrhaging staff, a massive an
invaluable archive unfortunately for scholars hidden behind a pay wall. There
are the archives of the independent sector for which limited Sound and Vision
grant money is available. The archives of at first the IRTC, then the BCI,
later BAI and now Coimisiún na
Meán are
a vital thread to understanding and studying Irish radio history. This
scattered approach is diffused and disorganised and without a centralised
online guide. Our radio archives physical and audio should be housed in a
dedicated sound and audio archive like the Centre National de L’Audiovisuel in
Luxembourg or the German Broadcasting Archive.
Whether its Clifden in 1907, O’Connell Street in 1916, 2BP’s broadcasts
in 1923. 2RN in 1926, Radio Caroline in 1964, Radio Nova in 1981, Atlantic 252
in 1989 or Christmas FM in 2008, the physical and audio archives should be
centralised so that those who have kept safe their treasures over the decades
have somewhere to donate their collections. There should be strategic policy
developed for Irish radio archiving and history protection.
With the GPO relocating its offices from O’Connell Street to The Point,
perhaps the GPO could be used to house a unique collection of radio
memorabilia, artefacts, archives, and audio. We need action now as each and
every day new material is created, new memories are made and yet voices are
lost.
An hour and a three quarters from Dublin is the Tipperary town of Thurles. Although more famous for its Feile in the past and Semple Stadium today, the population of just over 8,000 has since the Seventies had a flirtation with radio broadcasting in their town. The first Radio Thurles[1] was set up for the Suirside Festival in the town in 1977. The festival was held from August 21st – 28th 1977. The station was operated from a caravan in Liberty Square in the town.
According to the Tipperary Star
‘Radio
Thurles has had thousands of-, requests, played for people "deeply in
love", lost fans of the late Elvis Presley, tourists returned exiles etc.’
The paper also reported that those ‘spinning the discs’ included Mary Grace, Jim Kearns, Kendall and Michael O'Brien, Johnny Kearns, Jackie O'Brien, Mary Gleeson and Tim Corbett.
The next Radio Thurles began broadcasting on 230mMW. A small low powered station that broadcast to the County Tipperary town that opened in 1978. The studios were in an abandoned building attached to a castle ruins in the town. The station hijacked the station title Community Radio Thurles when they heard that RTE’s mobile service would be in the town in October 1979 forcing the state broadcaster RTE to title itself Thurles Community Radio.
Independent Radio Thurles on 222m MW was a short lived station that
began broadcasting on St Patrick’s Day 1979. Then came the RTE’s mobile radio
station now known as Thurles Community Radio or Raidio Phobail Dhurlas.
Another version of Community Radio Thurles appeared on 100mhz FM. Following
a number of various incarnations, this version of CRT began test transmissions
on November 9th 1981. The following December, the Southern Star
newspaper reported,
‘Community Radio Thurles has just completed a very
successful week of test transmissions. From the enormous response received it has
been decided that the station, will commence broadcasting on a permanent basis
from Monday, 14th of December.
The station will be broadcasting from a new and eminently more
suitable premises. At present a varied schedule of programmes is being prepared
and will include a variety of programmes to suit all sections of the
community, both young and old. A strong element of community involvement in the
station is hoped for and many local bodies are being contacted with a view to
forming a programme management committee.
Broadcasting will be between the hours of 6—11 p.m. from Monday to Friday and between 11 a.m. and 11 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Why not tune in to Community Radio Thurles on 100 Megahertz F.M. It will be worth your while.’
In January 1982,
the station moved to a new studio and began broadcasting on a permanent basis
to the Tipperary town. The station changed its title slightly to Thurles Local
Community Radio.
Today apart from
the independent franchise Mid-West Radio and the community station Tipperary
Community Radio, you will find Thurles parish church radio on FM
106.4.
Sources
Radiowaves.fm
Pirate.ie
The DX Archive
The Irish Newspaper Archives
The Tipperary Star.
