Blog of the Year Finalist 2018

After a number of years on the long list and then the short list, The Irish Broadcasting Hall of Fame blog has made the finals at the 2018 Irish Blog Awards with the ceremony to be held in late October. The month will be a pivotal month in the history of the archiving of Irish broadcasting history. More details will be announced on October 2nd 2018. 

Irish Pirate Radio - It's time to tell your story in your own words.

Join us for oral history recordings
October 20th 2-5pm
Ballsbridge Hotel Dublin 4
Free Tickets available at eventbrite.ie



30 years after the close down of the pirate radio stations let's celebrate the era that made radio so great in Ireland.

Join us in December 2018 on a radio with memories and more from 88 and before.

Send your questions to reception@radio.ie

Links: Irish Broadcasting Hall of Fame - DX Archive -

Wireless on Flirt FM

THE IRISH PIRATE RADIO EXHIBITION (Nationwide Tour)

At Midnight on December 31st 1987, the new Wireless Telegraphy Act came into force and began to regulate the chaotic Irish radio airwaves. It brought about an end to a golden era of pirate radio in Ireland that ultimately had created a radio industry that still flourishes today. According to the latest JNLR figures (July 2018) 3.1 million Irish people listen to the radio everyday for an average of 4 hours per day. That's 85% of the entire population of Ireland listening to the radio.

From the very earliest radio experiments by Marconi which were conducted in Ireland to today's State radio and legal independent radio sector Ireland has a colourful radio history. During the 1916 Easter Rising the rebels led by Padraig Pearse launched their own wireless station and they began to broadcast communiques declaring the Rising had begun and that a new Republic had been declared. Ireland had become the first nation in the world to be declared by radio, by pirate radio.

Throughout the decades up to 1988 Ireland officially had a State broadcaster originally known as 2RN, the Radio Eireann and as it is today allied with a television service Radio Telifis Eireann (RTE). To compete with this monopoly and to cater to an emerging younger, liberal and rebellious population from the late 1960's, pirate radio began to fill a void.

From 1960 to 1988, thousands of pirate radio stations went on air in every city, town, village and even parish. Some were hobby in nature, some were community orientated while many began known as the super pirates, with powerful clean signals playing a diet of pop music and commercials making many of them quite financially successful.

The South Dublin County Library 

Many of these stations are now just pleasant memories but their paper and audio trails still exist and are an important  part of Ireland's radio and social history. They demonstrate a changing society and how the illegality of pirate radio can sit sometimes very comfortably with state institutions such as Revenue, Unions such as the NUJ and politicians.

Pirate radio has at times being of a political nature and the first man to die on hunger strike following his conviction for pirate radio broadcasting Sean McNeela died in 1940 having operated a station that broadcast IRA propaganda. Sinn Fein stations in the 1980's contributed to the election of a number of Maze hunger strikers which prevented a Charles Haughey led Fianna Fail government getting back into power.

RTE, TV 3 and some of the commercial and community sector are awarded grants from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) to conduct archiving and it would be remiss of us as a nation to allow the wealth and depth of the pirate radio archive to be lost for future generations of scholars and radio listeners.

In May 2018, after months of gathering materials I launched the Irish Pirate Radio Exhibition at the South Dublin County Library to show some of the memorabilia and to let visitors discover the history of pirate radio (and television) in Ireland. The exhibition includes pop up banners, rate cards, car stickers, mugs, court summons and even an FM pirate radio transmitter built by Sean McQuillan in a biscuit tin for the writer Pat McCabe (The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto) for his station Radio Butty.

The Waterford Central Library

The exhibition then traveled to Waterford Central Library and is currently on at Dungarvan Library on the Quayside. On August 7th it will move to the Granary in Limerick City. The hope is to create real interest in the history of Irish pirate radio and to create momentum for the creation of an archive and perhaps most importantly for any project to generate funding whether through grants or donations.

The Dungarvan Library, Waterford

Stay tuned to our facebook page 'Dublin's Pirate Days' for details of the exhibition visiting somewhere near you.

The Irish Pirate Radio Exhibition

In December 2018, Ireland will commemorate the 30th anniversary of the closure of the golden era of Irish pirate radio. An exhibition will begin in May 2018 at the South Dublin County Library and then will tour the country bringing the history and story of pirate radio to a national audience. The exhibition is a collection of memorabilia, treasures and information sheets telling the colourful story of Irish pirate radio from the first station during the 1916 Easter Rising through the decades up to the golden era of pirate radio in the 1980's with iconic stations like Radio Nova, ERI, Boyneside and ABC Waterford. A series of lectures will be held throughout May on various aspects of pirate radio and radio in Ireland today.

This unique first time event will be an insight into Irish broadcasting history and social history in Ireland. 

Here an interview here on Flirt FM giving more details on the treasures that will be on display.

https://wirelessflirt.wordpress.com/2018/04/09/wireless-on-flirt-fm-programme-18/

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.