Most weeks we cover three stories related to the Irish radio industry but this week it’s worth taking a bit of a deeper look at one massive story that will likely impact the industry for years to come.
What happened?
Comunicorp who are the largest independent radio broadcaster in Ireland this week agreed a deal to be acquired by Bauer, a large German media company.
The news was announced on thursday morning and came as a surprise to many in the media industry. We had heard previously that Bauer were targeting Irish advertisers but this still came as a bit of a shock.
Websites like TheJournal described it as a bombshell but after every surprise deal like this come a lot of questions and reactions. I will attempt to put some of this into context but it’s worth noting that we really don’t know a lot at this point.
The impact of this will only begin to be truly realised in the next few weeks, months and years so we can only speculate for now. Let’s try however to answer a few questions and see where it takes us.
What stations does this impact?
Comunicorp owns many stations so it’s impossible to give a massive list but the main stations are
- Today FM
- Newstalk
- Spin 1038 and Spin South West
- 98FM
- All the Goloud stations
- Off the ball
There are other online stations and training stations but those are the main ones.
Is this a done deal?
Not yet. All this needs to be approved by a few regulators who will examine the deal to ensure competition is maintained in the industry.
How much did Comunicorp cost?
We can’t be 100% sure but RTE reports that the deal was worth over €100 million. That’s a lot of money.
This does lead to many hoping for large investments in Irish radio.
What does this mean for the future?
The short answer is we have no idea
There could be Job losses or a massive hiring drive. We really can’t say for now. This will only become clear when Bauer start putting there stamp on Comunicorp.
A few things are predictable however. There will almost definatly be a push for more podcasting and a faster transition to digital in general but after that we can’t really be sure what will happen until it actually happens.
Now we wait
It’s going to be an interesting road ahead so it’s going to be fascinating to wait and see how this goes. But for now all we can do is sit back and enjoy the ride.
We will continue to post radio news here on Radio Land and other sites like Radio Today do a fantastic job covering stories day to day. So check back next week when we should be back to a bit more normality.