It’s nearly 2022. How did that happen so fast? It feels like 2021 went like a rocket but Believe it or not, a lot of radio stuff happened this year.
In this post we’ll take a look back at the biggest radio stories from each month of the year and reflect on what a crazy time it’s been for our little industry.
Let’s begin with January, anyone fancy a bit of networking?
A new year and a new networked show, 96FM and Live95 began networking there evening show back in January. When reporting on the story at the time all we had was a job listing but Shane bucks quickly brought the networked show to reality,
It’s February, or should I say Februar, that’s February in German
It feels like forever ago but bauers deal to buy Communicorp was done in February this year. This is still an ongoing story as we will likely see more changes in 2022, but it all began back in February of this year.
The third month was March, you know by swapping around those letters you can make the word charm?
Classic hits and Nova announced in March that they would be swapping breakfast shows. Classic hits listeners universally didn’t approve of this and things went quiet for a while, but the swap took effect in April and has remained since.
In April it was decided that Dublin no longer talks
The 98FM show Dublin Talks was replaced with a music show this month. the shows presenter’s Adrian Kennedy and Jeremy Dixon have since moved on to new projects. We’ll still need to wait and see if Bauer make more of these decisions in 2022, but its certainly an interesting one to watch.
We also lost RTÉ on DAB this month. This put an end to legal DAB in Ireland.
You can find that story right here
Nobody was making money in may
Wireless group announced a loss of €7 million in may, with their accounts giving us a few interesting insights. All we can really do is hope that stuff stabilises financially in the next while as it’s a tough time for the industry.
2FM also prepared to launch their new breakfast show back in may, crazy to think it’s been on air for months already.
You can read both those stories here
We’re very very sorry, but it’s june
FM104 apologised in june after making fun of a child in their kids in the car segment. an important reminder to treat others like you’d like to be treated.
It’s July, and nobodies watching the road!
AA Roadwatch ended traffic reports for radio in July. it’s a shame that such a valuable public service was discontinued as it seems now many more stations are just relying on listeners for traffic updates. Call or text when safe to do so I suppose.
Surely this is an area some insurance company or car manufacturer could help out with? It’s insane that some stations are now without traffic updates, what a world.
RTE gave us some staff pay info back in august
We got some really interesting numbers back in august about staff pay at RTÉ. It’ll be interesting to see if those wages hold in the years to come as budget cuts sadly seem inevitable.
Let’s be happy for one month at least
We had a nice happy radio story back in September, I’m not going to be able to do it justice here so I’ll just direct you to our post about it at the time.
It was a month of awards and rebrands in October
We started October with another online IMRO Awards. Lots of stations and presenters got recognised so you can see all the details on that with the link below.
All your IMRO info is right here
October also saw the announcement that Choose Radio was to become Radiocentre. We have yet to see any big news from Radiocentre since rebranding so this is certainly worth keeping an eye on in the new year.
We learn all about Radiocentre here
It was made clear how tough it’s been for stations in November
In November, The Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media was told by John Purcell just how hard the pandemic has been on radio stations.
He said among other things that some stations were at times just a week away from shutting down. A scary thought considering how important radio is to people during the pandemic.
This really shows just how important funding from the likes of sound and vision can be in keeping stations on air.
You can read all about it and watch it here
Finally came December, the month of Christmas, but more importantly JNLR numbers
It took a while but they finally came. We got new JNLR numbers in December after a long pandemic induced break. it wasn’t a great time for RTÉ but in general most stations seemed happy.
I’ll personally be really interested to see how networked shows perform in 2022 as well as seeing if 2FM make any changes following their drop in listeners. So much to look forward to.
Get all your JNLR details here
What a year it’s been
Thank you so much for checking out Radio Land in 2021. Radio is always changing and we hope to continue informing you in the new year.
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We’ll be back with a regular post tomorrow so we hope you’ll join us then for another year in radio📻