This Week In Radio 8/1/2022

Lots happens in the radio industry each week so here’s a summary of the week we just enjoyed.

Here’s what happened

The standards in public office commission has issued a report this week related to the chief executive of Wexford County Council allegedly putting pressure on South East Radio.

According to the Irish Times, the report found that Tom Enright put “unwarranted” pressure on a local radio station when he threatened to withdraw council advertising during a dispute over coverage

Mr Enright however has said he believed the findings were “flawed and disproportionate” and he was taking legal advice.

I’m unfortunately not going to be able to include all the details of this story here, but I would highly recomend the Irish Times article linked below as they have gone into fantastic detail.

While the dispute is and should be the main focus of this story, it has also led to some interesting financial numbers being seen in public.

• In an email to south east radio, Mr Enright wrote: “Wexford County Council is currently reviewing our commercial relationship with you. We have spent over €160K with SE Radio in the past 18 months, he also said that this is “A lot of money to a radio station that facilitates inaccurate and damaging commentary on positive initiatives that the council and others are trying to achieve in order to make Wexford a better place.”
• According to the head of south east radio, the council spent a total of around €63,000 on advertising in 2019
• That number was down to about €46,000 in 2020, despite the pandemic

These are interesting numbers for sure so make of them what you will. As I said I can’t provide as much detail here as the Irish Times so I’d really recommend you read their work on this story.

Read the story from the Irish Times here

Waterford’s WLR has announced that their Christmas Appeal has raised a massive €101,349 for St Vincent De Paul in the county. This is great news and something we should hopefully see more of in the coming weeks as Christmas FM announce how much they’ve raised.

Well done to the many stations who raised money over Christmas, it really makes a massive difference.

Read the story here

Finally this week, RTÉ have announced the shortlist for their Choice Music prize album of the year. The winner will be announced live from an event at Vicar St, Dublin, with the event also airing live on 2FM

Tickets for the event on the 3rd of March can be purchased now through Ticketmaster

Check out the shortlist here

Quick Bits

Radio Nova has started playing Vinyl

There was a great article in the Farmers Journal this week on how media has evolved

Tara Duggan has left her role as head of news at Classic Hits and is moving to a new job with Bauer

2FM have aired a 4 part documentary on dance music in Ireland

And that’s the summary for this week. Come back to radio land next week for more radio news📻 and be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram for extra stories.