This Week In Radio 21/5/2022

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

Here’s What Happened

It seems that Talksport is moving further into the Irish Market. As of now, News UK who own the brand refer to Talksport Ireland on their job listings, and the brand has this week announced a deal with cricket Ireland.

Interestingly, in job ads for Urban Media, the service is actually listed as a station.

As for the Cricket Ireland deal announced this week, Talksport will broadcast a number of mens fixtures This summer, and will also create content on social media and VOD services like YouTube. There’ll be expanded coverage on all the News UK stations here in Ireland, as well as on Talksport 2 in the UK.

Ultimately it will be interesting to see what becomes of Talksport ireland. Will it just be a UK simulcast with a few opt outs? Or will it be a bit more like OTB, creating something more ireland specific? Time will tell.

Read the announcement here

Midwest Radio are holding an outside broadcast as part of the Home to Mayo Tradfest. It’s really great to see broadcasters getting out and about again post pandemic, and hopefully this should result in a bit of extra revenue for stations.

The 2 hour broadcast will take place from 6pm on the 28th of may from the Merry Monk in Ballina. The broadcast is apparently sponsored by the venue so it sounds like a win win for all involved.

All the details on the event can be found below. With a bit of luck we’ll see more and more outside broadcasts like this over the coming months.

Read the story here

Finally this week, Ireland is in trouble, and that might result in the Media Commission being created a bit sooner. Let me explain.

Long story short, the European commission has referred Ireland as well as a few other countries to the EU Court of Justice for not implementing a piece of legislation called the audiovisual media services directive (AVMSD),

what this legislation does, is place new standards on regulators of television and online video platforms, making sure that they are regulated in the same way across the EU. The thing is, we didn’t pass the law in time, and now the EU has told the court about it.

Without getting too technical, the law that needs to be past in ireland is called the online safety and media regulations bill. This is the bill that will replace the Broadcasting Act 2009. When this bill passes, the BAI will be gone and we will all then be regulated by the Media Commission (Coimisiún na Meán)

Now that the EU are getting more involved, we might see the end of the BAI sooner rather than later. Lots of interesting changes ahead. If this is an area your interested in, the linked article from RTÉ has some good information.

Read the story here

Quick Bits

Radiocentre Ireland have launched their insights page with lots of interesting info

Fáilte Ireland are spending €700,000 on a national radio, print, and online advertising campaign to try reduce staff Shortages in the tourism sector

Applications have closed for the latest round of sound and vision

Is it normal for Irish people to leave the radio on to deter Burglars? Reddit was discussing that this week

Here’s an article about the early days of radio in Dundalk

Radio Days Europe took place this week

The Irish Catholic Newspaper has a review of Radio Maria. Unfortunately it’s a paid article but the headline suggests they were happy

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.