This Week in Radio 29/10/2022 (GAA rights and witches)

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

Here’s what happened

GAA logo

The GAA has been a topic of conversation in the radio industry for a few weeks at this point, but this week our story has nothing to do with CRKC.

RTE radio 1 and RnaG will continue to provide coverage of national GAA games, with Today FM and Newstalk providing score updates. 24 IBI stations are keeping their rights, and according to the GAA at least some community stations will still carry gaa games.

The head of communications at the GAA provided a statement to the Clare Echo which discusses community station Scariff Bay Community Radio. It also acknowledges community radio more generaly.

“There is no change to pre-existing arrangements and we acknowledge and welcome the great work many community stations do for our games nationwide,”

Alan Milton, director of communications at the GAA

It’s certainly been an interesting time for GAA broadcast rights, and the drama looks to be continuing on the television side now as ⁨head of Virgin Media Television Paul Farrell⁩ is going after RTÉ.

It’s going to be interesting to see how all this plays out over the next while, but for now at least that’s where we stand.

Read the story here

Red FM logo

Red FM’s wealthy witch has been on the streets of cork over the past 2 weeks as listeners competed to win a share of €10,000 from the cauldron of cash.

The competition saw the return of the fugitive format to cork after many years. The fugitive was a regular on 96FM and C103 back in the day, but Red FM have revived the format as part of their Shocktober promotion.

Each morning on the breakfast show the witching hour was revealed, this was the hour that listeners could go on the hunt. At the start of the witching hour a clue was given to help listeners, with additional hints being posted on social media.

It’s not exactly a new format, but in fairness to Red FM it’s created some great radio. I’ve personally heard people chatting about it on the bus here in Cork over the past while, so it’s been cool to see radio grab people’s attention again in this way.

Hopefully we see more creative promotions like this over the next while in the radio industry. It’s one way radio stations can truly stand out from other forms of media.

See more from the competition on the Red FM Instagram

NAI logo

Finally this week we got some Sound and Vision news.

The BAI have announced Two new rounds of sound and vision, rounds 47 and 48. Round 47 is for independent producers and the BAI have up to €4.9 million to give away. Round 48 is slightly different as it’s only open to community radio and community TV services, This round has €750,000 up for grabs.

Applications for round 47 close at “12 noon sharp on Thursday, 8th December 2022” with round 48 closing at “12 noon on the 13th December 2022”

Details for how to apply can be found at the links below. Best of luck to those applying, it’s great to see support’s like this for good quality broadcasting.

Click here for details on round 48, community radio and community tv services

Click here for details on round 47, for independent production companies

Quick Bits

Transition year students in the south east have completed their media week at Beat 102 103

A radio presenter in the uk died this week while presenting his breakfast show,. May he rest in peace

RTEs States Of Mind Podcast is back

Derek Mooney has received an honorary degree from UCC for contribution to natural history broadcasting

A number of Irish broadcasters and executives attended a party at the British Embassy in Dublin to mark 100 years of the BBC

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.