Lots happens in the radio industry each week so here’s a summary of the week we just enjoyed.
Here’s What Happened
He’s been hosting the show for as long as I’ve been alive, and indeed much longer, but it’s time for Ronan Collins to leave his daily show on RTE Radio 1.
Ronan announced that he will host his final edition of the Ronan Collins Show on the 23rd of December. From January onwards, he will be hosting on Bank Holiday Mondays only.
With 232,000 listeners, Ronan’s show was the most listened to music show in the country. Whoever takes over the show is going to have very big shoes to fill.
“I’ve been working on afternoon radio on RTÉ Radio 1 for nearly 38 years, plus six years before that on Radio 2, and nobody will ever know how grateful I have been for all the opportunities over the past 40 years and going forward with RTÉ. I often ask myself ‘how much longer can I continue to do this?,’ and the answer always is ‘just keep going.’ New challenges await now on RTÉ in 2023, and I will continue to be on RTÉ Radio 1 with The Collins Collection on Bank Holidays.”
Ronan announcing the end of his show
It will be interesting to see who takes over, with an announcement on this expected in the coming days. both Louise Duffy and Ray Cuddihy have filled in on the show in recent times, so might they be the next big names on Radio 1? We’ll need to wait and see.
Best of luck to Ronan on his future career, and congratulations on playing such a huge role in Irish radio history.
And that’s what I get for trying to be organised!!!
So, I had everything written all ready to go, and then RTÉ drop a bombshell. When they said the replacement would be announced in the coming days, I didn’t think they meant tomorrow. Anyway, we now have our replacement.
Louise Duffy will take over in the slot from January, after previously filling in for Ronan. She’s also covered other shows on the station, and has 8 years on Today FM behind her too.
It will be great to hear how the new show sounds in January, and we wish Louise the very best of luck.
An Irish language community station in Belfast is considering the possibility of launching a service on a small scale DAB Multiplex in Derry.
Raidió Fáilte have held a meeting with the local community to explore the possibility, and discuss what people from Derry would like from the service.
We don’t know the outcome of the meeting, but this might be an interesting one to watch over the next few months.
It’s also interesting to see DAB used in this way, especially when you consider that we never really went down this road in the republic. Would you like to see DAB in Ireland? Or would it be too big a risk for the existing radio industry? Vote on our Instagram story now.
Finally just an explainer of how I plan to work stuff on Radio land over Christmas.
For the first time in 2years, I’m going taking some weeks off. Don’t worry though, I’m not doing a full Ronan Collins just yet.
Next Saturday the 17th I’ll take a look back at this years biggest radio stories, and then after that I’m taking a 2 week break. All normal programming will be back in January though.
Thank you all for supporting Radio Land over the past year. Do follow our social media for updates when we return.
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.
Lots happens in the radio industry each week so here’s a summary of the week we just enjoyed.
Here’s what happened
The BAI have announced that they have allocated €2million in the latest round of the sound and vision scheme.
This round of the scheme was specifically for productions in the Irish language, so all of these projects are either fully in Gaeilge or are bilingual, meaning 30% or more of the show is in the Irish language.
Out of the 15 projects to receive funding, 10 were radio projects. Here’s a sample of some of the shows we can expect on radio in the next while.
SIad Féin is a radio drama for RTÉ JR Radio, and will also be aired on RnaG. The story is based in the West of Ireland where a group of tweens unleash an ancient evil. The show will apparently be filled with SFX and spectacular foley, so it should be a great listen. If the recent RTÉ JR radio dramas are anything to go by this should be really good. It’s been allocated €20,206 for 8 episodes
Clár sa Charr is a project airing on 11 commercial radio stations, focusing on the conversations between parents and their kids in the car. It’s all being managed by the IBI, with a funding recommendation of €111,000 for 105 6 minute inserts.
Béaloideas/Folklore is a 20 part series for Athlone FM exploring how stories are translated. Well known and lesser known stories will be translated by local Irish speakers and a member of the traveler community, and they’ll then be read by local school children. This project has been awarded €15,000
It will be interesting to see how these projects come together over the next while. As always it’s great to see quality public service content getting funded in this way.
Rising is a 2FM initiative where 10 up and coming Irish artists are supported with airplay and opportunities to try give them a boost in their career. many of those who have been a part of rising in recent years are now household names, so the initiative can be very effective.
2FM are now looking for a sponsor for Rising 2023, so here’s what’s up for grabs.
4 Tagged Rising tracks per day for 48 weeks
14 Station promos per week for 48 weeks
20 promo blasts per year
10 Instagram mini artist bio videos
10 On air interviews with presenter, one per artist
10 Long form interviews for podcast, one per artist
Studio 8 Recording Session with each artist with the sponsors logo on the video
All this can be yours for a cost of €100,000. It would be a perfect deal for some brand who wants to be seen supporting local Irish music.
It will be interesting to see who gets this sponsorship, but hopefully we won’t need to wait much longer. 2023 is getting closer.
Finally this week, Irelands Christmas station made a return to the airwaves. Christmas FM returned as expected on the 28th of November to help bring us all a bit closer to Christmas
In a change for 2023, Christmas FM have taken a page out of RTE’s book and copied the toy show appeal. Instead of having one charity partner the Community Foundation For Ireland will distribute funds between a number of charities across ireland.
The very best of luck to everyone at Christmas FM over the next while, hopefully the fundraiser will be a big success.
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.
Lots happens in the radio industry each week so here’s a summary of the week we just enjoyed.
Here’s what happened
RTE have announced Upfront with Katie Hannon, a new Monday night current affairs show to take over Claire Byrne Live’s old slot.
What’s interesting though is that it’s not really just a TV show. Upfront will be a full brand of podcasts, articles, and digital content across social platforms designed to facilitate public discussion.
Katie is giving up her radio hosting duties to take over the new show, so that means we’re getting a new host for Late Debate and Saturday with Katie Hannon.
RTEs deputy foreign editor Colm Ó Mongáin will take over both slots from December. He’s been responsible for some of RTEs podcasts recently, including Brexit Republic and the Pandemic Podcast.
The press release does mention that Katie will still have a roll on radio 1, but they haven’t said much about what that will be yet.
Very best of luck to Katie from us at Radio Land. It’s great seeing RTÉ really taking a digital first approach with this, so I look forward to seeing it all come to fruition in January.
The station returned to FM for three days this week, but in all the promotional material for the launch they made one thing clear. They want a full time FM licence. is it time they got one?
“We would like to thank the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, and Sport, and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland for their support in this development opportunity, and the opportunity to show that the station is ready to take the next step to provide quality shows and content to young people at a national level on a full-time basis.”
Raidió Rí-Rá Chairperson Traic Ó Braonáin
So, are they ready to go full time? And what does that look like? Would they operate as an independent public service broadcaster? Or would they try be a commercial operator?
On a national level it’s just RTÉ and Bauer now, and even if you don’t think we need new stations you’ve got to admit that Rí Rá is doing something nobody else is, and catering for an audience nobody else is serving.
So, should they get a full time licence? Go vote on our insta story now.
Finally this week, RTÉ newsreader and former radio continuity announcer Eileen Dunne has retired.
After over 40 years on air at RTÉ, senior newscaster Eileen Dunne has retired. The Nine O'Clock News presenter signed off from her final broadcast tonight, saying it has been ‘an honour and a privilege’ | Read: https://t.co/O5oDCeIT7Dpic.twitter.com/hZctXi6KOb
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.
Lots happens in the radio industry each week so here’s a summary of the week we just enjoyed.
Here’s what happened
The rumours are true! Bauer have agreed a deal to buy Cork’s Red FM.
The deal is subject to regulatory approval, but if everything goes to plan Bauer will then be owners of Red FM, 98FM, Spin 1038, Spin South West, Today FM, and Newstalk.
What does this mean in practice though. There are a number of safe bets, and also lots of things we can have fun speculating about.
Safe bets
Red FM will become part of Goloud. Goloud is the app housing all of Bauers audio content, so Red FM will certainly become part of that platform.
Cash machine is on its way. The cash machine is a premium rate text to play game that’s aired across Bauers network of stations. It’s almost certain to make its way to Cork if this deal goes through. This may result in cash amounts up for grabs increasing across the network, but we’ll need to wait and see. The Cork market has previously had a similar format called Cash Call, but that hasn’t really been around since the former UTV network became Wireless Group.
Red FM sport is about to get the Off The Ball treatment. It will be interesting to see where this leaves brands like The Big Red Bench, It might become part of OTB, it might get sent to the sideline never to be seen again. No matter what though it’s safe to assume Red FM will develope a tighter relationship with OTB.
While obviously all this is speculation, these all seem like relatively obvious things to expect from Bauer in this case.
There are still lots of questions though. Is The Neil Prendeville Show going to face the same treatment as Dublin Talks and just get axed? Will we start seeing networked shows across the station? Could the Red FM brand become an extension of Spin South West? That’s only the start of it. From the Today FM/Newstalk studios in cork to the RedExtra brand, who knows what potentially huge changes might be on the horizon.
No matter what way you look at it, there are some crazy times ahead for a market that really hasn’t changed much in recent years. It’s the biggest change in Cork since KC joined 96FM from Red, and arguably the impact of this Bauer move will be bigger.
What are your thoughts? Is this a good or bad deal? What do you expect to change? Go let us know over on our Instagram story now.
Usually this would be our top story, but it’s just been a crazy week in the radio world. Anyway, New JNLR numbers were released this week, so it’s time to find out who’s going up and down.
As always we don’t have the time to cover all stations, but we’ll include links you can use at the end if you want more details.
In general this wasn’t a great book for Radio 1. Nothing has changed massively at the station, but it seems they are suffering a loss in listeners that until now was only seen in the afternoons.
451,000 are listening to Morning Ireland, that’s down a huge 22,000 in a single book
Tubridy has an audience of 344,000 he’s down from 369,000
Claire Byrne now sits at 331,000 listeners, she’s down 19,000
The big news here though is Ray darcy’s show continuing it’s massive decline. the show is down 18,000 to 179,000
It’s unclear what’s going wrong here, but clearly there was either an over estimation in the last book or radio 1 has started to drop listeners.
What’s clear though is Ray Darcy is having trouble, and RTÉ have noticed. The head of RTÉ Radio 1 spoke about the show to the Independant.
“We changed the production team on it in the last while. It has one of the best series producers and also one of the best new producers. We got two new superb researchers so what we would be more looking at is the structure of the programme rather than the content. That’s where we think we probably have to go with it.”
head of RTÉ Radio 1 Peter Woods
If this continues for another book some tough decisions will need to be made.
2FM had more of a mixed bag, rather than dropping huge listeners like Radio 1, shows that you might expect to have seen growth have remained the same.
2FM breakfast is up 1,000 with listenership of 124,000
Jennifer Zamparelli has 131,000 listeners, that’s down 7,000
It’s the same story for Tracey Clifford, she’s now at 120,000 after also dropping 7,000
The 2 Johnnies have had no change this book staying on 122,000
2FM isn’t facing the same disaster that Radio 1 saw this book, but they would probably have been hoping for better. This isn’t really too bad for now as long as it doesn’t become a trend.
Basically everyone’s down on today FM except relative newcomer Ray Foley
Breakfast is down 2,000 and now has 199,000
Dermot & Dave are down 5,000 now slipping beneath 200,000 at 198,000 listeners
Pamela Joyce has dropped 4,000 and now sits at 130,000
Matt Cooper has lost a scary 10,000 listeners and now has 164,000
The big news is Ray though, he’s crushing his slot and is now up 6,000 to 149,000
Fair play Ray, that’s good going
Newstalk also had a mixed bag, but nothing too disastrous. Some shows are up, some are down, so everything all kind of evens out.
Newstalk Breakfast with Ciara Kelly and Shane Coleman is up 1,000 and now has an audience of 147,000
177,000 tune in for Pat Kenny, that’s down 7,000
Lunchtime Live is down 3,000 to 108,000, so not a massive drop, but a drop all the same.
Moncrieff now has 90,000, he’s up 3,000.
The Hard Shoulder is up 1,000 and sits at 156,000.
Really mixed bags for Bauer stations this time, but it could be worse. It’s not a Radio 1 style catastrophe which is a good thing I guess.
Links
It’s hard to know what to think this time around as it really could have gone better if we’re honest. We can only hope for an improvement in the next book.
The boss at 2FM has spoken about Eoghan McDermott’s future on the station, as well as a number of recent goings on for station presenters.
Eoghan McDermott left 2FM in February 2021, after aligations were made against him. The person who made those aligations later retracted them in a legal letter, and Eoghan has now began rebuilding his career following the incident.
He has recently returned to naration duties on Love Island Australia, so naturally enough the question came up about a possable return to 2FM. RTÉ 2fm boss Dan Healy spoke about that this week, saying that at least for now the 2FM schedual is locked down.
“His contract ran out with us at that time and the schedule is now locked down. The station is now moving in a certain direction with talent like the 2 Johnnies, the Breakfast Show trio Doireann Garrihy, Donncha O’Callaghan and Carl Mullen alongside Jen Zamparelli and Tracy Clifford. I don’t see this schedule moving. I think we made the right decisions with regards to the talent. We have a really nice, strong daytime schedule,”
RTÉ 2fm boss Dan Healy
It will be interesting to see if another station does take Eoghan on in the next while, but it looks like 2FM is out of the picture at least for now.
Dan also addressed other stuff this week including a challenge finding male presenters, as well as Lottie Ryan being disapointed after not getting the hosting job for Dancing With The Stars.
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.
Lots happens in the radio industry each week so here’s a summary of the week we just enjoyed.
Here’s What Happened
KCLR have launched a Ukrainian information service. The new service aims to provide support and info to those who have arrived in Ireland from Ukraine following the Russian invasion.
The service is being led by Tetiana Kuschyk, who herself arrived in Ireland only recently. Tetiana has previously worked as an interpreter and has qualifications in linguistics, so she’s more than qualified for her new role.
It’s been great to see the media trying to help out with this situation, little things like TheJournal.ie posting information in Ukrainian or the fundraising carried out by so many stations has been great to see.
The team over at Radio Today cover this story in detail so check out their coverage below. Very best of luck Tetiana, welcome to the Irish radio industry.
IRadio launched a new dedicated Irish music stream, following the lead of some other stations such as Today FM.
The ILove Irish station launched just before Paddy’s Day and will have music from loads of Irish artists. it’s available using smart speakers and the IRadio App.
I’d love to know the listenership of services like this as it seems trendy to launch streams of specific genres or decades. it’s obviously good that more Irish Music is getting played, but I think increased airplay for Irish artists on the main stations is also needed in some cases.
Finally this week, Ireland has a new hub for fact checking information. While this isn’t a radio specific story, I think it’s important to be aware of it as disinformation and misinformation are issues on all media platforms.
The new service, known as the EDMO Ireland Hub will be based at DCU, and brings together experienced fact checkers, social media experts and various academics in an attempt to try reduce misinformation and disinformation in Ireland.
We’ve been lucky that radio hasn’t been hit too hard with misinformation, but hopefully this new service will benefit all media outlets going forward. Even though radio hasn’t been hit too hard, I can think of examples of misinformation making it’s way onto the airwaves so this is certainly important.
Honestly, with it only being a half week, there wasn’t that much interesting stuff happening. Everyone played a few Irish tunes on St Patrick’s Day, not much happened that’s worth chatting about outside of that.
So, only 2 stories in quick bits this week. Hopefully next weeks a bit more interesting. If you have a story to share at any time be sure to email news@radioland.org as we’d love to hear from you.
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.
