This Week In Radio 13/9/2023 (JNLR numbers anyone?)

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

Here’s what happened

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it’s JNLR time once again. It’s time to take a look at who’s up and who’s down in the latest round of radio figures.

You can use this link to skip the JNLR stuff if you’d like

The good news is that no stations have had any catastrophe this time round, and RTÉ in particular will be satisfied knowing that their disaster of a book from last time seems to be behind them. Some shows certainly are doing better than others though, so let’s get into the details and see where people stand.

Radio 1 did better than last time

RTE radio 1 logo

Overall the news is good for Radio 1. It’s certainly not worth a fireworks display or anything, but not bad at all.

  • Morning Ireland is up 4,000 and now has 437,000 tuning in each morning. They lost 18,000 in the last book so still a bit of recovery needed, but an increase is an increase at the end of the day.
  • The most talked about man in Ireland, also known as Ryan Tubridy, has an audience of 335,000 tuning in each morning. That’s an increase of 4,000. Tubridy will be interesting to watch over the next while as his time hosting the Late Late Show comes to an end. On one hand TV viewers might miss him and tune in on radio instead, or the lack of TV time might reduce the relevance of the show hurting it’s listenership. Fascinating times ahead.
  • 327,000 tune into Claire Byrne each day. That’s a nice boost of 6,000.
  • This is where the good news ends for a while. The Louise Duffy Show has dropped 9,000 to 213,000. How much of that loss is as a result of Ronan moving on to RTÉ Gold is hard to know, but it’s certainly not ideal to be losing listeners in your first book.
  • News At One has 299,000 falling under the 300,000 mark. It’s a loss of 11,000 from last time which really ain’t great.
  • LiveLine also fell and now sits at 306,000. That’s down 4,000.
  • A much needed boost came for Ray Darcy, as he gained 4,000 to reach 181,000 listeners. He could still do with gaining a few more but it’s certainly an improvement.
  • 214,000 tune in to Drive Time on Radio 1, that’s up 6,000. not bad at all.

Generally it’s not a bad performance. The shows with longer run times and consequently more ad breaks all gained listeners which is good news for the station. The Ray Darcy slot still needs serious improvement, but it’s not dropping even more listeners which is something.

“The increase in the listenership across the morning and late afternoon is very welcome. It’s a tribute to the focus and commitment of our teams and we will continue to refine our output. Weekend programmes have always fluctuated – but the position of so many of those programmes in the top ten underlines our continuing pre-eminence and connection with the audience. This was a good book.”

Peter Woods, Head of RTÉ Radio

It will be interesting to see if all the changes on telly impact radio numbers in the next few books. Time will tell.

They’ll be dancing at 2FM, mostly

2FM Logo

Last time we spoke about 2FM, it’s presenters were all dancing their hearts out on Dancing with the stars. Some presenters benefited from that, but it’s not universal.

  • 135,000 people now tune in to 2FM breakfast each morning. That’s up 6,000. The show got good promotion when Carl won Dancing with the stars, so we’ll need to wait and see if it’s a sustained boost.
  • Jennifer Zamparelli is down 1,000 and now has 133,000 tuning in. Only a small drop so no need for panic just yet.
  • Tracey Clifford had a 7,000 listener drop and now has 109,000. She really needs to reverse course at this stage as she’s been losing listeners consistently for a while now. She was down 4,000 in February, and down 7,000 in November. Combined that’s a loss of 18,000 in the last 3 books. Certainly not ideal.
  • The 2 Johnnies had a lovely boost and are now up 11,000 to 130,000 listeners. My dentist made the switch from Today FM recently,, so now you can suffer through an extraction while being entertained by the Parish Quiz. How bad.

The 2 johnnies have had a really good boost, but I’d be getting a bit concerned about Tracey. Does she need a co host? A new format? If it doesn’t improve in the next book or two it will be time to look at a more drastic change.

“Overall 2FM, has performed well. This is the first time that we have a full 12-month view of the 2 Johnnies since they joined the station in February last year. Their daily reach ( IPSOS MRBI/JNLR 2023-1) has grown by 11,000 adults since the last survey and with significant growth every quarter hour from 3pm. Doireann, Donncha and Carl also continue to grow from survey to survey. Their daily reach has increased by 21,000 from this time last year from 114,00 to 135,000.The new weekend schedule has bedded in quickly and we will have a clearer picture of how that is performing in the next survey. I want to thank everyone at 2FM, both on and off air for their creativity and hard work. Most importantly I want to thank our audience ,who despite the changing audio environment and irrespective of what device is used to listen, they know there is nothing better than live radio.”

Dan Healy, Head of RTÉ Radio Strategy and RTÉ 2FM

Things are still ticking over just fine.

Some small ups and downs for Today FM

Today FM Logo

Good news continues for Today FM, as most of their shows continue to gain listeners.

  • Ian Dempsey now has 208,000. That’s up 5,000 from last time. Slowly but surely moving away from that 200,000 clif edge.
  • Dermot & Dave had a small drop of 2,000 to stand at 205,000. Nothing worth panicking about yet.
  • Pamela Joyce has gained 2,000 listeners and now has 136,000 tuning in. She’s well ahead of Tracey Clifford for now, but you can never truely relax in this game.
  • Ray Foley continues to smash it. He’s got 3,000 new listeners and now has 163,000 each day. Not bad at all.
  • Matt Cooper’s down 4,000 and now sits at 168,000. Still a respectable audience but worth watching. He gained 8,000 back in February so should be grand.

The German bosses will be quite happy with this I would think. No crazy jumps, but more importantly no major losses.

“I’m incredibly proud of the Today FM team. We believe we have some of the finest talent here on-air and behind the scenes and today, our listeners have reinforced this. Together we are taking Today FM to new levels of success. One of the exciting aspects of our team is we have highly experienced professionals working together with the next generation of stars coming through. Our audience is at the heart of what we do and we have a lot of fun along the way doing it”

Fyona Smith, Managing Editor Today FM

Today FM are continueing to perform well so no need for concern.

News Talk Logo

Newstalk is doing okay, although they did have a few losses. Lots of shows staying still here too which is fair enough I guess.

  • Breakfast has dropped 3,000 and now has 149,000 listeners.
  • Pat Kenny stays at 174,000 which is still as respectable as it was last time
  • Lunchtime live hasn’t received a boost from Boylan it seems, it’s also stayed still with 106,000 listeners
  • It’s a 2,000 jump for Moncrieff with 98,000 listeners. So close to the 100,000
  • The hard shoulder took a hard fall of 7,000 to 152,000 listeners. Not ideal, but we’ve certainly seen worse.

Could be better and could be worse. There’s nothing wrong with staying still, so I wouldn’t be issueing a breaking news alert just yet.

Overall

Not a bad day for radio all things considered.

You can read more details on these results by clicking the links below, and we’ll be back to do it all again in 3 months time.

RTE

The independent

That other radio news site, whats it called again? Radio Today? Something like that

In other news

News Corp Logo

Wireless Radio Ireland, which is ultimately part of News Corp, made a loss of €2.58 million before tax, according to new accounts.

The group, which owns FM104 and Q102 in Dublin, 96FM and C103 in cork, live 95 in Limerick among others, has had a large reduction of staff, but it’s staff costs still went up.

240 people used to work for the company, but that number has now dropped to 201. It’s unclear where most of these jobs were cut, but the station has shown more interest in networking in recent times. Despite the lower staff count, staff costs are up from €10.56 million to €10.99 million, which is interesting to see.

The business mentioned strong digital growth, and they say they’re investing more in this area going forward.

There are more detailed financial details linked below, so go check that out if your interested. It’s ultimately a shame seeing numbers backing up staff cuts in radio, but unfortunately that’s the way it goes.

Hopefully radio will find itself on healthy ground in the years to come.

Read the story here

Red FM Logo

Usually when the minister for finance goes on a radio show, he gets asked some difficult questions by the presenter. But sometimes, politicians fight back.

Yesterday the minister for finance Michael McGrath joined Mick Mulcahy on Red FM to answer some questions. Ordinarily this would be of no relevance to Radio Land readers, but when the minister questions the presenter about the Cash Machine, it suddenly becomes more interesting.

On Thursday a cork couple from the minister’s constituency won over €40,000 on the Cash Machine. This lead to Mick attempting to get a declaration from the minister, but the endeavour didn’t go according to plan.

It is a beautiful radio moment, so allow me to share the experience with you.

Mick started as all good presenter should. He informed the minister that the following question was “just for fun”. Despite Mick’s efforts, the minister was expecting an interviewer ready for war, so he wasn’t exactly ready for fun.

Mick proceeds to point out the success the ministers constituents had on the Cash Machine the day before, and asked the minister to confirm that these winnings are tax free. This would have been grand, except the minister wasn’t sure. In order to answer the question effectively the minister needed more information about this Cash Machine thing.

The minister spoke about lotteries, leading Mick to expertly retort that “it’s a game of skill”. It was an intervention worthy of a lawyer from Mick, but Michael came back for more.

Who is the operator? Asked the minister, to which Mick responded “The GoLoud Network of Radio Stations. Mick was now on shaky ground as it’s actually Bauer Media Audio Ireland.

Before things could get any worse Mick came clean saying he just wanted a Sound Byte. The Minister proceeded to confirm that Lottery winnings are usually tax free, as long as the lottery is registered. For good measure the minister offered to look into it for Mick, at which point Nick promptly moved on to less interesting questions.

It was truly a great performance from both candidates, and it really raised some interesting questions. Is the Cash Machine a lottery? Or is it as Mick said “a game of skill”. Go vote on our Instagram story now.

Listen to the clip here:

Quick Bits

A former RTÉ supervisor has had a €60,000 personal injury claim thrown out

Former Today FM presenter Fergal Darcy is joining 2FM

Bauer Media Audio Ireland is getting a new CEO, as Simon Myciunka joins the UK arm of the business

Paul McLoone is back with Nova

Gareth O’Callaghan is returning to Classic hits after his crash in Cork

Lyric FM are doing a big outside broadcast from Bloom in June

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.

This Week In Radio 4/3/2023 (some good, some bad, it’s all inside this Radio Land)

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

Here’s what happened

Ian dempsey in front of a yellow today FM microphone

We recently covered Today FM’s big Busk for focus Ireland in Quick Bits, but they are doing something really cool that is worth looking at in more detail.

Today FM are looking for local business’s to bid for the opportunity to have the Ian Dempsey breakfast show broadcast live from their premises.

Bids start at €5,000, with all funds going towards Focus Ireland. Obviously brands pay for OB’s all the time but the fact that this is for charity ads to the whole event.

Will brands be willing to pay more knowing that it’s going to charity?, and that this will help brand image more than just a standard OB? We’ll need to wait and see. To me this is a fun unique way for radio to be used for good, raising vital funds for a worthy cause along the way.

Best wishes to all the bidders, I look forward to hearing the final bid amount.

Read the story here

96FM Logo

Corks 96FM and C103 newsreader Pearse McCarthy has been charged with drug offences. He appeared before Bandon District Court this week on nine charges.

Pearse has been a newsreader on the station for many years, and has also filled in as presenter of the Arts House. Separately from the radio Pearse also hosts the 4Play podcast, where artists speak about the four songs most personal to them. He also works as a producer for TalkSport Ireland.

Pearse faces three charges of possession of drugs, three charges of having drugs for sale or supply, and one charge of having drugs worth more than €13,000 for sale or supply. All these alleged incidents are from 2017. He also faces 2 charges from 2021.

MR McCarthy has been released on €5,000 bail. He is subject to certain conditions, such as signing on at a Garda station three times a week, not applying for replacement travel documents, and being contactable by Gardai. He has already surrendered his passport.

If you want more information on this story you can check out the link below.

Read the story here

Red FM logo

Finally this week we’re sticking with Cork. Red FM is now officially part of Bauer. The deal has now gone through, and we’re already seeing changes, Jesus Bauer, slow down a bit.

The changes started last week before the deal had even went through. The Red FM mobile app was updated with a new look. it now has a much more modern design.

The station has also been added to GoLoud, which really is the signal for the start of changes at RedFM. We haven’t seen new imaging or anything yet, with no mention of Goloud or Off The Ball in RedFM’s branding so far. It’s likely things won’t all change instantly, but we would expect to see things like Cash machine arrive in Cork over the next few weeks and months.

We’ll need to wait and see how all this plays out, but it’s going to be interesting to watch over the next while.

Do you think Bauer buying RedFM is good news? Let us know over on our Instagram story now.

Read the story now

Quick Bits

TODAY FM DJ Declan Pierce is making a full recovery after suffering a brain hemerage

DJ Frankie Beats, who hosted a show on Kiss FM in the Algarve was in court this week for harassing a Garda and a hotelier

Brian Dowling is joining Suzanne Kane on the 98FM Daytime show

Irish Music month gets underway on the 12th of March

Redacted Lives from The Journal won best podcast at last nights Spider Awards (I was at the event and it was a fantastic night, well done to all winners)

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.

This Week In Radio 18/2/2023 (might ireland get a new station soon?)

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

Here’s what happened

RTE Sign

We got an interesting insight into earnings at RTÉ this week, as they released the earnings of their 10 highest paid presenters.

Some of the names on the list you’d probably expect, but others perhaps not so much. Let’s take a look at who’s earning what.

For this list we’ll look at the 2021 figures as they are the latest, and we’ll compare with 2019 to give an idea of how things are changing over time. If you want to see 2020s numbers you can find them at the link below.

  • Ryan Tubridy earned €440,000 in 2021, down €55,000 from €495,000 back in 2019
  • Joe Duffy takes second place with €351,000, he’s down from just over €392,000. That’s a drop of around €41,000
  • Claire Byrne is doing well after taking over the today slot on Radio 1. She earned €350,000, that’s up from €250,000 in 2019. It’s important to remember Claire was hosting her highly successful TV show in both these years, so her earnings are probably down a bit now considering she stepped down from that show.
  • Ray Darcy had a big cut, going from €450,000 down to €305,000. That’s down €145,000. His Saturday night TV show has ended which likely explains these cuts. It’s unclear if D’Arcy has a contract renegotiation on the way, but if he does he could see earnings fall further due to underwhelming JNLR numbers in recent books.
  • Next up, we have Miriam O’Callaghan. Miriam earned €263,500 in 2021, that’s down from €320,000 back in 2019, a drop of €56,500
  • Brendan O’Connor earned €245,004 in 2021, I’m sure that €4 at the end there was very important in negotiations. That’s a whole breakfast roll, and you wouldn’t be the dry one to refuse the lad his breakfast now would you? He’s up from €220,000 back in 2019, a boost of 25k and a breakfast roll.
  • Bryan Dobson got €209,282 in 2021, this is the same as his earnings from 2017 and 2018, but it’s up slightly on 2019 when he earned €196,961
  • Mary Wilson had earnings of €196,961 in 2021.
  • Darragh Maloney received €183,738
  • And rounding out the top 10 we have George Lee on €179,131.

It does seem RTÉ are sticking to their plan of reducing salleries of the biggest presenters. This does mean we might see some Pat Kenny style poaching attempts , but we’ll need to wait and see.

It’s interesting that no 2FM presenters made the list, it would be fascinating to compare these salleries with the likes of Today FM or Newstalk.

All that aside, these numbers are interesting to see. Hopefully we get numbers for 2022 soon.

Read the story here

Irish flag

Is Ireland about to get a new radio station? The minister signaled her support this week for the launch of an Irish Language youth service.

This follows the BAI doing research into the concept, which resulted in interesting findings.

  • 35% of young people would be likely to listen to an Irish youth station at least once a week. This goes up to 70% when content feels relevant to the audience.
  • 15-34 year olds are increasingly digital only content consumers
  • People felt there was a lack of Irish language content for young people. It was felt that this was a gap in the market.

It’s an interesting idea to think about. Could this be a project for RTÉ or TG4? Is this Ri Ra’s moment to shine? It could be cool to have a new station on air, especially one that is clearly providing a service to an underserved market.

Who knows if it will happen, but let’s wait and see. Let us know what you think over on our Twitter, @RadioLandIRL

Read the story here

Radio Days Ireland Banner

The IMRO Awards took place this week, no, seriously.

We’re not talking about the IMRO Radio Awards now, these are just the IMRO Awards. The no radio in the title IMRO Awards took place at Radio Days this week and saw some awards for broadcasters. Let’s take a look at who got what.

The awards focused on those who had shown great support to the Irish music sector. Those receiving awards were

  • Corks Red FM
  • Claire Beck of Today FM
  • Ronan Collins from RTÉ
  • Ray Colclough who’s with WLR
  • Louise Tighe at FM104

IMRO also gave special recognition awards to the founders of Hot Press Magazine, Niall Stokes and Mairin Sheehy.

Finally, the IBI presented an award to the former chief Executive of the BAI Michael O’Keeffe. This was for his services to Irish broadcasting since the beginning of legal independant radio in ireland.

Congratulations to all those recognised, keep up the good work.

Read the story here

Quick Bits

An Entertainer has been charged with defilement of a child, reporting restrictions are in place so this person can’t be named at the moment

Mayo Community Radio has a new manager

Broadcaster and author Deirdre Purcell has passed away aged 77

Profits are up at a company representing many big Irish broadcast names

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.

This week in Radio 8/10/2022 (what a week)

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

Here’s what happened

IMRO Awards 2022 logo

Last night was the night that brings the whole radio industry to one big party, that’s right, last night was the IMRO Radio Awards.

I launched Radio Land on the night of the 2020 IMRO’s, so the site is now Two years old. Time flies when your having fun.

Anyway, enough about Radio Land. Who won stuff this year?

  • WLR have won local station of the year once again, making it their……wait for it….. 4th year in a row🎉 if your winning one of the biggest awards every year then your clearly doing something right. Well done WLR.
  • Red FM are the music station of the year this year. They have also won this award previously. people clearly still love music on Air, so well done to Red FM.
  • Finally in the big three category’s, Today FM won full service station of the year. Today FM have had a schedule shakeup recently so they’ll be delighted with this endorsement. Congratulations to all involved.

Well done to everyone who has played a part in making radio great over the last year. You can read a full list of winners in all categories by clicking the link below.

Notable Twitter Moments

We unfortunately weren’t at the event, so we were left to join the fun at home from Twitter. But as usual Twitter didn’t disappoint. Here are some of the key points from Twitter over the course of the night.

  • Newstalk need to give their social media team a raise. We teased them a bit, but they had tweets of their wins up before the IMRO Awards account at times. They even included fancy graphics. So the gold for fastest social media team goes to Newstalk🏆
  • Everything was so civilised that someone had to get salty. Lord Bill Badbody tweeted “Disgusted at #IMR022 for not awarding my radio showÉireann Your Views again this year. Obvious bias against radio hosts who tell it like it is. They’ll pay for this. Every single one of those bastards.”. Thankfully it was only an account from Waterford wispers having a bit of fun. So to Lord Bill Badbody, congratulations on winning gold for best salty tweet🏆
  • The gold for looking for a pay raise has to go to Ross Broun of Corks 96FM, he reminded his employer that he hadn’t yet signed his new contract, he pointed out that he could go national, and encouraged stations to get in touch. Ross might indeed get a raise though as he then went on to actually win a real gold award. Congratulations Ross🏆

It really was a fun night on Twitter, and I hope everyone at the event had a blast too.

Again, well done to everyone and thanks for making radio such an awesome little industry. I guess we’ll see you all again next year🎉

Read the full winners list here

BAI Logo

The BAI have rejected a number of complaints surrounding the Russia/Ukraine conflict. They also rejected complaints from the owner of a public sector news magazine.

Let’s start with the Russia and Ukraine stuff. Complaints were lodged against Prime Time, Brendon O Connor, and the Pat Kenny show. The exact details of the respective complaints differed, but all felt there was bias within the broadcasts.

The BAI rejected all of these complaints saying.

  • In relation to Prime Time “there was no evidence of the Prime Time presenter attempting to “nudge” guests into stating that NATO should become involved in the conflict”
  • Regarding Pat Kenny, “There was no evidence of any contempt in the presenter’s voice and the broadcast content did not support the complainant’s view that the broadcast could be described as racist,” the BAI also pointed out here that use of terms such as “the Russians” were common terms in the shows context
  • The complaint about Brendan O Connor took issue with some of the Russian talking points being argued on the show. The BAI rejected this too however. They said ‘discussion in general was managed appropriately by the presenter, who put forward suggestions and counter arguments to elicit responses from the panel and that the audience was not misled on the subject under discussion”.

The other set of complaints made related to a public sector news magazine. The Magazine was heavily criticised on LiveLine, leading to the owner lodging a complaint with the BAI about the broadcasts.

The problem here was that the complainant, John Hogan, claimed that joe Duffy shared his own views in the show as he “rang gongs like a game show host”. There’s quite a lot to this actually so I’d recommend reading the article linked below for the full details.

While the BAI did ultimately reject the complaints, they did agree that the show was very negative towards the magazine. They pointed out that this was often the case with shows where conversations are caller driven, and they also noted RTEs attempts to get someone from the magazine on the show.

As I said there’s a lot to this story, so if you want more details you can check out the linked article. That article also covers some other complaints that we didn’t discuss here.

Read more details here

GAA Logo, the logo is white on a blue background, the letters GAA sit above text that reads where we all belong

Finally this week, a deal between the GAA and the IBI has resulted in a community station in Kilkenny no longer being allowed broadcast GAA matches.

Community Radio Kilkenny City (CRKC) had always carried extensive GAA coverage, but they have been told to curtail this with immediate effect. The reason for this is that the deal with the IBI (independant broadcasters of ireland) has resulted in commercial broadcaster KCLR having exclusive GAA rights.

This has a number of repercussions for CRKC, as not only will they risk losing loyalGAA listeners, but they will also lose those commercial sponsorships that might cover a lot of costs.

Understandably, the station is not too impressed with this new deal.

On behalf of itself and its listenership, Community Radio Kilkenny City is extremely disappointed by the position it is placed in by the GAA/IBI agreement. Community Radio Kilkenny City will continue to provide extensive reports of Kilkenny GAA games on Sunday and Monday evenings, and we will also continue to provide extensive sports coverage on our other weekend sport (and music) programmes. The same level of restrictive coverage will also apply to Community Radio Kilkenny City in relation to Kilkenny intercounty games at all levels. Since Community Radio Kilkenny City commenced full time broadcasting five years ago, the station has given unrivalled coverage to club games at all levels in Kilkenny. The same applied to the inter-county scene plus schools and colleges games. It is worth noting that Community Radio Kilkenny City was often the only Kilkenny broadcast media outlet at many of those games. Community Radio Kilkenny City is proud of what it has achieved to date, and more especially as all the Sports Team work as volunteers. Community Radio Kilkenny City is fortunate also to be able to call on numerous other volunteers around Kilkenny who provide match reports on a regular basis.

Statement from CRKC, source Kilkenny People

There are literally so many possable reactions to this story. Is this the IBI screwing over community stations? Is the GAA being perfectly reasonable by following the audience and the money, should exclusivity deals for a national sport like GAA be banned? There are so many possable ways to look at this. Go vote on our Instagram story now and tell us what you think.

Go vote in our poll here

Read the story here

Quick Bits

The IBI have called for the broadcast levy to be scrapped

2FM breakfast presenter Doireann Garrihy is taking over hosting Dancing With The Stars

Radio Nova’s PJ Gallagher and Jim McCabe are doing a charity random cycle

Spin has a new weekend schedual

A number of broadcast contract renewals are being fast tracked

Lyric FM is celebrating Black History Month

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.

This Week In Radio 17/9/2022 (I’m not your radio station, please stop texting me, I beg you!)

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

Here’s what happened

IMRO awards logo

The IMRO Awards hall Of Fame inductees were announced at a ceremony this week. So, who was honoured at the event?

  • Morning Ireland presenter Rachael English. Rachael spoke about how she had been fascinated by the medium since she got her first radio when she was 10. She also thanked the Morning Ireland team as well as the listeners.
  • Galway Bay FM presenter and former CEO Keith Finnegan. Keith served as the CEO of Galway Bay FM for 33 years, as well as presenting the stations current affairs show for 3 hours a day. He stepped down as CEO in summer 2022 but continues to host shows on the station.
  • The late Midlands103 boss Albert Fitzgerald. Albert had roles at many stations, starting his work at corks ERI. His main work in ireland saw him lead Midlands103 through the economic downturn by launching innovative advertiseing services, such as an online store. Something more stations have replicated since. He sadly passed away in August 2022.

Congratulations to all the new Hall of Fame members. It really is fantastic that we have such talent in the industry.

Read more details from Radio Today

The Cork’s Red FM 7:45 secret sound has been won.

The current sound had been in play for 38 weeks, before it was finally guessed by Chloe Dunne this week. It turns out the sound was of a fuel pump being placed back in its holder.

The secret sound has been running in cork for many years, starting on wireless group station 96FM. The 96FM version had a prize that increased for each day the sound stayed in play. In 2017 96FM put the competition on pause, but Red FM stole the format the following week before 96FM could restart.

Originally when Red FM took the format they ditched the increasing prize and instead guaranteed €5,000. They called it “Cork’s €5,000 secret sound”, using the guaranteed prize as a selling point.

That guaranteed prize is now no more though, and Red FM use a carbon copy of the 96FM Format. That’s why Chloe won €4,500 after 38 weeks, and why the competition is now called the “7:45 Secret Sound”, named after the time, not the money.

What’s your favourite radio competition format? Is it the secret sound/what’s that noise, that simple 60 second quiz. the fugitive/ the hunt/ secret Santa? Go vote on our insta story now.

Vote now on our Instagram

Hear the sound here

Finally this week, imagine having a phone number so close to a radio stations that you end up getting music requests multiple times a day. Well, it turns out that one poor woman has been receiving messages for FM104 for years now.

@travelwithaine on gTikTok has spoken about some of the texts and voice notes she’s received over the years, including one voice note where someone was explaining why they think they should win westlife tickets.

They explained in their voice note that their dad had been murdered, and they played you raise Me Up at his funeral. They then sent on news screenshots to prove it. Once they were made aware of the fact that they had sent to the wrong number they apparently seemed embarrassed and deleted everything.

What a crazy story, it would make you wonder how many people receive texts as a result of having numbers similar to those used by stations, or even old decommissioned station numbers.

So remember folks, check the number twice before you send that talk show your deepest secrets. You do not want to mess that up.

Watch the story time video here

Quick Bits

A couple who had their first date on Today FM have got married🎉congratulations🍷

RTE broadcaster Oliver Callan has a new comedy show on BBC Sounds

A load of ad teams had some fun playing softball this week

There’s a new commercial and operations director at Wireless Group

RTE have announced their plans to cover the ploughing championships

Michael Byrne has joined the board of WLR

RTE have insisted that the new sponsor of Claire Byrne’s show will have no influence on show content

Radiocentre Ireland are launching an audio course

Jennifer Zamparelli from 2FM has opened a Hair Salon

The Great Pink Run have announced Today FM as media partners

Bonus Stuff

This week we released our first ever video content. Check out our review of the new RTÉ Radio Player below and let us know what you think.

That’s it

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.