2022

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

Here’s what happened

MEPs Mick Wallace and Clare Daly are taking legal action against RTÉ. As of now, it’s unclear what the case relates to and it’s unclear how RTÉ will respond.

The two MEP’s have taken seperate actions, but are both being represented by Dore & Co solicitors. Interestingly, Robert Dore has been involved in a legal dispute with RTÉ previously. Robert represented Fr Kevin Reynolds in his case against RTÉ a number of years ago, this case resulted in RTÉ apologising.

The MEP’s have been in the news in Ireland and abroad recently, mainly as a result of there opposition to the EU sending arms to Ukraine.

We’re just going to need to wait and see how this story unfolds over the next while.

Read the story from The Journal here

A new breakfast show has launched at Midlands 103, with Peter Dunne replacing Ann Marie Kelly in the slot. Ann Marie had been hosting breakfast for 10 years, and will now be hosting a late night show on Fridays.

I must admit, while I have heard many breakfast shows from both Ireland and abroad in my time, I’ve never heard the breakfast show on Midland’s 103. I actually haven’t heard much of the station at all over the years so it might be time to give them a listen.

It’s important when working in radio to listen to stuff all over the place, this can give you new interesting ideas on how you can improve your own radio work. So,, this week I’ll have a listen to the new midlands 103 breakfast show, and I’ll share my findings over on the Radio Land Twitter.

Very best of luck to Peter from us here at Radio Land, I look forward to hearing the show during the week.

Read the story here

Finally this week, we got an update on the dispute between Wexford county council and South East Radio. If your out of the loop on this one, have a read of last week’s Radio Land as that has all the details.

The update this week is that the Wexford County Council Secretary has apologised for the email he sent to South East Radio.

In short, he apologised to the councillors for worsening the relationship between the council and the station.

“I wish to apologise to the Elected Members and to my colleagues at Wexford County Council for the manner in which my well-intentioned efforts to rebuild a strong working relationship between the Council and South East Radio have given rise to public controversy. It would appear this is exactly what has happened in relation to my email of 25thMarch 2022 to South East Radio. My email and its contents were designed to improve the working relationship between Wexford County Council and South East Radio, not to damage it further as I appear inadvertently to have done.”
Statement from council secretary David Minogue

As with our coverage of this last week, I’d highly recommend reading the Irish Times article on this. They have done a fantastic job covering the story so well done to them.

As I said last week, I hope this can be resolved. A relationship between media and the council can benefit both sides, but any control over content can’t work.

Read the story here

Quick Bits

RTE News has announced John Kilraine as the new London correspondent

Shaun Doherty of Highland Radio has announced he’s training to become a priest

Sunday With Miriam is up for sponsorship. It’s €45,000 for 6 months or €75,000 for a year

Two new presenters have joined Clare FM

A new round of Sound And Vision has opened

Folk On One is a new Folk music show launching tonight on Radio One

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 9/4/2022

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

Here’s what Happened

The BAI have upheld in part a complaint against the Neil Prendeville show. The complaint, which was made by Louise Harrington on behalf of Cork Traveller Women’s Network alleged that an interview with cork City counsellor Ken O’Flynn had contained a number of inaccuracies. The complaint further alleged that the interview was not conducted in an Objective or impartial manner.

The complainant felt that not only did the views of the guest not get challenged, but that they were reinforced by a number of comments made by the presenter.

“I give up! I give up!”
“Ah, come here, are we mugs or what, like?”
“This is intolerable”
“Ok, I think people have a much clearer opinion now and a much clearer idea as to what is going on and also, we’ve corrected some of the numbers. Ken, thank you so much”

All this was sparked by a report from the ombudsman For Children’s Office, and focused on the resedents of the Spring Lane halting site

You can read the full details of the BAI’s findings at the link below, but here are the main bits.

The BAI found that the presenter didn’t sufficiently challenge Ken’s views, and the broadcast didn’t reflect the views of those who contacted the show but didn’t want to go on air

“The bai felt these allegations and the manner in which they were treated in the broadcast presented stereotypical views about Travellers and showed no respect for the people who live in the Spring Lane halting site. They said the broadcast contained an inappropriate and unjustifiable representation of the residents of Spring Lane halting site and of Travellers generally and that the content amounted to a stigmatisation of Travellers,

There’s more stuff too but I’d recommend having a look at the BAI’s findings for more info.

It’s hard to know what to say about stories like this, but we can only hope that lesson’s are learned here and that this doesn’t happen again. It sounds simple, but just showing people a bit more respect could have avoided this issue.

Read the BAI’s complaints decisions here

Now it’s time to go back in time!!!

You might remember us previously covering the story about the chief executive of Wexford county council threatening to pull advertising from South East Radio. It led to a standards in public office investigation which criticised the chief executive, but eventually the counsel voted not to take any action on the report.

The last we heard of this story was the county manager getting a standing ovation over the incident. If you’ve missed our coverage of this you can check it out here.

Now though, back to the present.

It’s all happened again. This time the county secretary has asked south east radio to agree that presenters can’t share there views on air in exchange for advertising amounting to between €40,000 and €50,000

They also requested that the station keep all its audio for 2 years so that any dispute can be easily resolved.

The managing director of south east radio, Eamonn Buttle, has reminded the station of the recent investigation findings as well as pointing out that the BAI is the regulator of radio stations, and that the councel can’t become a “quasi-regulator” in exchange for advertising revenue.

The Irish Times have done some fantastic coverage of this situation which I’d really recommend you read at the link below.

This is a very messy situation unfortunately. But hopefully both parties can sort this out. For a local station like south east Radio council ads are essential, but any closer relationship is dangerous.

Read the article here

Finally this week, a number of Irish media organisations have come together to launch the Ireland For Ukraine fundraising effort. Those from the world of digital,tv, radio and print have all come on board to support the project with RTÉ and IBI involved from the radio side.

50% of the money raised will be split between a number of international aid agencies including Irish Red Cross, UNICEF Ireland, Concern Worldwide and Trócaire while the other 50% will be made available as grants to organisations supporting Ukrainians here in Ireland.

It’s fantastic to see collaboration in the media industry and especially when it’s for such a good cause. well done to everyone involved from us at Radio Land.

Check out the project here

Quick Bits

Red FM gave away a €15,000 wedding prize this week in their first dance competition

RTE News has been awarded a global journalism trust mark

BBC Radio Ulster’s the Nolan Show is causing controversy

Radiocentre Ireland are holding a launch event in the Aviva stadium

Rick O’Shea is taking a short break from RTÉ Gold. He will be back after Easter

The home of a Radio Éireann producer has gone on the market,

Will you shift my friend? Is a new podcast from Spin 1038’s Graham And Nathan

A number of Ukrainian women have started training at Radio Kerry

Clair Byrne was back broadcasting from her shed thanks to Covid

Cork City Community Radio received an interesting request this week

Mairead Ronan says she thinks a time will come when she regrets leaving radio

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 8/1/2022

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.

This Week in Radio 13/11/2021

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

Here’s what happened

The chief executive of Wexford county council has been accused of threatening to pull sponsorship from South east Radio in response to coverage he didn’t like. It gets worse though, The BAI also apparently issued a compliance notice to South East Radio for not recording the show in question.

This is a critically important story so I would highly recommend reading the Irish Times or RTÉ coverage of these events. they both provide fantastic detail on how everything unfolded so be sure to check out the links below.

Get the details from the Irish Times

Get the details from RTÉ

Mairead Ronan has announced she’s leaving her lunchtime show on Today FM. She’s been in the slot since September 2019 after replacing Muireann O’Connell. It’s unclear at this stage who will be taking over the slot but it will be interesting as this will be the first major decision taken since Bauer acquired the station.

Read the story here

Supercharged with Anna Geary on RTÉ Radio 1 needs a sponsor. More details on the show have now been confirmed including it Sunday evening slot. The show will air for an hour between 6:30 and7:30 each week and will also exist as a podcast.

The show will be on air for 6 weeks and will cover a wide variety of health related topics. The listed sponsorship fee is a cool €60,000 which unfortunately I can’t afford.

Get all the details here

Quick Bits

Former 2FM breakfast presenter Keith Walsh called RTÉ toxic this week saying he didn’t feel appreciated

Meanwhile the current 2FM breakfast team were singing a song of appreciation to their producer

Applications opened for the New york Radio Awards

A community station in Clare is struggling financially

The RTE Radio 1 Folk Awards are live Tuesday at 8pm

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.