Author: Brian Greene

DEAD AIR is a live, theatrical, horrifying homage to the Golden Age of classic radio horror, when chilling tales of the macabre creeped into our living rooms through the crackling wireless.

Sleepless Nights Productions present SIX ten-minute tales of terror, plucked from the minds of SIX of Dublin’s most fiendishly twisted writers, and shocked into life by SIX of our delightfully demented directors in a night of ghoulish live entertainment!

DEAD AIR has sold out

Sunday With Miriam 22/10/2017

A host of broadcasting talent call in to pay tribute to Larry who is continuing to broadcast on Irish radio with so sign of stopping, ever.

If the player doesn’t display go here.

It is easy to see that radio is a resilient medium. It battled cinema and television and VCRs and internet streams and it still keeps going and keeps getting stronger. Not the tall head but the long tail of radio. Tall heads are playing classic hits and becoming more removed by the decades they aspire to. But the long tail of radio, under the radar, small audiences, medium audiences is bubbling and crackling with life. While they are bubbling and crackling they are still smaller than the tail head high tower radio groups but their business model has them streets ahead in the ROI game. Station versus station tall heads are bigger than the long tails, but the combined size of the long tail is now creeping up on the big old stations,(I do not have a source yet for this claim other than my own close observations of the growth on small scale radio projects in Europe & USA). This autumn’s edition of Index on Censorship magazine has a focus on radio being back, I would query was it ever away? It’s just the definition of who is radio and what is radio that is being reinterpreted. Have a read of it yourself.

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special edition podcast from Index on Censorship about radio.

The retro medium of radio is back, as we explore in the autumn issue of Index on Censorship magazine 2017, which is excellent news for the delivery of well, news.

“The new rise of radio allows more opportunities to discuss and debate than ever before, but we must also fight for radio stations to be unbound from state control and to be able to broadcast news freely,” Index on Censorship magazine Editor Rachael Jolley writes in the new issue.

Listen to a radio show, and you might be provoked, informed or excited about a new subject. But in listening you are doing something that is a little out of fashion, contemplating what others are saying, not tweeting some angry instant response, or even just posting the first thought that comes into your head.

After many predictions of its death, radio is on the rise again, its audience is growing across various age groups and various countries including the US and UK, and part of the reason might be because we are all a bit tired of transmitting constantly. Instead we appear to be happier to settle down and listen to radio and, particularly its news programmes, once again, argued Jolley.

We report that in the summer of 2017, around 48.2 million people in Britain listened to the radio at least once a week, up 0.9% from 2016. And in 2017 across the Atlantic, the USA is seeing a surge in listeners for news and talk radio. Of particular interest is the steady growth in those who listen to the radio for news in the 18 – 35 age group. “Radio was thought to be going out of fashion as new technologies elbowed it out of the way, but instead it’s back and gathering new audiences. Part of the reason might be growing awareness that someone’s ramblings are not necessarily a reliable source of information.”

Our special report on radio and its impact in 2017 includes a report from Laura Silvia Battaglia in Mosul on the radio station that is giving a voice to the residents of the city, while Claire Kopsky interviews people behind “radio boats”, which are broadcasting information on cholera in the Central African Republic in a bid to educate the population about the disease. We report on how Somali radio journalists receive threats from Al-Shabab for doing their jobs. “I check underneath my wheels, but normally they put bombs under the seat in your car,” says radio reporter Marwan Mayow Hussein.

Then there are the stories of radio proving a perfect outlet for people to share their most private inner thoughts and experiences, as radio star Wana Udobang writes about from a Nigerian context and best-selling author Xinran remembers back in China.

“Part of the increased popularity of radio is that it’s managed to evolve and we explore how podcasts are being made in some of the least likely – and most censored – places, such as China, and smuggled into North Korea.” The magazine also have a handy guide on making your own podcasts, for those with an idea.

But radio’s ability to reach the masses also means that this powerful tool can get into the wrong hands. Then there’s Rwanda, which two decades ago saw the airwaves being monopolised by voices promoting genocide. The country has moved on a lot, but radio there is still far from free. Veteran reporter Graham Holliday who has covered the country reports on the latest challenges.

And there’s interviews with BBC World Service English director Mary Hockaday, pirate radio DJ Allan Brando, Hong Kong broadcaster Hugh Chiverton and science presenter Robin Ince.

Outside the special report on radio, the magazine publishes a special investigation into the dangers faced by journalists in Mexico, by our special correspondent Duncan Tucker, who looks at how many reporters have been murdered since 2000, as 2017 looks to record the most killings for a decade.

For a single copy subscription to receive this issue
https://www.indexoncensorship.org/subscribe/
Source
Via DX Listening Digest 17-42
Via Medium Wave News 63/05, 6 October 2017
via DXLD

Rick O’Shea & Will Leahy are going to present live shows on RTE Gold from next month.

in a Facebook post Rick said

A little bit of news here for you on Facebook – I have a new job.

As announced today this Sunday October 15th marks my last ever show on RTÉ 2fm after 16 years here.

Before you all start gnashing teeth and weeping uncontrollably (I can hear you already from here, I really can) this is brilliant, exciting news.

I’m moving on to be a central part of RTE’s continuing development of our long-standing digital radio channels and I’m going to be back live on the radio 5 days a week in the afternoons playing music I genuinely like and love, this time as part of the first ever live weekday schedule on RTÉ Gold.

More details about that at the end.

That doesn’t mean though that it’s not hard to move on from the longest gig I’ve ever had, a place where I learned how to do this bloody job properly, and a spot where I made some genuine friends.

To give you some idea of where it fits in my working life I was 28 when I joined, I’m now 44 – I’ve spent 3 times as long here as I did at my previous longest job and almost 2/3 of my entire working life.

I started as pretty much the youngest person on the schedule in a room with desks occupied by Tony Fenton, Gareth O’Callaghan, Dusty Rhodes, Larry Gogan, Dave Fanning, Ruth Scott, Aidan Leonard and Gerry Ryan and now I leave 5 or 6 complete schedule changes down the line as, well, one of the more experienced staff… *ahem*

Time passes much faster than you think.

2001 seems like, if not yesterday, certainly a couple of years ago.

This is an astonishing, boggling job that has, over the years seen me do live radio shows in pretty much every county in Ireland and from San Francisco to Glasgow to Boston to Austria to Malta, interview Daniel Craig about James Bond, do One Direction’s first Irish radio interview, have Dave Grohl accidentally announce the Foo Fighters were headlining Slane, saw me onstage in front of 100,000 people in the Phoenix Park in a chicken suit, broadcast from dozens of festivals, ploughing championships, beach tours and 10,000 other tiny moments that are lost in the mists of time…

Actually, it’s not a job. It’s a brilliant, challenging hobby with a salary that seems to have, mostly at least, been fun for everyone who listened too.

It’s impossible to say goodbye to all of this though without saying goodbye to the show I do now.

Believe it or not Cormac Battle and I were thrown together 7 years ago, not really knowing each other terribly well at the time, and we’ve spent every working day since to the point now where we’re essentially an old married couple. Our on-air partnership may be finishing, for now, and Cormac will be staying in 2FM, but our real life friendship won’t be coming to an end.

If only because neither of us really likes other people very much and who else would put up with us?

As to what happens next, I’m going back to daytime radio, where I belong, to RTE Gold, along with the brilliant Will Leahy who’ll be doing the new breakfast show every day 7-10am

If you ever listened to 2FM from the 90s to about 2010 then things over there are going to sound awfully familiar. You’ll be able to listen on the RTE Radio Player app (or whatever app you use to listen to radio), through the RTE Gold website, on your Digital DAB radio or in the radio channels on your Virgin or Eir TV box.

Spread the word 😉

This hasn’t been an easy decision to make, it’s been a hard one, but it’s rare enough that you get a chance in this job to take over a greenfield site on a project that’s becoming something more and more exciting here in RTE.

I start live every weekday on RTE Gold 3-6pm from Monday November 6th.

You won’t be hearing less of me from now on, you’ll be hearing more. I’ve been made an offer I can’t refuse…

Thanks for listening.

R x