Author: Brian Greene

I came across the music of Peddyr Cubberley in an interview on Manx Radio back in April 2017. I was in Dublin in the car listening to 1368KHz (Manx Radio) and Peddyr said that radio brought the music from Ireland to his ears in Isle of Man and it fostered in him a love of Celtic music which is native to Isle of Man and Ireland. (not a verbatim transcript from the broadcast but a general sense of what was said).

This idea intrigued me. And it really shouldn’t. Irish audiences listened to Radio Caroline North anchored off the Isle of Man. My good Friend Graham on the Wirral caught the wave of A Woman’s Heart listening to Moloney After Midnight on 1278KHz RTE Radio 2. So radio with medium has reach, daytime and a different nighttime reach, as my friend John Walsh puts it, medium wave has geography. It broadcasts from a point and radiates outward overseas (it likes salt water) crosses borders and reaches people outside of its target geography.

I asked Peddyr if he would answer some questions about how music travels on medium wave and being part of our shared heritage.

BG. When did you first hear radio from Ireland.?

PC. 1970s.

BG. What stations / shows / genres did you hear? any level of detail is useful including years / decades.

PC. RTE Radio 1 – Gay Byrne / Long Long Note / Mo Cheoil Thú (Ciarán MacMathúna), most things trad. 1970s to date.

RTE Radio 2 from it’s launch in ’78 was it? Dave Fanning, Larry Gogan etc. 1980s

Radio Nova – Declan Meehan, Colm Hayes, Bob Gallico & Sybil Fennell (News). Can’t remember who else. Nova had a big following in the IOM in those days, so much so that I remember that they even came here a couple of times with their roadshow! 1980s.

BG. In your opinion how useful is Medium Wave radio for the propagation of traditional music in our Islands?

PC. 50/50 I’d say. Much further reception than VHF, hence being able to listen to stations on AM/MW that couldn’t reach on VHF. Downside is, it’s prone to interference and fade at night, often being ‘bled over’ by European stations. Largely irrelevant today with the advent of online streaming globally/smartphone apps.

BG. With the closure of Irish Medium Wave radio in 2008, how has this impacted on the reception of traditional music in your life?

PC. A little negative, as some shows couldn’t reach some parts of the Island on VHF alone. No problem at home as can use online streaming/catch up/ podcasts etc. Just disadvantaged in the car really, but I can live with that!

BG. Does online broadcasting supplement broadcast transmissions of the past or is there a loss of continuity in the platform change?

PC. I think it does. It can richly enhance traditional broadcasting.

BG. Any additional comments on this subject beyond the questions above?

PC. A few years ago, the then Director General of RTÉ Cathal Goan, visited the Isle of Mann and held a meeting (as I understand it), to look into the possibility of having RTÉ TV/Radio relayed throughout the Island due to it’s small relatively population, and shared Gaelic linguistic and cultural heritage. I haven’t heard anything about this since. I guess the idea got dropped since 2008 when the ‘credit crunch’ happened.

My thanks to Peddyr for sharing his views on Medium Wave Radio.
here is some music from Peddyr Cubberley with some stunning drone photography of the Isle of Mann

Peddyr’s music is also on Facebook.

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