Category: General

Percentage of adults (over 15s) listening to radio daily

2017 82%
2016 82%
2015 84%
2014 83%
2013 84%
2012 85%
2011 85%
2010 86%
2009 86%
2008 87%
2007 84%

There is no doubt that radio is popular in Ireland but percentages are great at hiding the reality. In 2008 there was a 3% jump upward in a single survey (3 months). What happened. Well hundreds of thousands of people emigrated. These young people are statistically less loyal to radio. Their older parents are more loyal. The population fell by over 250,000 as the financial crisis (which is 10 years old this week) sent our young to Canada and Australia and many places in between.

Back home the Irish Times attributed the rise in listeners to our radio audience loving gloomy talk radio about the economic crash with the troika in town. Nothing could be further from the truth. Younger less loyal radio listeners left Ireland leaving older more loyal listeners at home. The population and total available ears to hear radio fell by a quarter million and radios daily listeners increased 3% but only as a percentage!

The anniversary of the economic crash reminds us that the crash is older than the iPhone. Released June 2007 it went on sale in Ireland in late 2007. The iPhone has probably done more damage to radio audience than the economic crash. Not to the age group that emigrated and now returned and not to their analogue parents but to the next generation. The Gen-Zeds are growing up with mediated musical/audio experiences delivered by internet protocol and not served by radio transmitters. The iPhone has no radio chip enabled in the device. The next generation is gone. No new youth radio (Spin, Beat, iRadio) have come on air since the iPhone arrived and one such station has departed in this decade with the departure of TXFM (nee Phantom FM).

If an industry is in a time warp where the playlists are getting older and older meeting retirement / comeback / reunion tours of the artists they play then radio is in a decline. The percentages will hide it for a while but radio is lost on the young and it need not be so.

A reinvention can show that the old school social media that was radio has a part to play in the one to many style of entertainment so lost on the youth of today.

image: http://www.mirror-image.com/audioinfographic/

BBC Radio Ulster’s ALT meets audio producer and engineer Julie McLarnon of Analogue Catalogue in Rathfriland. She reveals how she used her dad’s garage to build her first studio, How John Peel was a big fan of the early records she produced and she gives advice on becoming a producer.

Today I set up a SDR station. Basically I turned an old PC and a €15 RTL-SDR dongle into an online remote control radio tuner for up to 20 people to connect to at any one time. When my station is fully up and running people all over the world can tune in to a radio in Dublin Ireland on frequencies from 10KHz to 2GHz. The online part is powered by OpenWebRX.

You can try it out now at SDR.HU

Meanwhile I need to upgrade the front end receiver and get a upconverter to allow use on HF bands like LW/MW/SW.

I will update this post occasionally as to the progress. Needless to say radio that can be shared on the listening side can be shared on the station side too. If you want to join a small group of SWL/experimenters setting up a communal station on a very low budget email reception@radio.ie and I will add you to the WhatsApp group.

Update1: 08/08/2017 I over came a few hurdles with my ISP and router and have set up port forwarding and shared SDR with the world for an hour tonight. I have formed the WhatsApp group and so far 3 of us will set about setting up a station in Dublin 13. More research has gone into KiwiSDR SDRplay & HackRF.

update 2: screen shot 09/08/2017

This video might help explain the progression of radio signal processing

Little Road Productions’ radio documentary ‘The Cross Border Orchestra of Ireland: 21 Years On’ will be broadcast on LMFM Radio on Bank Holiday Monday August 7th at 12noon.

Funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) with the Television Licence Fee, this one hour documentary charts the amazing 21 year history of the Cross Border Orchestra Ireland, whilst following them through their Peace Proms 2017 concerts in Liverpool, Dublin, Belfast & Limerick.

Featuring interviews with Sharon Treacy-Dunne, Founder of the CBOI, and Greg Beardsell, Musical Director, along with soloists Patricia Treacy, Eoin Hynes, Zena Donnelly, Lauren Murphy and Cormac Keegan, the documentary also speaks with members of the orchestra from North and South including the Colmcille Pipe Band, Harris Piping, the Michelle Johnston School of Highland Dance and the Rooney O’Malley Maguire School of Irish Dancing.

It also features teachers & pupils involved in the Peace Proms from all across Ireland & also from Liverpool.

If you’re not in the Louth/Meath area, you can also listen in on www.lmfm.ie at 12 noon, Monday August 7th 2017.

The Irish Times reports that there are 13 groups with an interest in new FM radio services in Ireland.

While the 13 groups are not listed in the article there are a few of the well known groups wishing to expand their FM reach listed. 8 Radio, Radio Nova & Country FM.

The 13 would not include the aspirant community radio stations which alone would out number the 13.

FM radio continues to be the dominant platform for radio in Ireland where DAB radio has failed to grow. Last month the independent DAB Mux 2 closed down and a number of years of extended trials.

Do you like radio? no, do you LOVE radio? if the answer is yes then you must consider a visit to the Hurdy Gurdy Radio Museum in Howth in County Dublin.

The Martello tower stands on the site of a former motte castle of the St. Lawrence Estate. It is also said to have been the site of the original Howth Castle. The museum gets its name from a comment made by the late Seán Lemass (former Taoiseach) while visiting the radio studios of Radio Éireann in Dublin. He referred to the radio service as “the old hurdy-gurdy” as whilst on his visit to the studios the RTÉ Concert Orchestra (then known as the Radio Éireann Light Orchestra) was tuning up… and the sound was reminiscent of a ‘hurdy-gurdy’.

The museum first opened in 2003, Pat Herbert, the curator, had been looking for a suitable premises to display his vast collection of radios, gramophones and other radio-related paraphernalia. Fingal County Council offered the recently refurbished Martello Tower to Pat for use as a museum. Pat maintains the museum as a labour of love. It is not run as a commercial enterprise. He enthusiastically gives of his time voluntarily, purely for the pleasure and enjoyment he derives from it. He is joined in his efforts by a team of volunteers, who all provide tours and introductions to the collection.

visit the Hurdy Gurdy web site before visiting in person.

[reblog] EI6GSB Conor Farrell writes

Have you ever listened to your own local or national radio stations and wondered what similar stations are like around the world? Maybe you’ve listened to news bulletins in the US and wondered what was being reported in the UK about the same events. These days, it’s easy to get the information we need over the internet, and I’m often asked why I bother listening to radio when I can just stream the audio online. Those of an older vintage will know that receiving radio signals from around the world was a normal and everyday experience, and that listening to radio has a certain “quality” that online digital audio streams simply can’t provide.

read the article in full

12 months ago today Radio.ie was deployed to broadcast a very special radio station reunion of Big Beat Radio, 30 years after its first transmissions in Baldoyle village in 1986.

Hear again the 2016 station and some special programmes replayed from 1986.

podcasting isn’t radio – like steam isn’t water