Irish radio has a shakeup
Fun to have been in Dublin in Ireland for Radio Days Ireland earlier this month. Ireland is a vibrant and positive radio market, with a few surprises.
Wireless Group rebranded as “Onic” just before the conference started. The company, which also includes a radio sales house previously known as urbanmedia, owns a number of the larger radio stations in Ireland, like FM104 in Dublin, Dublin’s Q102, and Cork’s 96fm.
Most interestingly, Onic will also launch ten DAB Digital Radio services in Ireland. DAB has had a chequered past in the country: national broadcaster RTÉ launched it, then closed it, and commercial radio has never been particularly interested in it much. That all changes with Onic, who pile in with ten stations (kids, hits, gold, classical, RnB, 80s, Country, Rock, Movies, Pride and alternative).
Onic have managed to get a test licence covering Leinster (basically, 2.8mn people in Dublin and the surrounding commuter areas). And, unlike any DAB market before, it’s got a whole lot of receivers already there - because cars in Ireland have got DAB inside them (thank you, EU regulations and the closeness of the country to the UK). So, just like the random Mitsubishi I’ve been driving as a hire car in South Australia this weekend, DAB is ready to go.
Ireland has historically been a very regulated market for radio - more regulated than most, with quotas on the amount of speech, in particular. Arguably, Irish radio is the better for it: celebrating record audience levels, and while I’m sure the regulations are not particularly liked by the industry, they have kept radio relevant to the audience. The other highly-regulated English language market, Canada, should perhaps learn from it.
Jeff Geerling and his radio engineer dad have built what they call the “radio broadcaster’s dream rack” - a standardised setup for transmitters. Looks a fun idea, and potentially useful.
Steve Jones from Canada’s Stingray Radio highlights that people in advertising think that radio is dead - when the truth is that it is still significantly more popular than streaming. And it’s true: it’s surprising that the ad business doesn’t appear to believe radio is still as popular as it is. Perhaps there may be a demographic issue here, though.
Interesting to note that the Mad Fudging Witches (not their real name) have been monitoring the Kyle and Jackie O “hour of power” (compilation daily show) on regional radio stations across Australia - and notes that for the first time, the hour got no advertisers at all on aany of their monitored stations. “Wholly unsustainable”, the group suggests. They’ve been trying to convince advertisers to pull ads in the K&J show for some time. Looks like they might be having an effect.
I note that Boyd Leader is out of Bell Media “due to restructuring”. Canadian radio has suffered a lot of cuts recently. Here’s hoping someone snaps him up.
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Where I am speaking next
- Radiodays North America, Toronto ON, Canada (May 7-8)
- The Podcast Show, London, UK (May 20-21)
- Podcast Movement, Dallas TX, USA (Aug 18-21)
- Radiodays Asia tbc (Sep 1-3)
- Pennine Radio’s 50th birthday! In Bradford.
- PodSummit YYC, Calgary, Canada (Sep 19-20)
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