Monday, May 22, 2006

Newstalk 106 to go national


Good news for all those people who live outside Dublin, Newstalk 106 has been granted a national broadcasting license. The license is "quasi-national" covering 98% of the country and lasting 10 years. They are planning to go national by the end of the year, probably October, just at the same time as I head to Australia so I'll miss their first 3 months, but they do provide podcasts so I will be able to keep up to date from the other side of the world.

It would appear that they are planning on tweaking their line-up.
Targeting over 25s, big name presenters Eamon Dunphy and George Hook have been secured while the colourful civil rights campaigner Senator David Norris is also being lined up.

The station has said it is committed to bringing more Irish language programming to the airwaves along with shows for immigrant communities while limiting music to three tracks an hour.

I hope they keep the shows I listen to Eamon Dunphy, George Hook, Sean Moncrief (from time to time) and especially Ger Gilroys Off the Ball show. It's the best sports show on Irish radio, and is on every evening of the week (in fact they are on now and have warned their competitors around the country that they are coming for them :-) ).

7 comments:

-Ann said...

I'd call it a happy day for those outside of Dublin but a sort of bittersweet day for those inside Dublin. The character of the station is going to change even more. National issues will dull the focus on local issues and waterdown the quality of the station.

Maybe it's just that I don't like change, but I'm not optimistic about what this means.

Anonymous said...

Me neither. Call me selfish but i liked it as a Dublin station.

Mind you, I'm only a regular listener to Off the Ball and the sunday sports show .

In the morning I prefer Radio 1 and Ian Dempsey to Dunphy. And I prefer Matt Cooper ( or RTE 1 or 2FM for that matter) to Hook.

Declan said...

Ah but being a bogger myself I like the idea of being able to go home and still listen to Newstalk.

I dont think the station will change all that much, if you think about it most of the issues it deals with are general non local ones. Other than sports I dont think it has much of a Dublin bias.

Another bonus is I wont have to sit through May, June and July listening to "Dublin are Great" in the run up to their annual defeat in the football championship. ;-)

Anonymous said...

Well, Gilroy is from Kildare and their GAA man, Ciaran Murphy is from Galway... If you want to be irritated by real Dubs talk then tune into Anna Livia!

Anonymous said...

Hey Ciaran! You should be happy for Declan. I suspect he was single-handedly keeping the ratings up in leaner times. Their enlargement to the rest of the country is a just reward for his loyalty and relentless evangelising of the station.

:-)

Declan said...

Yeah, and Dubliners never really appreciated Newstalk 106. :-)

Anonymous said...

Well they have been nationalising the content for some time now. The only real Dublin Focus to the station is City Life. I really loved the early days of the station when I'd tune for the local event guide, and hear local dubliners complain about the state of the local park. I'm sure someone will come along to fill this gap.