Community/Local/College Radio

flatyre

Do any of you listen to/participate in any of the above?

Im involved in my local Uni station <plug>queensradio.org</plug> and I can honestly say its the best club I could have joined at Uni. Various villages around the north get restricted licences for stations from time to time, and I was wondering if anyone was involved in anything similar?

monkeyfudge

The community radio movement is very big Ireland actually. There are about 19 Community and College campus stations in Ireland las time I counted.

Oddly the three big colleges in Dublin don't have thier own stations. DCU used to have one though called Dublin Weekend Radio.

The term Local radio would generally refer to local commerical stations though.

I've been involved in the community radio movement for over 10 years, and I work at a station in the North East of Dublin.

Bard

http://www.craol.ie/

I'm involved in Community Radio here in Dundalk with Dundalk FM 100 ( www.dundalkfm.com ) and have my own show on Friday nights ( www.niallok.com/WallOfSound )

flatyre

From what I hear the college stations make do with community licences, and as such are bound to have a proportion of their output as 'community interest'. We're lucky in that we have a restricted commercial licence, even though we've avoided advertising thus far. Although, we do have a top notch news and features team.

Cheers for the link to craol, I'll see if I can pick up more info there.

dajaffa

monkeyfudge wrote:

Oddly the three big colleges in Dublin don't have thier own stations. DCU used to have one though called Dublin Weekend Radio.

Actually 2 of the big 3 do. Here in UCD we have belfield fm, + trinners has trinity fm. DCU + Griffith have them too, dunno about others. We're actually all on the same frequency (97.3, for now anyway), and in any one week only one (if any depending on term time etc) is on air, though some may do some internet only broadcasting.

Belfield fm goes live from 8 to 11ish live when we're on air, a lot of the other colleges broadcast a lot of pre-recorded stuff.

Btw Trinity ot in trouble this year for broadcasting in a week they weren't supposed to (cause of the frequency sharing), and they could have trouble getting their licence nexxt year.

monkeyfudge

I don't think those are proper full licenses, they're only temporary ones.

Cork, Limerick and Galway are the only campuses that have full community of interest licenses at the moment. DCU used to have a community of interest license, but when their license was up for renewal they went and formed an alliance with Trinity and UCD to have a single city wide college radio station for Dublin... but Trinity and UCD pulled out at the 11th hour and DCU didn't have time to pull their own application together... this is a good few years ago though.

The Muppet

dajaffa wrote:

We're actually all on the same frequency (97.3, for now anyway),

Why "for now " is there a move on ?

What license do the college stations operate under. Is it the low powered institutional one or a modified community license?

monkeyfudge

The Muppet wrote:

Why "for now " is there a move on ?

What license do the college stations operate under. Is it the low powered institutional one or a modified community license?

It's temp one.. They take turns operating on that frequency.

Belfield is working on getting a full license as far as I know.

projectmayhem

i'd love to get into it, but with the whole "no experience" stuff it kind of sucks. i've wanted to get into podcasting (best way to get into radio right now IMO, bar a full course in radio obviously) but really just never made any moves to do it.

sadly for ireland i'd love to do a "bunch of mates being funny" style thing, but laden with music. it just suits the podcasts i download (lazlow!... i've pimped that thing to high hell here )

edit: by music i mean my crazy eclectic "who are they, i like it" style... because i'm a music pimp

monkeyfudge

Well the community station that I work for provides training for anyone.. you certainly don't need experience... that's pretty much the whole point, the fact that it gives a voice to anyone.

That said... we tend to shy away from music programming and commercial radio style programming.

projectmayhem

monkeyfudge wrote:

Well the community station that I work for provides training for anyone.. you certainly don't need experience... that's pretty much the whole point, the fact that it gives a voice to anyone.

That said... we tend to shy away from music programming and commercial radio style programming.

yeah that's why i'm thinking of investing in some nice software and a good mic set-up, or even just asking nearFM for an hour in the studio to podcast. i've no "career intentions", just have always been interested in it. i'm not really interested in that community radio type of show, unless someone's doing a games panel discussion

monkeyfudge

projectmayhem wrote:

unless someone's doing a games panel discussion

Actually I used to do a game review show back when NEAR fm first started. And I'd love to do it again. I just don't have the time to take it on by myself. But I'd definitely take part if someone else got one off the ground.

ha.... it was called the Binary Zone.... oh... memories..

The Muppet

projectmayhem wrote:

i'd love to get into it, but with the whole "no experience" stuff it kind of sucks. i've wanted to get into podcasting (best way to get into radio right now IMO, bar a full course in radio obviously) but really just never made any moves to do it.

sadly for ireland i'd love to do a "bunch of mates being funny" style thing, but laden with music. it just suits the podcasts i download (lazlow!... i've pimped that thing to high hell here )

edit: by music i mean my crazy eclectic "who are they, i like it" style... because i'm a music pimp

As monkeyfudge said above there are ways into radio without experience and without studying it. Hospital Radio is another avenue open to you, it can certainly provide experience and if you are good enough you will be able to move on from there.

projectmayhem

monkeyfudge wrote:

Actually I used to do a game review show back when NEAR fm first started. And I'd love to do it again. I just don't have the time to take it on by myself. But I'd definitely take part if someone else got one off the ground.

ha.... it was called the Binary Zone.... oh... memories..

i'd gladly get into it if someone got it off the ground (having zero experience means i wouldn't be the best fit to get anything going).... but don't call it the binary zone. please.

dajaffa

The Muppet wrote:

Why "for now " is there a move on ?

Heard murmurs of the frequency being moved to 100 n something cause the 97.3 frequency might go to a commercial station at some stage. Hope fully we'll have a proper licence in 1.5/2 years time and we'd be changing frequency then anyway.

tj-music.com

flatyre wrote:

Do any of you listen to/participate in any of the above?

Im involved in my local Uni station <plug>queensradio.org</plug> and I can honestly say its the best club I could have joined at Uni. Various villages around the north get restricted licences for stations from time to time, and I was wondering if anyone was involved in anything similar?

I work for NEAR FM and have my own show every Tuesday and this is the best that ever happened to me. In Community Radio I can go deeper into topics than I could on commercial radio and even with a smaller listenership I believe my show makes a contribution and raises awareness.

Since I work for radio I also listen to plenty of other community stations as we network a lot and it is very educating and cool. I guess I would never have listened to community radio because "community" sounds so small - but that would have been so wrong!

www.indepthradioshow.blogspot.com

Tuesdays 3.30 - 4.30p.m. on 101,6FM or www.nearfm.ie / livestreaming

dino4t3

Lo all. Just thought I'd add my 2 cents worth. Am involved with a Roscommon community radio for two years, and its been a great experience. Lovin it. We have been using the station up till recently for training ppl for the Fetac Broadcasting cert

feel free to check it out at www.rosfm.ie