How relevant are regional radio stations?

seachto7

Hi,

Was thinking about this the weekend while I was flicking around radio stations. I rarely listen to local or regional radio, for the simple reason I don't find anything good on them.

There are a few specialist music shows that can be good in the mid west region, but it's not anything I couldn't listen to online anyhow.
I often find they will try and copy the format of a national station, but after a while the topics being discussed become boring, as they run out of material, trying to keep it local.

I just find a lot of them pale imitations of national radio. You flick through and most of them it's the same bog standard music.

Is it just a case that we are too small population wise to have all these small stations. Would it be better to have apart from the national stations, a station that would cover Munster and would focus mainly on Munster news, another for Connacht etc. RTE has it covered for Dublin, I mean, Leinster already!:)

I just don't see the relevance of half of these regional stations....

MJ23

South East Radio is brutal. Poor diction by most presenters.(da races in turles at tree a clock). Crap music, Richie Kavanagh, Daniel o Donnell. I listen in sometimes just for a bit of a laugh.

youtube!

" The death has taken place this hour of Biddy Reilly of Ballygobackwards" .....:o

thats about all I hear on them, awful.

Fran1985

youtube! wrote: »

" The death has taken place this hour of Biddy Reilly of Ballygobackwards" .....:o

thats about all I hear on them, awful.

Death notices bring in big bucks for the stations that still do them, and that, unfortunately, is why they will remain part of the schedule. They are awful tho.

But OP are you perhaps talking more of the local stations such as mid west, Galway bay, South East, rather than the regionals, beat, i, Spin SW? The locals really are aimed at everyone 45 and over. Same faces/voices in there since day 1 who lost interest in trying to impress in the job a long time ago. Not all of them by the way, there is people in those stations with ambition, but A LOT have given up their ambition and just go from one day to the next without giving too big a dam

mike65

Although I'm sure every local station is online I never think to have a listen and hear if they are as bad as I suspect (!) locally WLR is the main player but I never listen beyond the odd news headlines, which do indeed feature death notices at 9 am and a couple of other times I think. They held out for a long time before starting that feature.

batm!ke

Beat 102-103 do quite well for themselves in fairness. Not my cup of tea at all, too much shyte nightclub music at strange times of the day and not much variety but they market themselves very well and get involved with Twitter, FB etc. Their Breakfast crew have a very easy chemistry and would be the only thing worth listening to imo. In saying that if Today FM is too chat-heavy I will put on Beat just for some music. They always seem to be going up in listenership though, I reckon they're popular with 16-25 crowd in the South-East.

WLRfm on the other hand... lord have mercy

Technocentral

youtube! wrote: »

" The death has taken place this hour of Biddy Reilly of Ballygobackwards" .....:o

thats about all I hear on them, awful.

So sad, she was a daycent skin.

signostic

I invite you tune into BogWest sometime

http://www.midwestradio.ie/mwr/index.php

padd b1975

signostic wrote: »

I invite you tune into BogWest sometime

http://www.midwestradio.ie/mwr/index.php

Yes indeed, easily the most popular station in its region and has been since it was formed.
Its run as tight as a drum and gives its listeners exactly what they want.

A genuine west of Ireland success story.

theholyghost

I think this says a lot about regional radio in Ireland, not everything but a lot.

flyswatter

LMFM, my local one is pretty shite.

padd b1975

flyswatter wrote: »

LMFM, my local one is pretty shite.

How did it do in most recent JNLR?

flyswatter

padd b1975 wrote: »

How did it do in most recent JNLR?

No idea sorry.

seachto7

I will say I mainly listen to talk radio, but anytime I have listened to local talk radio, it appears to be them trying to make a big deal out of really trivial issues, just to fill time and content....

Highland Radio in Donegal is a fairly decent local radio station.

A lot of country music but for people who are into it, it suits them down to the ground. I think their listnership figures are quite high, for a local radio station.

Lapin

Galway Bay FM is my local station.

I don't listen to it anymore apart from tuning in for the local news headlines when I think of it, and for sports commentary involving Galway based teams.

I stopped listening to the daily current affairs programme (The Keith Finnegan Show) a couple of years ago as I became fed up of the daily obsession with the HSE, and with the programme being used as a mouthpiece for priests and nuns.

Apart from that, Finnegan's habit of referring to every item as "a situation" and saying "in relation to" and "indeed" in almost every sentence became too annoying to bear.

The rest of the schedule if filled with hyper DJ's playing "Hit after hit of Galway's favourite music mix" and blah de blah blah blah.

I know a few people who work for the station in various different roles, and because of them, I'd be sad to see it go. But apart from some of the sports coverage, I wouldn't miss it.

efb

They serve a purpose- I don't think they're aimed at your typical boards poster.

battle_hardend

seachto7 wrote: »

Hi,

Was thinking about this the weekend while I was flicking around radio stations. I rarely listen to local or regional radio, for the simple reason I don't find anything good on them.

There are a few specialist music shows that can be good in the mid west region, but it's not anything I couldn't listen to online anyhow.
I often find they will try and copy the format of a national station, but after a while the topics being discussed become boring, as they run out of material, trying to keep it local.

I just find a lot of them pale imitations of national radio. You flick through and most of them it's the same bog standard music.

Is it just a case that we are too small population wise to have all these small stations. Would it be better to have apart from the national stations, a station that would cover Munster and would focus mainly on Munster news, another for Connacht etc. RTE has it covered for Dublin, I mean, Leinster already!:)

I just don't see the relevance of half of these regional stations....

obviously you are ignorant of how important the death notices are to irish people who ate thier dinner in the middle of the day

battle_hardend

flyswatter wrote: »

LMFM, my local one is pretty shite.

what about the cattle mart reports ?

seachto7

On top of the local ones, you have community radio, some of which is horrendous, I happened to tune in to a Tipp one last week, and it was so bad, it was good. There are people on it who shouldn't be let near a microphone. On the other hand, youngsters can cut their teeth on community radio, and you might hear Slayer being played in the middle of the day!! :)

flyswatter

battle_hardend wrote: »

what about the cattle mart reports ?

Actually my original comment was a tad unfair, used to love listening to it when they'd let us know when school was cancelled due to bad weather!

eyeinthesky

Regarding comments on Midwest Radio i cannot agree. Personally as a listener from pirate days to recently the standard has declined drastically. Personally i think the performance of the station generally is very poor with even the programme schedule on the local paper at least 1 year out of date. Then with regards to guidelines to playing music one presenter quotes Broadcasting Commision while the next plays their own favourites maybe twice a day, because it it a regular occurence one presenter may do two shows and maybe the news also. I am allowing for pepole getting ill or holidays who need time off. Then there is no local news on bank holidays only streamed national news. It must be easy to get awards with this preformance, I think it is time to tune elswhere.

withless

Northern Sound used to have its moments but went to hell when Shannonside got involved. Enda should get off his fat arwse and split them up again.

And now, we regret that the following people have died...

Death notices sponsored by Brady, O'Reilly and Smith, have all your macabre fantasies brought to life in our new showroom on the navan road on this side of Cootehill.

leggo

It depends what you take relevant to mean. For example, I wouldn't consider having specialist music shows 'relevant' as the vast majority of people just want to listen to the top 40 and a relatively small pool of classic songs from the 70s onwards. However, if you meant in terms of relevant to each individual, I get you.

I take relevant, in this context, to mean leading the way and innovating, finding out what the public wants before they want it and delivering. Like Apple, say, with their products. Or how X Factor/Pop Idol capitalised on the growing dream of the everyman to become a rich, famous celeb. And in that context, no I still don't feel Irish radio is relevant.

There was a great phrase on Dragon's Den the other week "If you're following a trend, you've missed the boat." And radio in Ireland is all about jumping on trends and bandwagons, especially local radio. Note how if you ever hear people talking about something they heard on the radio, it's not the chatter or content they generally speak of, but they talk about the radio talking about something else. The radio is just a mirror of what is relevant, instead of being what is relevant. Very few set the trend or social agenda, they just reflect it. And as a result most are pretty much resigned to mediocrity. There's no real brand loyalty, you'd happily flick off any station as soon as you flicked it on. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the complete opposite of the idea of radio?

Unfortunately, Irish people are possibly the most passive-aggressive on the planet and won't force change until something directly affects them (and even then we're still slow to the mark). So instead of switching off, finding alternatives elsewhere and sending a loud message to the top dogs, we settle for less and flick from mediocre station to station for all eternity.

Don't believe me? Where are the big brand leaders in the JNLRs? Where's the dominant players? Movies have box office smashes, TV have ratings behemoths, what does radio have? Nothing. Everyone is scrapping for listeners. There's very few clear market leaders in any area (except for Radio 1, who use the licence payers' money to line the pockets of people the public don't see as deserved). That's not the way in any other entertainment field, but it is in radio. Strange, no?

I look forward to radio staff and hierarchy under aliases trying to spin the clear, black-and-white numbers to convince everyone the elephant in the room is actually a tiger.

flazio

True that during day to day life, these stations are dull, but during major emergencies such as big freezes, floods etc, they really do come into their own as the main relevant information provider. Even in this smartphone age, the local radio station has a knack of getting the info first.

wnolan1992

Their relevance and their quality are two very seperate issues.

Relevance
There are two types of local stations. You have the C103(Cork), Live95(Limerick), Kerry Radio, typ stations which are solely aimed at the over 40's. They don't want, nor aim for a younger listenership imo. For the people that listen, these stations are still highly relevant. They bring local news, death notices, trad music, etc. Weather reports are also way better on local radio because of their local nature.

I would imagine, that when the majority of people on this forum are past the 50 mark, you'll have a new generation of local DJ's playing all the hits from the 90's, early 00's that people in their mid-twenties/early thirties now would love.

You also have the iRadio, Spin, Beat type stations. I think if you asked any teenager they'd tell you that these stations are very relevant in their lives because they cater solely for them.

It's not so much a question of relevance as demographic.


Quality
Quality wise, regionals/locals cannot, and should not be expected to compete with national stations. It'd be like comparing a student radio station with the BBC. They simply don't have the resources or skill. If they did, they'd be quickly snapped up by nationals (KC and Muireann O'Connell come to mind).