What's your fascination with radio?

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I was just reading one of the threads, and commented that I think the forum here has really improved over the last number of months. We really are seeing some interesting, informative and funny posts from people on both sides of the radio.

Why do we all care so much?

I have had a love of radio for years. I used to have the radio with me late at night going to sleep. I was listening and analyzing already at that stage.

I studied radio in Ballyfermot, and enjoyed it immensely. I worked voluntarily part time in local and community stations for a number of years, and even had a blast at presenting. It wasn't for me. I enjoyed it, but didn't feel like it was where I could stay. I didn't feel like I would be suitable for it to be honest. What's the point in continuing down a path you are enjoy but can never quite be satisfied in. There were other reasons too, but I'll sound like a moaning ould fart (as usual) if I go in to them! One of them is that it is an incredibly hard job, and even harder to make money doing!

I'm now studying another field, and working full time in something that will help me get there. I listen to the radio all day, and often give out about it here!

I just enjoy thinking through the processes of what goes on in studio, how it could be done better, how a music choice is bad or good, what ACTUALLY happened when the dead air came, what systems they are using, where have they got that audio from, is that text real or made up, are they live, what is that being said in his ear, that song will be too long for just before news, who edited that so badly etc etc it goes on and on...

Please share your general radio thoughts

Skid

I got a radio when I was about 8. Loved it straight away. Tuning in to all the BBC Stations on AM and LW, it seemed like another world. Started listening to the radio in bed, usually woke up with the earphones still in and the radio still on. I still listed to the BBC more than any Irish station.

Always bring my tiny portable radio on holidays, I love scanning the dial and hearing the different stations. I scan the car radio if I am driving around the country, to get the local stations. I think it is a great medium with huge diversity and I hope it survives and thrives for many years

Justfolk

I could write a book on radio in my life, I think. (Hmmm maybe I should.) I'm sixty this year and one of my very earliest memories is lying on a countertop while my mother moved around the kitchen working, listening to and singing along with the radio. The radio was always on in my childhood and I had a sense that all of those people, talking and singing, were somewhere very special, and I was connected to them. I grew up in the television era but, through most of my childhood, my family did not have a set, so radio was my constant companion, all day, and even at night with little, sometimes homemade low-tech radios under my pillow.

That sense of connection keeps me glued to the radio decades later. I have radios in every room and -- except at work -- I've got one on almost all the time. But even at work I keep one close at hand for when I need it. That's mostly local radio.

For twenty-odd years as a young adult, I listened to shortwave radio obsessively. In the early 1990s that started to tail off for various reasons. After a ten- or twenty-year flirtation with the Internet as my regular source of immediate contact with the rest of the world, I've drifted back to shortwave. In between, I spent a couple of years trying to get something sensible out of satellite radio (the commercial services -- on this, western, side of the Atlantic that means Sirius-XM) but discovered that it is so homogenous that it's useless. There's still a lot of *real* radio on shortwave, so I'm back home again there. I'm listening to Radio Australia on their longterm fq of 9580 right now as I type this. Australia is almost as far from here (Newfoundland) as you can get, but that fq has been reliable every morning for at least 35 years. That's what I like about radio.

msg11

My real love with radio is the equipment and FM rigs. Give me a transmitter and I would be entertained for hours even with it just putting out 1watt of energy.

I have since moved onto community radio but still dream looking at the stuff for sale on Aareff and PCS Electronics.

If I won the EuroMillions I would buy a 20KW TX from PCS just to look at it, wouldn't turn it on as you would more than likely be turned off within the hour by ComReg.

wnolan1992

Fascinating question... one which I don't think I can answer that well, but here goes.

I can't remember when I first started listening to the radio. I remember it would always be on in the car whenever we went somewhere, usually listening to dodgy local radio stations with cringey Irish country music on. My Mom would (and still does) have 103FM (now C103) on listening to Jimmy Reidy at the weekends and "Around the Fireside" (I think) at night time.

Thinking back, my first experience with actually "presenting" a show was in National School. One of my friends and me started up a piss-takey TV/Radio station in the corner of the schoolyard (WCW: Worst Channel in the World :pac:), and used to do parody shows when I was in about 2nd or 3rd class. I used to love doing my own version of the Jimmy Reidy show, and later on we would do a Seanachai type show, where I'd tell a really rambling story in a harsh Kerry accent with my friend asking questions like "Oh, was he Maguire from the Maguires up around the Glen?"...

We even did our bit for the Irish language, with our quality show "A Dhaidi agus a Mhac! (sponsored by Smarties)" where we pretended to be father and son and got in arguments because the son wouldn't eat his dinner, all delivered through our limited command of Gaeilge... :pac:

I also vividly remember a massive old radio my Dad had, which was the only radio I've used that had MW, LW, AM and FM. Used to spend hours trying to tune in MW and LW stations, and got a giddy thrill whenever I'd get a German or French station to come through clearly.

I remember the plays and books that RTE R1 would broadcast on Sundays, and loved (hell, I still love it) just turning off the lights and sitting in total darkness listening to them.


The first show I remember purposefully tuning in for was The Blast! with Ray Foley back in '04. I'd have been 11 or 12 at the time, and to this day it's the show that has had the most impact on me. Listening to them just having a laugh, not taking things too seriously... well, it was something completely new to me. It opened up a whole different side of radio - radio for young people. (which maybe explains my fanatical love for him, which anyone who regularly reads the Foley Show thread will be aware of )

From then on, my obsession grew. REDFM was a revelation to me when we first learned about it. To listen to local radio which wasn't the standard "Mary in Ballyhooley is having her Station mass at 8:00pm tonight, coming up next it's the Deaths." was so refreshing. SPIN SW to a lesser extent also showed me that radio wasn't just Gerry Ryan or Ray D'Arcy moaning about stuff.


When it came time to choose my college course, there were ever only two real choices; Computer Games Development in UL or TV, Radio and New Media in Tralee. In the end, I opted for UL, and while I don't regret it for a second, I still wonder sometimes...

In May 2011, I was sitting in my friend's house having a few beers. I noticed a flyer on the table and inquired about it. He said that it was a campaign flyer for someone running for Communications Officer in the SU, and that she wanted to establish a radio station for UL (UL hadn't had a station in years since some falling out they had with Wired FM). She got elected, and I fired off an email saying that I'd love to be involved in whatever way I could.

Come September, there was a makeshift studio established in a disused office in the Student's Union Building, and I was timetabled for two shows on Mondays; One a politics and news show with as a co-host, one a blatant rip off of Tony Fenton's "The Essential _____" series which used to be on Today FM.

I still remember the first show. The nerves were almost unbearable. But once the first link was done, we just relaxed and had a ball. We were only supposed to be on for an hour, but at quarter to the hour the station manager came in and was like "Lads ye're doing great! Listen, the people after ye didn't show up, do ye want to do a 2nd hour?"


Being involved in college radio has just increased my fascination with radio in general. I know there's no real comparison between what we do and what the big national DJ's do, but even so I think it's helped me get a better understanding of what the pros do.

There's a certain buzz I get from presenting or producing a show. I can't explain it. I suppose it's escapism really. Just like when I was younger and I could listen to a radio show and just totally forget about everything else that was going on, when I'm in a studio and the mics are open, all exterior crap is gone for an hour or two.


But yeah, I'm rambling now.

_feedback_

It's a hard decision isn't it wnolan. I'm content at the moment being away from it. I was getting bogged down with the business side of it. Loved programming and being creative and having a laugh but then the grown ups come along and spoil it!

Community radio is great because you can do a lot more. More enjoyable. As a business it's tough, but if you can enjoy it, it's wonderful.

Having it as a hobby is the best way for me, and look forward to getting back to it in a couple of years maybe with a bit more volunteering in community radio.

In the meantime I'll continue to moan about Ray Darcy!

Lovely Bloke

As a listener, I've loved Radio since I don't know when.

Back in the early to mid 90s, I loved some of the pirates on Dublin Radio.

One of my favourite memories is living on the Northside, and on a Friday afternoon sticking a radio nearly out the window so I could pick up Dun Laoghaire Local Radio (DLR) to listen to the Chaos Rap Show, brutal reception, but I still recorded the songs - still have the tape somewhere with those recordings.

Then there was Pulse - what a station that was, I used to love listening in at about half four on weekdays when they'd do the "top 5 of the day" - real "in the moment stuff", I still remember lying on my bed when they shut down for the last time "It's not over, not over, not over yet".

There was a pirate broadcasting at about 92FM in Dublin, think it was Energy, and they'd broadcast BBCR1 until thier actual DJs came omn air, sometime around 3PM I think, maybe later.

That was my first introduction to the greatness of BBC Radio. Zoe Ball then Sarah Cox in the mornings. Then Chris Moyles "The Saviour of Radio 1", Marc & Lard awesome show.

Phantom too, when it was a pirate, was a great station. I loved, loved the "Anorak Hour" on a Sunday morning, I wish somewhere would revive that.

On the LW side of things, Atlantic 252 holds a special place in the memories of a lot of people in the early to mid 30s age bracket I imagine, sounded so exotic, if onlt we'd realised it was broadcasting out of Meath!

These days, I'm on the internet radio, trusty old Logik IR100 still going strong. Stations from all over the world in crystal clear quality, Australian ABC, American MW Newstalk from the different cities and NPR, The Isle of Man, Jamaica - all kinds of music, Jazz Fusion, Dancehall, Deep House, Industrial Metal.

Radio is so eclectic, opening you up to all kinds of opinion and output.

Most recently I headed to bed on the evening of the NYC "Superstorm" and was able to listen to live updates from people actually living through this event.

Amazing!

msg11

TheNinthGate wrote: »

There was a pirate broadcasting at about 92FM in Dublin, think it was Energy, and they'd broadcast BBCR1 until thier actual DJs came omn air, sometime around 3PM I think, maybe later.

That station would have been Freedom 92FM , TX was transmitting on 92.10Mhz..

Lovely Bloke

msg11 wrote: »

That station would have been Freedom 92FM , TX was transmitting on 92.10Mhz..

ah yeah! Freedom, thanks!

Declan A Walsh

My earliest memories of my childhood include the radio in the background, and it has been there ever since, except often it has NOT been in the background. My parents used to listen to RTE Radio 1 regularly and I initially grew up with that station too. I liked those minority programs where they played pop music and Pat Kenny's late-night albums show! Over time, I began to respect at least The Gay Byrne Hour.

I started to play around with the radio, which had MW, LW and VHF (FM). I discovered foreign-language stations on LW and, somewhere along the way, BBC Radio 2. Certain programs on BBC Radio 2, such as Tom Browne's Top 20, were a simultaneous broadcast with BBC Radio 1. This in turn led me to exploring BBC Radio 1 on MW, mainly to hear more of the music I was interested in. I noticed too the personalities of the deejays.

I discovered Radio Luxembourg on 208 metres on the MW dial and got hooked on its evening shows, especially the chart shows, and I became very familiar with the names of the presenters. This was the era of the transistor radio in the bedclothes!

I don't know whether or not it was through word of mouth at school or not, but by 1978 I was also listening to Dublin pirates. This is where things got really exciting on radio. I was a regular listener of pirate radio until 1988 - the golden era. Along the way, Radio 2/2FM got a bit of a blast too. When Radio Nova arrived in 1981, FM (formerly called VHF) got more attention nd it was not long before most of my listening was on FM. There was to me one major exception - more later. I lived in Hertfordshire (south-east England) in 1986, where I heard the local BBC station and the local independent station Chiltern Radio. I was surprised to hear a familiar voice on the latter from superpirates Sunshine Radio and Radio Nova - namely Tom Hardy! I got to briefly hear Radio Caroline (the original of the species).

My personal favourite pirate was Capitol Radio (1983 - 1988) - it also had an alterego Nitesky Radio.

Come 1989 and there were very few pirates on the radio: the Grandaddy of Irish pirates - Radio Dublin - was one of the few. I listened to RTE's Dublin station - Millennnium Radio. July arrived with the first of the licenced independent stations - Capital Radio (now called FM104). Of course, there were many familiar voices from the pirateworld. Century Radio and 98FM followed in September and November respectfully. Also in September, the result of a joint venture between RTE and RTL (Radio Luxembourg's parent company) arrived on the airwaves: Atlantic 252. This station broadcast from Co. Meath and was mainly geared towards the U.K. market. What was unusual was that it was on 252 metres LW.

During the early '90s, I bought my first car and it had a radio with MW/LW and no FM and no tape or CD player! Atlantic 252 came at the right time for me. It served its purpose.

From the ealy '90s, there was something of a resurgence in pirate activity in Dublin. I began to twiddle the knobs again on FM! There was DLR, Coast FM, exciting new dance pirates, and later Phantom FM. From the '00s on, we entered the era of the temporary licenced stations. Phantom went from being a pirate to being temporary licenced to being fully licenced.

There are a load more licenced stations these days and a handful of pirates. Dublin has two stations with different slants on rock music, which is good news for us rock fans, even if it is not perfect. That said, things have got very homogeneous, generic, repetitive and predictable on radioland. The magic and sense of adventure of the early days of radio has long since dissipated but I still listen.

two wheels good

There's a famous BBC radio interview, - maybe it was just a brief vox pop - from way back where a child is asked why he prefers radio to television and he replies "because the pictures are better". I don't think it was black and white TV he had in mind. Radio drama done well can be fantastic.

decies

Am listening to bbc five live as we speak, love sport on radio especially cricket lol.

Gerardo_12

The best thing is falling asleep with the sound of radio, and I find that radio makes music more attractive sometimes, espeicially old songs.
Stories are also great.

OisinS94

For some reason most songs sound better on the radio, especially in a car when a song you really like comes on the radio it just for some unexplained reason sounds even more brilliant.

Anyways most radio is **** these days. I do like Cormac Battle on RTE 2FM though (which is on at the moment)