From Radio Caroline, Bayside, to Legal Radio

Declan A Walsh

There used to be a pirate called Radio Caroline, which broadcast from Bayside, Sutton, in north Dublin, for most of the '90s (and maybe the early '00s).

Given that it was around for quite a while, I wondered who went through there that ended up on legal radio.

I can only come up with three examples.

1. Pearl: she spent a few months on **Radio Caroline before getting involved with Phantom through its various phases. She left Phantom in September 2012. Pearl turned up in 2013 and 2015 on 8Radio.com's temporary license runs.

2. Mike O'Brien: Radio Caroline was his first pirate. After some more pirates, he ended up on a couple of temporary licensed stations, including his own (90s Network). Mike has had a few gigs in the last year or so on 4FM and Radio Nova.

3. Daragh O'Sullivan, aka Steve Davitt, did a stint with Radio Caroline before setting up Pulse FM with Ronan Brady. Since then, he has been involved with a number of temporary licenses including Christmas FM, of which he was part of the management team.

Any more examples? How about Near FM - the community station for the north-east of Dublin?


** An aside: Phantom had the rather unique situation of also having a presenter through all its phases who had been with the other off-shore pirate Radio Caroline - Steve Conway! And they both turned up on 8radio.com as well!

end of the road

if i remember rightly, the station survived until 2000.
i think
1. they were off for a little while that year, before coming back for a time.
2. they were on and off a lot during that little bit, until they shut for good.
3. they were raided at some stage that year, either at the time they went off before coming back, or after they came back which caused them to shut for good.
i'm open to correction on all of this though.

Infoanon

end of the road wrote: »

if i remember rightly, the station survived until 2000.
i think
1. they were off for a little while that year, before coming back for a time.
2. they were on and off a lot during that little bit, until they shut for good.
3. they were raided at some stage that year, either at the time they went off before coming back, or after they came back which caused them to shut for good.
i'm open to correction on all of this though.

Don't remember the raid but do remember the trouble they got into when they put out white noise on 102.5 after link problems - Lite were not happy ,R na Life never had any issues with Caroline...,did they change their name to Alcatraz or XTC at some stage ?

Caroline also brought us the Sunset beach parties in the 90s...

end of the road

Infoanon wrote: »

Don't remember the raid but do remember the trouble they got into when they put out white noise on 102.5 after link problems - Lite were not happy ,R na Life never had any issues with Caroline...,did they change their name to Alcatraz or XTC at some stage ?

Caroline also brought us the Sunset beach parties in the 90s...

i actually was thinking earlier they had gone before lite came on air, but now you mention it you have reminded me otherwise (sadly i didn't pay enough attention like i should have back then but some things do come to me from time to time)
thinking back now that you mentioned Radio na Life and the fact they didn't have issues with caroline, they were originally on around the 102 mark weren't they? before being moved to 106.4.
i'm unsure if Caroline did become something else but Alcatraz and XTC are familiar names. xtc i think was on back around 2001/2?

Declan A Walsh

end of the road wrote: »

i actually was thinking earlier they had gone before lite came on air, but now you mention it you have reminded me otherwise (sadly i didn't pay enough attention like i should have back then but some things do come to me from time to time)
thinking back now that you mentioned Radio na Life and the fact they didn't have issues with caroline, they were originally on around the 102 mark weren't they? before being moved to 106.4.
i'm unsure if Caroline did become something else but Alcatraz and XTC are familiar names. xtc i think was on back around 2001/2?

I'm open to correction on this, but I think Caroline was on 102.4 for a few years and then had to move to 102.5 because of the arrival of Raidio na Life on 102.2. It was a station which could be picked up on the southside.

I thought of two more names since.

1. Derek Jones - Unlike the other examples I gave, Derek was a veteran of pirate radio by the time he joined Radio Caroline. He then went on to Beaumont Hospital Radio. Derek was involved in all 3 temporary licence runs of Premier FM and the first couple of runs of Christmas FM.

2. Bryan Wilson - Bryan presented the Very Varied Music Show on Radio Caroline, a show which he later presented on 2 of the temporary licence runs of Premier FM. I don't know much about him, but what I heard of him on Premier FM suggested he was of the same vintage as Derek Jones and I suspect would have gone back a bit with the pirates like Derek. If memory serves me right, Bryan had to drop out of Premier FM due to ill-health. That\s the last I heard of him - that would have been 2005.

Declan A Walsh

I found something by Brian Greene, who I think was the owner/operator.

https://audioboom.com/posts/924658-radio-caroline-dublin-jingle

Basically, Radio Caroline started as a weekend station in 1989 and became a 7-day station after merging with Suburban Radio. Radio Caroline ran until 2001 when it morphed into WXTC. I never knew any of this before!

I also got a another name for my list - Billy Lee. He presents a program every Friday night on Dublin City FM.

I'm up to 6 names now. Surely, there must be more examples.

Losty Dublin

end of the road wrote: »

i'm unsure if Caroline did become something else but Alcatraz and XTC are familiar names. xtc i think was on back around 2001/2?

Alcatraz came from Botanic Avenue in and around 1994. It played very alternative rock and hadn't anything to do with Caroline 102.5. There was an X FM back in the day; is this what you are thinking of?

As a side note, I recall Caroline having a Shortwave relay. Was this via the Prince Terry Ozone International output?

Declan A Walsh

Losty Dublin wrote: »

Alcatraz came from Botanic Avenue in and around 1994. It played very alternative rock and hadn't anything to do with Caroline 102.5. There was an X FM back in the day; is this what you are thinking of?

As a side note, I recall Caroline having a Shortwave relay. Was this via the Prince Terry Ozone International output?

Alcatraz was Aidan Lynch's alternative rock off-shoot of Coast FM. Subsequently, a mixture of Coast FM and Alcatraz staff founded Spectrum, which was renamed to Phantom... and the rest is history!

I believe WXTC was the station that End of The Road was alluding to - see my previous post. This came out of Radio Caroline.

Losty Dublin

Declan A Walsh wrote: »

Alcatraz was Aidan Lynch's alternative rock off-shoot of Coast FM. Subsequently, a mixture of Coast FM and Alcatraz staff founded Spectrum, which was renamed to Phantom... and the rest is history!

I believe WXTC was the station that End of The Road was alluding to - see my previous post. This came out of Radio Caroline.

He may well have been referring to them, yes, but as he was talking about mid 90's I simply threw out the X FM of that era in case he was getting waylaid, something us anoraks always do mid thread

Infoanon

Declan A Walsh wrote: »

Alcatraz was Aidan Lynch's alternative rock off-shoot of Coast FM. Subsequently, a mixture of Coast FM and Alcatraz staff founded Spectrum, which was renamed to Phantom... and the rest is history!

Small correction - Spectrum closed after causing interference unintentionally (think to aircraft) - Phantom appeared a short while later once the TX had been cleaned up