Whatever happened to frequency splits on local radio ?

I remember years ago Midlands 103 had a gold split for Athlone and Galway bay FM in the evening would put top 40 music and classic hits on the city frequency and the usual country n western/hospital requests on the county frequencies. I sure other local stations did it too

dxhound2005

LMFM do it for sport. On 28 March, both the Louth game and the Meath game in the Leinster Football Under 20 Championship, will have live commentary. But only on LMFM.ie and on their App. That is the way of the world now, people are listening to "radio" stations not being broadcast by a transmitter.

I think Shannonside Northern Sound have different sports commentaries sometimes, coming from actual transmitters.

marno21

C103 still do it on Sunday mornings, John Paul McNamara on C103 North/City/East Cork (103.7/102.6/103.0 Youghal/102.9/103.3 Fermoy/103.5 Cork Harbour) and John Greene on C103 West (103.3/102.7/103.0 Kinsale/103.9 Clon/103.9 Macroom).

I'd imagine that Galway Bay split was for the younger audience in the city, back before the days of iRadio. Radio Kerry did something similar, they had a youth output (R2K) on the 96.2 Tralee frequency back when there was no station for 15-34 year olds. This is 20 years ago at this stage.

Declan A Walsh

I read before that Ocean FM sometimes had different programming at certain times in Leitrim from the rest of its allocated region (north-west). For example, Paul Williams used to present a programme that was aired on the Leitrim transmitter.

LMFM had a second channel for a while called Fresh FM until they were informed that they could not do that!

TheBMG

I’m almost certain I’ve heard KCLR do it for sports events.

Glaceon

LMFM once ran a spin-off service on their Saggart transmitter but had to stop after a couple of days because they weren't licensed for it.

Declan A Walsh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120428339#Comment_120428339

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120429753#Comment_120429753

I alluded to that in my post, but it's good to get more clarification on that.

TAFKAlawhec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120428339#Comment_120428339

Ocean FM (and North West Radio) before it definitely used to have some separate programming between it's main 102.5 MHz outlet (Truskmore, Sligo) and it's 105.0 MHz South Donegal outlet (Mountcharles, Donegal). There's a small relay station in Ballyshannon on 94.7 MHz not because there's difficulties in receiving the main 102.5 service, but for the service on 105. Not sure if there still is a regular split service with Ocean FM, but I'd imagine it still allows them to tailor sports coverage when needed e.g. Donegal on 105 & Sligo or Leitrim on 102.5. AFAIK there's never been any opt-out for (North) Leitrim audiences on Ocean FM, the area's easily enough served by the 102.5 TX, there's no relay station in the county for Ocean FM and the population of North Leitrim would likely be too small to be commercially viable for a regular opt-out.

L1011

Both Ocean and KCLR still used (last time I saw them, fairly recently for Ocean and a bit longer ago for KCLR) separate PI codes and RDS IDs for North/South and KK/CW respectively, but I don't know if they do ad splits.

FreshFM was on air for a bit longer than a few days! Had full studio set-up in Clonee.

It was very cheeky of LMFM to basically set up an new youth station targeting Dublin on one of their frequencies

Declan A Walsh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120441753#Comment_120441753

Fresh FM was effectively a pirate station, without intending to be!