radio nova

MikeyTaylor wrote: »

I'm younger than any of the Nova presenters and my knowledge of rock knows hardly any bounds. From what I know Steve was on several pirates as a teenager, including a dance one called NRG, in which Nova CEO Kevin Branigan was involved as well.

peterobrien100 wrote: »

There was another chap that used to be on Saturday nights for a while before ALice Cooper and he fills in the odd time for the breakfast show at bank holidays and Xmas called Mark Taafe ! Think he was on NRG as well I would ask for Declan A Walsh to confirm same !

Declan A Walsh wrote: »

Yes, both Steve McQuarrie and Mark Taafe were both with Energy FM this decade! Steve was involved with a number of dance pirates, but I don't know as much about Mark. I did hear that he was the station manager of Energy.
I don't think Keven Branigan was involved with Energy!! He had well left the pirate scene before Nova started! Maybe you are thinking of Pulse FM in the mid '90s.

Infoanon wrote: »

Mark Taafe was on Kiss103 - Kevin Branigan was behind Kiss, Kiss later applied for a licence but got knocked out early on in the process.
Pulse and Energy were closely linked.

MikeyTaylor wrote: »

When was Kiss on the air? Both Steve and Mark are in their late 20s/early 30s so I'd imagine they wouldn't have been that old when they were on the pirates.

Yeah, there is considerable confusion here! Let's see can we clear it up.

Kevin Branigan was behind chart-oriented Dublin pirate Kiss103 in 1993 - 1994. Dance pirate Pulse FM succeeded it in 1995 and had many of the same personnel, including Kevin. Eventually, Pulse closed down in 1999. Kevin was well gone from the pirates before then. Two linked stations were set up by ex-Pulse staff: Essential FM and Galaxy FM. They merged to become ESG FM. During the early '00s, this was succeeded by (or renamed to) Energy 94FM - the Energy pirate that infoaman is obviously referring to as it would have had quite a few staff that went back to Pulse.

I think Infoaman is confusing Mark Taffe with Glen Taffe (I think that's his name), who was on Kiss103 and possibly Pulse FM, but I don't think he was involved with the others.

As Mikey rightly points out, Steve McQuarrie and Mark Taffe are not from that era at all. They were involved with dance pirates from the late '00s on, one of which was Energy FM a few years ago, This was not the same Energy referred to just above. Don't forget there were a number of pirates in Dublin over the years called Energy and, for that matter, Kiss, and there was at least one other Pulse FM in the late '00s. By the way, just to confuse things more, there was another dance pirate called Energy (Energy 88FM) in the late '90s, while Pulse was on the go, and was nothing to do with the one which indirectly succeeded Pulse FM!! At least one person involved with Energy 88FM (Ronan Scannell) was involved with Pulse before it stopped!

MikeyTaylor wrote: »

It's still a big step up for Dav.

Without a doubt. Hopefully it's a step in the right direction to put him more mainstream. But his playlist is more like Peter Devlin, Pat James or Gavin Glass. If Nova had any sense, his first daytime slot would be Mike Moloneys......What we don't need is Deeeeeeeee six times a week

MikeyTaylor wrote: »

Traic O'Braonain is in for Davin O'Callaghan. Tg seinnm roinnt cheoil dhairire andúileach! :-)

Traic's links are very beag. Are they voice-tracked?

I think all Traics shows are pre-programmed. It's just a stock of audio bytes stuck in between songs......every now and again, just to make it sound random.

MikeyTaylor wrote: »

A few questions.
1. Is Davin only usually on Fridays, post-Ainscough?
2. Why just use sound bites of Traic O'Braonain? He stopped doing live shows on Nova a while back so is there really any point in using archived sound clips?
3. And finally, if Alice Cooper's show has indeed been desyndicated from Nova, then that's a shame. But isn't syndicated programming much cheaper than live presenters?

1. Think Davin is 1-6AM after Friday Rock Show. But with Tony off last night for ZZTOP gig it might have screwed up the schedule.

2. Prob to fulfil the BAI guidelines on the stupidly mandatory Gaelic content. He was prob paid upfront for the bites. If you hear it regularly, you'll recognise that it's just the same stuff repeated........much like the day to day playlist sadly.

3. Don't know if Alice Cooper is gone yet. From Maxs' post, there was obviously tech problems so maybe the feed didn't come in. Hope Branners paid the ESB/Eir bills this month or we'll be stuck with more bad DJs :pac:

Thinking back, Fri night Sat morn web presence was totally off. Was being shown the live DJ was either PC or GG and the now/next was off by hours. Whoever is looking after the tech side in Nova needs to be sacked or properly trained.

There have been ongoing problems with news playout for a while now - which is a surprise given the people behind the scenes at Nova.

Hopefully it will be sorted out soon as it does detract from the overall professionalism of the station.

Some noticeable changes to the playlist - interesting times

Is it safe to tune in on Saturday mornings yet ? Has Mike Moloney gone ?

No more Alice Cooper Who is replacing him? Ruth bloody Scott! It's becoming a joke now.

MikeyTaylor wrote: »

Separate thread for that.

Seeing as I don't do any of the other radio threads (this one is the only one I read), I was unaware you had started a thread about it.

RIP Nights with Alice

MikeyTaylor wrote: »

It will still be on Planet Rock as far as I know.

And his own site I think. But that's not the point - it's the dumbing down and turning of Nova into yet another crappy pop station.