Pete O’Neill on the day of the recording, 24th March 1982 (courtesy Lillian O’Donoghue).
This is a recording of Cork super-pirate South Coast Radio shortly after the station’s official launch in March 1982. On air is one of the station’s founders Pete O’Neill with his early afternoon show. Pete thanks the late Hugh Browne who was on before him. News on the hour is read by Mark Lawrence and the show also contains a listener’s Top 5 songs and hospital radio requests.
Part 1 above was made from 1300-1345 on 24th March 1982. Part 2 below is from the same day and runs from 1346-1430. Both were made from 104 FM but are in mono. South Coast Radio also broadcast on 1557 kHz, announcing 194 metres.
Part 2 of the recording
Thanks to Lillian O’Donoghue for the recording and photo.
Keith York on 24.03.82 in the South Coast studio (courtesy Lillian O’Donoghue).
South Coast Radio was the first big station to shake up the Cork radio scene introducing a level of professionalism and slickness not heard on the smaller pirates that had sprung up since the late 1970s. The station was set up by Pete O’Neill and Peter Maher who had worked previously with Radio City and was on air by February 1982. South Coast was launched officially on March 3rd and the first voice heard was Peter Madison (RIP) who at various times presented on other stations such as Sunshine Radio, Radio Nova, Magic 103 and Boyneside Radio. South Coast was based at the Metropole Hotel in McCurtain Street until April 4th 1982 when it moved to Adelaide Place in St. Luke’s. On 26th September it moved again to a premises above Henchy’s Bar also in St. Luke’s. South Coast closed on 13th July 1984 and was revived briefly but didn’t last long.
This recording is of the late Keith York on South Coast’s official launch day, 3rd March 1982. It was recorded from 104 FM and runs from 1752-1855. The station also broadcast on 1557 kHz, announcing 194 metres. Keith had previously worked on the Voice of Peace, Radio Capitale in Brussels and in Dublin pirates Southside Radio and Island Radio. Thanks to Ian Biggar for the recording and Lillian O’Donoghue for the background information and photos.
Pete O’Neill in studio in March 1982 (courtesy Lillian O’Donoghue).
Pete O’Neill remembers:
I came up with the name South Coast Radio and the concept in the summer of 1981 having travelled to Portmarnock in Co. Dublin to spend a few days visiting Sunshine Radio. I approached Peter Maher, a salesman with me at Radio City and he agreed to work with me on it. He quit his job with an insurance company and we both left Radio City to work on the project. We had to sell some of our record collection to fund coffee and scones!
Peter assembled six business men in the Imperial Hotel and they all agreed to commit to the initial tune of £25,000. I travelled to London as a late teenager and purchased Technics turntables, Revox PR 99s, AKG Mics, a Quad amp and Kef speakers at a London outlet Music Lab. I also purchased many vinyl records at several stores to have shipped back to Ireland for a record library. After a trip around Capital Radio with Michael Aspel, I went to Kent to visit a rep for Pams Jingles. While there, I went over my lyrics to a re-sing of a QRUU/Radio Luxembourg package. I then headed to Brighton where I visited the Alice Stancoil factory and purchased an STM-8 Mixer (the same one as Sunshine had), an Alice 2008P production mixer and Sonifex cart machines.
I can remember all the equipment stored in a warehouse on Patrick’s Quay. I wired up the Revox and speakers and John Ashford (John Buckley) and myself listened to the new jingle package on Ampex tape. Amazing! We used the Southern Advertising Agency to design our headphones logo and they also did the initial launch photos using models. We secured a medium wave TX site near the airport which would be used with a 1kW transmitter. The then head of air traffic control at Cork airport built our FM TX, having given me a shopping list of parts including a Phillips stereo generator. He constructed it in his garden shed and I can remember him showing me the progress as it was built into a filling cabinet!
One of our shareholders knew the managing director of the Metropole Hotel so we acquired two rooms which we converted to studio/production. Great fun was had here with room service for the presenters! We even recorded cheerleaders from the States over for the St. Patrick’s Parade for station imaging. We made the front page of The Irish Times on April 2nd 1982 after Peter Madison told listeners to retune to watch him on breakfast television as an April Fool’s joke. The NUJ Cork branch were not happy with a pirate located in the hotel and protested outside, so we were forced to relocate.
I brought on many of the best local presenters to the station including Henry Condon (Alan Reid RIP), Neil Prendeville (Jim Lockhart), John Buckley (John Ashford RIP), Luke Ward, Steve Douglas and George Long. Most were on weekends so I needed to find others for weekdays. I was hoping I could attract some from Sunshine in Dublin like Tony Fenton and Declan Meehan but they had moved on to the new Radio Nova. Siobhán Walls and Stevie Dunne came down as did Keith York (RIP), Hugh Browne (RIP), John Kenny, Peter Madison (RIP) and Nick Richards. Later the line-up included John Lewis, Don Stevens and Steve Marshall.
We eventually moved to 40 St Luke’s Cross after a short stint at a premises nearby. This was to be our permanent home and consisted of reception, advertising offices, record library, production, news, and on air studios and of course a pub downstairs! I talked a friend’s mother to agree to give us a part of her farm land at Dublin Hill and we put up a higher AM mast there. We also flew in a 10,000 watt AM TX which took some time to get up and running with the help of Keith, Terry Vacani and a relation of one of our directors from east Cork. The sound and coverage was amazing with the signal loud and clear in Dublin and the south coast of England and London by night.
I gave away a £1,000 summer splash-out on air and the initial response was so great that it blew many of the Telecom exchange lines. I had to re-run it a week later! South Coast’s signal, sound, quality and personality of presenters and imaging was amazing and it quickly became an instant hit. There were problems down the road though with our new competitor ERI and we had water put into our site generator and then the entire mast was cut down. This, coupled with a major fire at the site and RTE jamming of commercial breaks, led to a quick demise of the station. I left in early 1984 as the writing was on the wall. I’m very proud to have met and worked with so many talented people, and to be afforded the opportunity to put on an amazing station while still in my late teens. South Coast radio will always be one of my favourite achievements!
Boyneside QSL postcard from 1982 (courtesy Ian Biggar).
In July 1981, a split in Boyneside Radio led to the breakaway station Community Radio Drogheda and the town had two rival stations for the best part of a year. This recording was made in July 1982, shortly after the two stations merged once again. There was some variation in the name around this time: the cassette label refers to Boyneside Community Radio and ‘Boyneside/CRD’ was used on air until the late summer, when the station reverted to Boyneside. Read more about Community Radio Drogheda here.
Cassette label referring to ‘Boyneside Community Radio’.
The recording was made from 1500-1535 on 19th July 1982 from 99.5 FM in mono. The presenter is Boyneside stalwart Eddie Caffrey with the afternoon ‘teatime’ slot and a lost-and-found section. News is read by Gerry Malone, another well-known Boyneside voice. There is some wobble on the cassette due to deterioration over the decades.
1982 letter from Eddie Caffrey to a Swedish DXer (courtesy Ian Biggar).
This recording is from the Anoraks Ireland Tapes Collection, donated to us by Paul Davidson. Further material from this collection can be found on Radiowaves and the Irish Pirate Radio Archive.
Boyneside Radio and Television sticker from 1982 (courtesy DX Archive).
This is a recording of Sean Neilon presenting the popular country and Irish show The Green Scene on Boyneside Radio in Drogheda on Saturday 20th March 1982. The first hour is all Irish music and there are also a few words of Irish to coincide with St. Patrick’s Day. Sean mentions a few times that they are also broadcasting on Boyneside Television, a reference to the short-lived television service that mostly relayed the radio programmes. The Angelus at 12 midday is followed by Dermot Kierans (RIP) with a programme about disability, which was progressive for the time and an example of how the pirates were about more than the Top 40. Dermot was a well-known figure in Drogheda who worked for many good causes in the town.
Cassette label from the Anoraks Ireland Collection.
This recording was made from 99.2 FM in mono. The first part above runs from 1058-1145 and the second below from 1145-1231. More information about the background to Boyneside Television is available here. One of Boyneside’s founders, Eddie Caffrey, has been the main presenter of the Green Scene through the decades and is still heard every Saturday on local station LMFM. It is the longest running programme on Irish local radio. Thanks to Ian Biggar for additional information.
Side B of the recording.
These recordings are from the Anoraks Ireland Tapes Collection, donated by Paul Davidson. Other material from this collection is available on Radiowaves and the Irish Pirate Radio Archive.
Unidentified DJ in the CCLR studio in 1983 (courtesy DX Archive).
This recording of Cork City Local Radio (CCLR) was made from 1830-1900 on 27th December 1982 and features the end of a marathon show featuring the Top 100 songs of the year. DJ Brian Downey has come to the of a long shift and signs off before the jingle at the top of the hour.
In September 1982, CCLR added an FM transmitter on 95.6 MHz in line in changes in radio listening. We have no record of the frequency from which this recording was made but it sounds like FM mono. Perhaps the tape recorder was set to mono on that day, or CCLR may not have had a stereo encoder yet.
