1986 Archives - Page 17 of 19 - Irish Pirate Radio Audio Archive

10th May 20206th January 2024

Automated shows on Charisma Radio (Dublin)

Charisma Radio was a low-power station broadcasting from various locations in Dublin in 1985 and 1986. Our recording from 98.1 FM is from the 9th of April 1986 and includes announcements that the station broadcasts to the neighbouring areas of Ranelagh, Rathmines and Rathgar on the southside of the city. The Anoraks Ireland report of the 19th of April 1986 lists Charisma FM as an irregular station on 97.9 FM from Blackrock/Phibsboro. It operated from a top flat at 11 North Circular Road for a period but had in fact moved to Ranelagh by that time. Charisma on 98.1 pops up in the Anoraks UK Weekly Report from June 1986 but by October, Ranelagh Community Radio is being reported on the same frequency. This was Charisma under another name because RCR is listed by Anoraks Ireland in 1987 and again in 1988 at the same address: 19 Dunville Avenue, Ranelagh, Dublin 6. There’s a scratchy RCR jingle below based on the original Royal County Radio package. Under either guise the station seems to have operated in the evenings only.

This recording of Charisma is an automated broadcast complete with periods of dead air. It begins with music and idents and after that is an American Baptist religious programme. Listeners are invited to write to the programme in Arkansas but that is followed by an announcement of Charisma’s Dublin address offering to forward letters to the US. Dublin had its own dedicated Christian pirate stations throughout the 1980s but American religious programmes popped up on smaller stations such as Charisma presumably for economic as much as for religious reasons.

One of the presenters on Charisma from North Circular Road was Colm O’Gorman, now Executive Director of Amnesty International Ireland, who remembers feeding the electricity meter to keep the station on air. Colm told us: ‘It played sermons on reel-to-reel as a revenue stream but all the DJs were gay men and played lots of high energy and house music. I always played Bronski Beat “It ain’t Necessarily So” after I had to put out one of the sermons!’

Reception is weak on the recording with plenty of interference but this is as the low-powered signal would have been heard on the northside of the city, well outside the target area. The recording is from the Skywave Tapes Collection. Skywave Radio International broadcast a shortwave station in the 1980s from Baldoyle in northeast Dublin.

16th April 202024th March 2024

Evening shows on Centre Radio (Clonmel)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Centre Radio was an offshoot of CBC Radio which started broadcasting from Clonmel in Co. Tipperary in November 1981. CBC had a strong community ethos but station boss Paul Byrne wanted a more youth-oriented station and so set up Centre Radio in April 1986. The station lasted until 1987 before being renamed as Premier County Radio.

This recording is from 7.46pm on the 18th of July 1986 and was recorded from 88 FM. Centre also broadcast on 1251 kHz AM. The presenter is Eoin Ryan, who would later become producer of RTÉ’s Nationwide series. Paul Byrne’s voice is heard on the news intro and on some of the adverts. He retired in 2020 as CEO of Radio Kerry. You can listen to a documentary about CBC here.

We thank Jonathan Ryan for his assistance with background information. This recording is from the Skywave Tapes Collection. Skywave Radio International broadcast a shortwave station in the 1980s from Baldoyle in northeast Dublin.

30th March 202010th April 2024

First day of Liberties Local Community Radio

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

This is a recording of the first day of Liberties Local Community Radio (LLCR) from 4^th April 1986. The presenter is Paul Barrett and this is aircheck includes jingles and a helpful interjection from Brian Greene who informs us that the FM transmitter on 96.7 was running 50 watts. There’s a change in sound quality half-way through, when it seems the source was switched from FM to the AM transmitter on 1035 kHz.

LLCR broadcast from Weaver Square in the Liberties until the end of 1988 during which time it changed format and name several times. You can hear LLCR jingles here. This recording is from the Pirate.ie collection.

22nd March 202025th May 2024

Munster Broadcasting Corporation from Limerick

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Limerick really punched above its weight in the golden age of pirate radio prior to 1989. There is some good material online about the Limerick stations including a blog about Big L, Liam Byrne’s radio site, the DX Archive Limerick pages and our own entries featuring Limerick. This recording from July 1986 provides a snapshot of one of the city’s lesser-known pirates at the time, the Munster Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) which despite the grandiose name operated from a tiny attic studio on Catherine Street in the city centre.

MBC was linked to other Limerick stations Radio Vera and Radio Munster. A corporation it wasn’t, and it certainly didn’t broadcast to the whole of Munster, although there were some ads from Tipperary and they claimed to have three FM frequencies covering Limerick, Clare and Tipperary. There was nothing remarkable about the music on MBC – it was the usual diet of the Top 40 – but it was a presenter calling himself Will Rogers who made an impact during our short visit to Limerick in 1986. He did a lunchtime show and also voiced most of the ads and jingles in one of the stranger mid-Atlantic accents of pirate radio in the 1980s.

13th June 20198th September 2021

Pirates co-operate in charity marathon

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

In 1986, three large pirate stations – Sunshine Radio in Dublin, ERI in Cork and ABC in Waterford – co-operated to jointly organise a 250-mile maxi-marathon between the three cities.

Here are two promos – the first from ERI and the second from ABC – voiced by Mark Byrne of Sunshine Radio. They are fascinating on so many levels: co-operation between pirate stations, a campaign backed by big commercial sponsors and funds raised going to a major charity, the Central Remedial Clinic.

This is a good example of how the archive can give us a more global view of what was happening in the 1980s. Listeners to each station did not know that all three stations were involved but the archive can tell us that. Arguably the level of co-operation surpasses what exists today between stations in the same large radio groups.

It also reminds us that despite often fierce local competition, stations from different parts of the country were willing to co-operate for charitable causes. No doubt they also had an eye to the impeding legalisation and wanted to position themselves as socially responsible.

These clips are based on recordings from the Leon Tipler Tapes Collection and the Skywave Tapes Collection.