Pirate.ie was featured on Castlebar’s community radio station, CRC FM this week. Brian Greene spoke to Angela Faul on The Chatroom on Thursday 12th November 2020 about our ongoing work in documenting and sharing Ireland’s pirate radio history.
You can listen to CRC FM in the Castlebar area on 102.9 FM or online here.
We’re delighted to announce the first episode of our new series of the Pirate.ie podcast. In this series, John Walsh and Brian Greene will discuss various aspects of Irish pirate radio history. We’ll have interviews with those who were involved in pirate radio and also bring you commentary on different types of stations from around the country.
Episode #1 is a discussion of the significance of the Irish pirate radio era of 1978-1988 which we are currently featuring in depth on Pirate.ie. The analysis is based on our recent article in the Journal of Radio and Audio Media which examined the political, economic, social, cultural and technological importance of the pirates for the Irish radio sector.
John Walsh and Brian Greene of Pirate.ie took part in a panel discussion entitled ‘Crystals in the Transmitter: Pirate Radio Archives in Ireland’. Also participating was Sybil Fennell of the great Radio Nova of the 1980s who has written a book about her memories of that exciting time. The panel was convened by Jennifer Vaughn, Senior Digital Librarian at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Carolyn Birdsall, Associate Professor of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. There was strong interest in the session, with up to 70 people in attendance.
Centre Radio began as a hobby station on December 19th 1986 from Baldoyle in northeast Dublin and came on air during school holidays. Brian Greene of Pirate.ie was one of the original founders and the other half of this site John Walsh was also involved. By 1987 the station had developed into a youth project and was training up to 80 young people in radio. From February 1988 Centre was on air every evening and weekend from Bayside. It was one of the last stations in Dublin to closedown at midnight on New Year’s Eve 1988.
This recording is of an oldies show presented by Bobby Gibbson (aka Brian Greene) on 25th September 1988. It includes community news and stations idents by Richard Taylor (aka John Walsh). Despite the claims in the idents, Centre broadcast in mono only, with the exception of its overnight stereo relay of the Radio Nova satellite service via the former Southside Radio FM TX in Dublin. You can read more about the history of Centre here.
On the 30th anniversary of the pirate radio closedowns, Ken O’Sullivan of the Louth local station LMFM talked to Brian Greene about that fateful day and the background to the Irish Pirate Radio Audio Archive. This was first broadcast at 1820 on 31st December 2018.