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Interview: Declan Meehan (part 2: 1982-1989)

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Interview: Declan Meehan (part 2: 1982-1989)
Declan Meehan and John Walsh at East Coast FM in Bray where Declan has worked since 1994.

In the second part of our extended interview, long-time broadcaster Declan Meehan discusses his move from Sunshine to Radio Nova in 1982 which was by then the biggest station in Dublin. He tells us how Chris Cary copied the sound of KIIS FM in Los Angeles to bring a new broadcasting style to Ireland. Despite his love for Radio Nova, Declan left the station because of the bitter NUJ strike in 1984. Although he moved into licensed radio in the UK and Ireland after that, Declan’s involvement with the pirates didn’t quite end there. The interview concludes with Declan’s thoughts on the pirate legacy and his views on the state of radio today.

You can hear the first part of this interview here.

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Interview: Declan Meehan (part 1: 1970-1982)

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Interview: Declan Meehan (part 1: 1970-1982)
Declan Meehan and John Walsh at the studios of East Coast FM in Bray, where Declan has worked since 1994.

We met one of Ireland’s most experienced broadcasters Declan Meehan recently to discuss his significant contribution to Irish pirate radio history and Irish radio in general over the past 50 years.

In the first part of a long interview, Declan discusses the early years of his involvement in the Dublin pirate scene spanning small stations such as Radio Vanessa and Radio Milinda and larger, more professional operations like ARD. He describes his unhappy move to the new RTÉ Radio 2 in 1979 and how he went on to work for the first of the superpirates, Sunshine Radio, where he met Chris Cary.

The interview includes references to many of the best-known names in Irish radio over the past half-century.

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Aircheck: Radio Annabel FRC

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Aircheck: Radio Annabel FRC
Radio Annabel ad from the Sunday World, 6 January 1985 (Alan MacSimoin collection).

Dublin station Radio Annabel featured a popular weekly Free Radio Campaign programme presented by Gerard Roe. This recording from 1985 features an interview with Chris Cary taken from Radio Nova in which he criticises the notion of community radio. It is followed by a reference to a newspaper article about one of the failed attempts to introduce legislation to regulate the radio sector during the 1980s.

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Interview: Denis Murray (Big D/KISS FM (102.7)/Radio Nova/KISS FM Monaghan)

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Interview: Denis Murray (Big D/KISS FM (102.7)/Radio Nova/KISS FM Monaghan)
A sticker for the KISS FM on 102.7 set up by Chris Cary, where Dennis Murray worked from 1982-84. Courtesy DX Archive.

On October 20th 2018 over 100 radio anoraks gathered in the Ballsbridge Hotel in Dublin. The purpose was to meet and record oral history of the pirate radio era. 

John Walsh interviewed Denis Murray about his pirate radio past including the early days of Big D, Radio Nova, KISS FM (102.7) in Dublin and another KISS FM (103.7) in Monaghan.