Irish Pirate Radio Audio Archive
Open Free Radio Archive
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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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CBC Radio started broadcasting in the West Gate, Clonmel in November 1981 and continued until the enforced close down of all pirate stations on New Year’s Eve 1988.
Over 100 volunteers, along with a handful of part-time and full-time staff, contributed on the air, and the station was hugely popular among young and old in Clonmel, Carrick-on-Suir and surrounding towns.
Over the past three years, former staff member Jonathan Ryan has been researching the station’s history and listening to many audio tapes recorded during that time, along with interviewing former staff members to bring to life this audio history of life in the West Gate.
With thanks to Jonathan Ryan for an advanced copy of the audio and for a amazing work of journalism in making this radio documentary. First broadcast on South Tipperary General Hospital Radio, December 27th 2018.
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In this interview from December 2016, John Walsh speaks with Dr. Rosemary Day, Head of the Department of Media and Communication Studies in Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick. The post-1988 licencing of radio and the development of the community radio space are discussed. This interview was first broadcast on Wireless on Flirt FM.
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On October 20th 2018 over 100 radio anoraks gathered in the Ballsbridge Hotel Dublin. The purpose was to meet and record oral history of the pirate radio era. Declan Ralph has been on radio in North Dublin for over 30 years. Currently hosting a few programmes on NEAR FM, Declan talks about his pirate past including NDCR which was the pirate forerunner to NEAR FM.
