Irish Pirate Radio Audio Archive
Open Free Radio Archive
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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.
Here we present a great panel of anoraks chatting to Dónal Greene: Liam de Siún (BLB), Roger Lloyd (aka Prince Terry of Radio Dublin and Westside Radio International), Ian Biggar (DX Archive), Eddie Bohan (Irish Broadcasting Hall of Fame) and Dr Don Moore (Westside Radio International and ARD).
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Radio Dublin was Ireland’s longest running pirate radio station. It broadcast from 1966 until 2002 and was at its peak in the early to mid 1980s on 253m/1188KHz and 6910 kHz shortwave. Here are a number of station idents and jingles from our collection, beginning above with two iconic 253 jingles from the late 1970s.
The clip below is a top-of-the-hour jingle from 1988. The FM transmitter had moved to 105 but Radio Dublin was still announcing 98.8.
Radio Dublin relayed other stations frequently during its long existence including World Music Radio. After midnight on 1st January 1989 when it defied the new law, it relied on WMR tapes for the first few days before resuming live programming. Here’s a WMR promo from 1987.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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.
Karl Tsigdinos worked on the pirates from the mid seventies to early eighties going on to work with Radio Ireland / Today FM, Dublin City FM and RTE Gold. In this interview he explains how Hotpress (where he worked as a journalist) had a radio show that travelled around between Big D, Radio Dublin and ARD in the late seventies.
