Irish Pirate Radio Audio Archive
Open Free Radio Archive
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In this interview, broadcast historian Eddie Bohan tells John Walsh about the expansion of Radio Nova in Dublin up to 1986 and afterwards in the UK. This interview was first broadcast on Wireless on Flirt FM in June 2018.
You can hear Radio Nova airchecks and jingles here.
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There’s plenty of Radio Nova material available online already and we don’t intend to compete with that. Here is a selection from our the Pirate.ie collection of airchecks of Radio Nova from 1984 to 1986. We also include two recordings from the Nova satellite service from the UK in 1988 which was relayed on FM in Dublin and used as an overnight service by some stations.
Listen to interviews with former Nova presenter Tom Hardy (RIP) here and newsreader Bryan Dobson here. You can hear historian Eddie Bohan describe the growth of Radio Nova here.
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In this interview, Daragh O’Sullivan talks to Ken Harley who worked on Big D, ARD, Radio Nova, Q102 and Radio Leinster. He also worked in Bay City Studios making adverts for Nova.
The interview was conducted on 20th October 2018 at the Ballsbridge Hotel in Dublin at a meet-up of people involved in Irish pirate radio over the years.
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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 RTÉ journalist and broadcaster Bryan Dobson tells Leigh McGowran about his times in Southside Radio and Radio Nova in the early 1980s. Bryan Dobson retired from RTÉ on 3rd May 2024 after over 40 years in the industry.
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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.