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RADIO COMPETITIONS ARE old-hat these days.
Every commercial station in the country regularly runs big-cash or holiday giveaways.
They come in a variety of formats — but the tried and trusted method employed by broadcasters for years was the ‘caller number’ contest…
You know the drill — you have to be caller number ten, 95, 98, 104 (or whatever) to win that pair of flights to New York, those tickets to Bryan Adams, or that voucher for the Dundrum Town Centre.
Not exactly a concept that sets the pulse racing, is it?
For those who’ve grown up in a multi-channel, digital world, it may be difficult to believe that something as trifling as a ‘five grand phone in’ could cause a city’s telephone network to give up the ghost.
But that’s exactly what happened, one day, many years ago, at Radio Nova.
The 30-year-anniversary of the freak event just passed us by last month — so we thought we’d take a quick look-back at how the scenario played out, in September 1984.
Radio Nova — not to be confused with the present-day radio station with a similar name — was, as some commentators have pointed out, part of an ‘Irish solution to an Irish problem’.
‘Superpirates’
Unlicensed, pirate radio stations flourished in Ireland in the early 1980s — providing younger listeners a vibrant alternative to the state broadcaster.
Amongst them, were the Dublin ‘super pirates’ of Sunshine Radio and Nova — which employed a full roster of presenters.
The likes of Bryan Dobson and Ken Hammond got their starts in the Nova newsroom.
On the music side, DJs like Chris Barry, ex-2fm boss John Clarke, Gareth O’Callagan and plenty of others took their first steps in the business, spinning discs from the station’s city HQ.
The phone-in
The station’s FM sound and format was “unlike anything heard before” by Irish radio listeners, one former staff-member recalls.
Enterprising Englishman Chris Carey, who had broadcast aboard the floating Radio Caroline under the name ‘Spangles Muldoon’ before a stint at Radio Luxembourg, started the venture at a house on Herbert Street in 1981.
Employing many of the tropes of US hit radio, it became hugely popular.
Soon, Carey and his colleagues hit on the idea of staging ‘big cash giveaway’ as a way of generating publicity, and attracting yet more listeners.
The competitions — which had long lead-in times — were designed to have maximum impact, with teaser ads promising the station guaranteed to play a certain three songs in a row by a certain date. And that when they did, a huge amount of cash would be won.
“This was built up for months in advance,” recalls presenter Scott Williams (who now helms the breakfast show on Dublin’s Q102).
The deal was we play three songs, and we give away five grand.
Says Denis Murray*, another ex-DJ: “The idea was to create as much hysteria as possible.
There’d been nothing like it ever before… The whole concept that you could make a simple phonecall, time it right, and walk away with five grand in cash…
There was a huge buy-in from the public, Murray recalls…
Presenters would play just one song of the set to keep people on the edge. Other times, they’d be inundated with calls after playing the final song only — the now-long-forgotten ‘Sunshine Reggae’.
The meltdown
On the night of in question, says Murray, John Clarke was the man in the hotseat. All three songs were played out, and the phone-calls began to flood in…
It was mad. People were getting out of cars and running to phone boxes to get through. Whatever they could do.
As a result, the city’s fragile phone system simply collapsed under the demand — creating yet more hysteria, along with acres of newspaper coverage.
“The thing was, Nova’s reach was so large at the time,” Williams recalls.
It covered half of Leinster on medium wave… If you turned on the radio in the Isle of man, Nova would come through as clear as your local radio station.
The network breakdown lasted “just a few hours” as engineers worked frantically to restore normal service.
And the broadcaster came in for some negative attention as a result.
Williams, again:
There was a lot of criticism afterwards … but in my view that was just people using it for propaganda purposes.
Nova continued to flourish, along with the likes of Sunshine and dozens of smaller operations around the country. The era of the pirates came to an end in December 1988, as stations were forced off air to comply with new broadcasting laws.
*Murray now teaches media production and management at Ballyfermot College of Further Education.
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Brilliant……we should have done this ages ago. Ireland has a legion of respected poets, this will be a great addition to the tourist trail as well as encouraging younger writers.
@gowfc@yahoo.com W: agreed
Anywhere artists set up others are drawn to the area
Classic examples in New York
Great idea. Ireland has been blessed with great writers and poets. They deserve a proper showcase.
Please say this money is not being used in this way instead of providing homes for our homeless I object as a tax payer in this country.
@Deirdre D’Arcy Murphy: read the article
@Deirdre D’Arcy Murphy: Jesus,change the record.Not every thing has to be measured against homelessness.
@Deirdre D’Arcy Murphy: Did you even bother to read the article? Clearly states where the money raised so far has come from and how they plan to get the rest of the funds needed. Next time read the article before you comment and keep your needless objections to yourself.
@Deirdre D’Arcy Murphy: jesus christ change the record. Ifs money made from donations and raising capital so its not your tax money. Despite what some may think art and culture is important to maintain and shouldn’t be pushed aside and forgotten just because there are homeless people in the country.
@Deirdre D’Arcy Murphy: I object as a tax payer that you went through over a decade of education payed for by the state and still come out either not being able to read or too blinded by your own opinion to inform yourself on what’s right in front of you.
@Naoimh Ó Murchadha: News on the way to you !
What a complete waste of money..
@Patrick j Brady: I’d call you a Philistine except you probably don’t know what it means.
@Patrick j Brady: There’s always one.
@Dermot Lane: is that someone who lives in Palestine
@Rowan Murphy: poets are gonna provide what..?
Bunch of layabouts
@Patrick j Brady: The Philistines had no appreciation of art or culture making them the ancient equivalent of ISIS. It also happens in Western society and Ireland where the need to destroy traditions or not appreciate the older ones becomes a dangerous conviction.
@Gerald Kelleher: wow you know some stuff …top of the class for you…
@Patrick j Brady: ” poets are gonna provide what..? Bunch of layabouts”
James Joyce had a lovely view of the poets even if he used Mangan to express his own views . Plenty of intelligent people in the comment section of the Journal with a sense of what is important but also plenty of Oirish as well who try to hard to be funny.
” Every age must look for its sanction to its poetry and philosophy, for in these the human mind, as it looks backward or forward, attains to an eternal state. The philosophic mind inclines always to an elaborate life— the life of Goethe or of Leonardo da Vinci ; but the life of the poet is intense— the life of Blake or of Dante— taking into its centre the life that surrounds it and flinging it abroad again amid planetary music. With Mangan a narrow and hysterical nationality receives a last justification, for when this feeble-bodied figure departs dusk begins to veil the train of the gods, and he who listens may hear their footsteps leaving the world. But the ancient gods, who are visions of the divine names, die and come to life many times, and, though there is dusk about their feet and darkness in their indifferent eyes, the miracle of light is renewed eternally in the imaginative soul. When the sterile and treacherous order is broken up, a voice or a host of voices is heard singing, a little faintly at first, of a serene spirit which enters woods and cities and the hearts of men, and of the life of earth” James Joyce
https://manganpaper.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/joyces-essay-on-mangans-vastation-of-soul/
@Gerald Kelleher: I lost you after the first 2l3 words….
For the Hebrews, the poets were kings while in Ireland they were second only to the king which is why English Common Law still doesn’t sit entirely well with the citizens of this island -
http://www.from-ireland.net/the-brehon-laws/
The Brehon laws were written in verse as easier to understand so Irish people have always had an affinity for poetry as it was not only spiritual language but also the language of justice. There are a lot of Oirish here that wouldn’t understand but that is not a bad thing, rednecks never get anything beyond a drab secular society.
There once was a looper called Gerald,
Whose comments his madness did herald,
He went to the pole, and talked out his hole,
And Einstein’s work he imperiled.
@Boutros Boutros-Ghali: Newton/Einstein works will be found in the science fiction section of museums some day.
I don’t know how much people know or don’t know but this is definitely science fiction -
” ‘Really this is what is meant by the Fourth Dimension, though some people who talk about the Fourth Dimension do not know they mean it. It is only another way of looking at Time. There is no difference between time and any of the three dimensions of space…”
@Gerald Kelleher: your work will be found in a bin and then put back.
@Boutros Boutros-Ghali: Poor Boutros, what did he ever do to have his name taken like that . I like science fiction as much as anyone else but that statement really is science fiction even if it is passed of as fact !.
Saw little finger in Ikea a couple of months ago. The Séamus Heaney library will have a few Kallax and Billy units I reckon.
So a home for poetry but no home for homeless children?
@Alois Irlmaier: You and Deirdre D’Arcy Murphy should get together. You can entertain each other because nobody else wants to listen to you.
I suppose they’ll be wanting free houses for poets soon.
Poetry gets Priority to Homelessness Obviously! Typical, just goes to show what exactly their Priorities are!
@Maurice Heaphy: Why should the Irish Heritage trust be responsible for Homelessness? This is not coming from Tax payers money although with the rich history of poetry in Ireland you can be damn sure it will raise a lot of revenue from tourists. But some people just need to complain about everything I suppose.
They’ll build a house for Jesus,
And one for Willy Yeats,
But no house for the homeless,
Sure we’ll leave them at the gate’s.
The building is gifted so could we have a breakdown of the 4 million euros and what is being provided for same? It seems excessive like pre 2008?
@Boutros Boutros-Ghali: “And Einstein’s work he imperiled.”
http://img.timeinc.net/time/magazine/archive/covers/1999/1101991231_400.jpg
They should have given the award to H.G. Wells and his 1898 ‘The Time Machine ‘ book that came up with the 4th dimension or spacetime as it is called in empirical circles. How a narrative for a time machine eventually made it into education as a supreme human achievement is quite a story but it is a true one that anyone can understand, at least with a bit of effort -
‘Really this is what is meant by the Fourth Dimension, though some people who talk about the Fourth Dimension do not know they mean it. It is only another way of looking at Time. There is no difference between time and any of the three dimensions of space”
Time Machine, 1898
http://www.bartleby.com/1000/1.html
The poets ,by their very nature, never cheated people in their expression but those empirical crooks did . It takes those with the heart of a poet to understand what stupidity drives people to follow fiction as though it were fact .
Why not now invest money into improving the poets reciting aloud skills..as 99.9 % of them seem oblivious of their dreadful voices….its akin to listening to singers singing off key…with no sense of rhythm
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