Having to wait two months and cough up a hefty sum for her services may have clouded Newstalk’s launch on to the quasi-national stage, but the silver lining was all those frontpages that Claire Byrne’s messy transfer from TV3 generated.
From having virtually zero profile beyond The Pale, Newstalk is now a brand that everybody who buys an Irish newspaper or indeed Hot Press is aware of. Whether that translates into hard listenership will be revealed in May 2007 when the denizens of Warrington House receive their first set of countrywide JNLR figures.
The challenge, of course, is to appeal to all 26 counties, without shedding any of those ABC1 Dublin listeners that are so prized by the ad agencies and who, frankly, don’t give a fig about the National Ploughing Championships or Limerick’s internecine gang warfare.
Talking of Limerick, industry eyes have been firmly fixed on Heart FM’s attempts to wrestle the Limerick City & County franchise away from the present UTVowned incumbents, Live 95FM.
Backed by comedian Pat Shortt, ex-2FM man Michael McNamara, Cranberries Mike and Noel Hogan and €2.5 million of local cash, a Heart victory could scare off the likes of UTV and EMAP, who've been acquiring existing stations on the basis that the BCI are unlikely to deny them a 10-year franchise renewal.
Of course, Live 95FM will point to their weekly listenership of 127,000 – one of the country’s highest – and a prestigious 2006 PPI Award.
It’s also a case of wait-and-see for Phantom FM, who made their full-time licensed debut on October 31. Is the format and following they developed during their pirate and temporary licence days big enough to satisfy advertisers, or will they need to steal additional listeners from the likes of FM104 and Spin?
Elsewhere, a consortium lead by Dublin’s Spin FM bagged the South-West youth franchise; former Newstalk and 98FM head honcho Dan Healy did the same in the North West with i105; Red and Beat continued their respective growth spurts in Cork and the South East; and Matt Cooper answered his critics in the best way possible by upping his Today FM The Last Word audience to 183,000.
There was also much intrigue out at Montrose, with John Kelly switching from RTÉ Radio One to Lyric FM, the axing of Radio One’s longrunning Rattlebag and their purloining of Dave Fanning from 2FM. But it was at the weekends that RTÉ made significant gains, with Eamon Dunphy added to the team and Marian Finucane on Radio 1 and The Saturday Show with Will Leahy on 2FM really shining.
As for 2007, expect the mother of all battles for the Dublin 'Classic Rock' franchise, which is up for grabs in September!