Blowing up in public

“We are fresh, we are new and people are believing in us.” With this impressive mission statement, 24-year-old James Hyland, the brains behind Bubble Hits, Ireland’s first ever music channel, hopes to revolutionise the Irish music industry.

Bubble Hits Ireland (NTL 711, Sky 374) hit the airwaves on May 19, just six weeks after Hyland and partner Lee Walsh (also 24) were informed by their partners Sky that they would be getting the opportunity they’d been waiting a whole two years for. With Sky and NTL as platforms, the channel now reaches every digital home in Ireland – around 900,000 people.
When the duo launched Bubble Hits UK and Europe in 2006, the channel flickered on air during the chorus of Orson’s ‘Bright Idea’, an irony not lost on Hyland, who at the time pointed out, “We couldn’t have planned it better.”
The original bright idea was to create a non-stop music channel, solely funded by programme sponsorship and text requests, to challenge stations that had fallen into the reality TV trap. That model has been dropped. Bubble Hits now broadcasts around five minutes of adverts per hour, compared with the industry standard of 16.
“With Bubble Hits you’re never more than 60 seconds away from the music,” Hyland boasts.
Speaking a few weeks after the Irish launch, the Cork native says it’s been a hectic few months. “We’ve worked at this for so long,” he says, . “Obviously it’s an amazing feeling, firstly because we’re the only Irish music TV station and secondly because we’re getting to really help out Irish talent. It’s not just about the TV, we’re passionate about the Irish music industry. It’s all about the music for us.”
Hyland is unable to give viewership figures, as Bubble Hits doesn’t subscribe to Nielsen, who provide the ratings. But the young entrepreneur says he’s “very happy” with the channel’s progress so far.
One of Bubble Hits’ biggest cheerleaders has been Louis Walsh, who has his own show on the channel. He shares Hyland’s belief that there should be an outlet for new Irish talent.
Hyland explains: “At the moment, you’ve got the Late Late Show and Tubridy and the few shows where bands get exposure for about 20 seconds. What we want to do is air more and more Irish talent and encourage the bands to make music videos so they can be played again and again.”
Not that he’s exactly misty-eyed about the quality of Irish talent: “There are a lot of really rubbish Irish bands out there. We have to be realistic. That said, we believe there’s enough good Irish talent to keep this thing going.”
Back in 2004, one of Hyland and Lee Walsh’s first commissions was to provide the voiceovers for Jamster’s adverts for a new product they were testing called Crazy Frog. How ironic, if the channel that Crazy Frog made a reality were to be instrumental in introducing the world to the next generation of Irish musicians.