NEVER MIND Mrs Brown's Boys or Harbour Hotel, the greatest radio soap opera of recent times has to be the brouhaha surrounding Chris Barry's proposed transfer from FM104 to 98FM. The abridged version of the story is that FM104 were distinctly unimpressed when Barry - real name Ciaran Gaffney - walked out on them last December despite being contracted to stay until January 1999.
Unimpressed turned to nail-spitting anger when, having been spuriously linked with Today FM, the phone-in presenter announced that he was joining their arch-rivals 98FM for what is reportedly a significant increase in salary. FM104 retaliated by obtaining a temporary injunction which prevented him broadcasting on 98FM pending a trial of proceedings between the sides.
Their jubilation proved to be short-lived, with Mr Justice O'Sullivan ruling last week in the High Court that to prevent further damage to his career, he should be allowed to go back on-air.
The gloves-off nature of the hearing was such that Barry felt it necessary to state in an affidavit: "At no stage did I indicate to the plaintiff that I was leaving because I wanted to be with a boyfriend or that I was mentally or psychologically unwell."
The bottom line in all this is that FM104 don't want one of their former stars going to a station that they've only just replaced at the top of the Dublin ratings.
"9pm to midnight would be our second most successful day-part after breakfast which is quite unusual in terms of Irish radio," reveals FM104 Managing Director Dermot Hanrahan who, on losing Barry, drafted in soundalike replacement Adrian Kennedy.
"That's not a new development, though. For the past five or six years, our late-night phone-in slot has been the most listened to Irish talk show outside of RTE."
What's more, if the right personality were to come along, Hanrahan says he'd seriously consider trying to smash the Gay Byrne/Gerry Ryan mid-morning cartel.
"As a privately-owned station that doesn't get a penny from the licence fee, there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to employ people with strident opinions of a particular type. I like the idea of having a left-wing or a right-wing broadcaster who you mightn't necessarily agree with but is stimulating to listen to. I've no doubt that the most compelling thing on TV news this past year has been Ian Paisley. You can be fervently anti-him and still find his opinions fascinating.
"With Chris Barry and Adrian Kennedy," he continues, "we've sailed as close to the wind as any Irish broadcaster, but while the IRTC insists on individual programmes - rather than overall output - being balanced, the most we can do is play Devil's Advocate. If you say white, we'll say black to develop the argument. If we had the freedom, we'd probably have presenters who are known to hold certain opinions and the public can either love or hate them."
Which is very much the ethos on the other side of the Atlantic where shock jocks not only rule the waves but waive the rules.
"Take someone like Rush Limbaugh," Hanrahan resumes. "He's highly articulate, has a devastating wit and even if your beliefs are radically opposed to his, he's still good radio.
"Broadcasting here is far too sanitised. There's a sports jock in Chicago, who I'd say is 20 stone and smokes five packs of cigarettes a day. She goes on air and abuses her male callers. It's absolutely hilarious and her ratings are sky-high."
Ratings are the reason why Don Harris sees Irish talk radio moving closer and closer to the American model.
"The boundaries are being pushed out all the time," says Harris, an industry veteran whose Airtime company books radio campaigns for a wide range of national advertisers. "It'll be interesting to see what happens when Chris Barry starts on 98FM and tries to grab his listeners back from Adrian Kennedy. As the market-place becomes more and more competitive, I imagine the content of these shows will get spicier and spicier."
That's confirmed by Kennedy who comments that, "We're going to be very choosy about what subjects we pick with a view to gaining the edge in what's becoming an increasingly competitive market.
"The biggest restriction, I find, is our libel laws. I was over in the States for the St. Patrick's Weekend and, within reason, the talk show guys there can come out with anything they want to. Here, we tend to be a bit too politically correct. Y'know, we'll say one thing and mean another because we don't want to offend. The Americans aren't so squeamish which, on balance, is a good thing."
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HEARD DAILY on 600 radio stations, Rush Limbaugh has spent the past seven years waging his own personal jihad against Bill Clinton and is the man who claims to have coined the phrase "Zippergate". The archest of conservatives, the 47-year-old native of Cape Giradeau, Missouri has also come up with his own version of the 12 commandments - the "35 undeniable truths".
With tongue not at all in cheek, Limbaugh reckons that, "Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of the 20th century"; "The most beautiful thing about a tree is what you do with it after you cut it down"; "Poverty is not the root cause of crime"; and "Women should not be allowed on juries where the accused is a stud."
Whatever about his politics, Limbaugh is a pedigree broadcaster whose profile goes up every time the President's trousers come down. His nationally-syndicated TV show was in danger of being cancelled until Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky arrived on the scene and, hey presto, he had all the ammunition he needed to win the ratings war.
http://rosecity.net/rush/index/html
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WHEN IT comes to plumbing the depths of bad taste, Howard Stern is a mere paddling-pool denizen compared to Mancow Muller's deep-sea diver. Looking like an even more errant Steve Earle, Muller is by far and away the beefiest thing on American radio today with the FCC regularly rapping his hooves for uttering the f- and c-words.
"Big biz controls our government and the mass media," says the man with a "free speech" tattoo on his shoulder. "We see what they want. My show is the mouthpiece of the common man. 'Suits' will never understand. My CD, Box Of Sharpies, sold 100,000 copies. My appearances on Springer bring their biggest ratings nationwide. I refuse to play it safe. Anarchy begets me."
Despite bearing all the hallmarks of the redneck from hell, the Moo-man loves "truth and good beer" and hates "censorship, homophobes, psychics and religious fanatics". Er, right on.
http://www.mancow.com/
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"I WANT to know why 60% of black babies are born out of wedlock? Is that the fault of white people? I want to know why so many black kids can't speak proper English. I want to know why black people can't pass a civil service examination. The excuse is that it's culturally biased. Well I'd like to know, what could possibly be culturally biased about a firefighter's test?"
Standard conservative rhetoric, except for the fact that it's being spouted by the son of a West Indian immigrant who spent the '60s protesting against Vietnam and came within a baton-charge of being arrested at the 1968 Democratic Convention.
According to his official biog, Ken Hamblin "supports capital punishment, fights gun control and believes men have no right to join the abortion debate. He is at odds with underclass communities today because he believes they are not instilling in their children the values they need to break out of the welfare mould that perpetrates illiteracy, poverty and a lack of self-reliance."
No matter that his detractors have labelled him "America's whitest black man", "The Black Avenger" can be heard coast-to-coast in 38 states and is putting the finishing touches to his autobiography, Please Don't Feed The Blacks, which "will sock it to those egg-sucking liberals".
http://www.southwind.net/knss/hamblin.html

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THE MAN who spent five years in jail for the Watergate break-in is hardly likely to be a paragon of liberalism, and, sure enough, G Gordon Liddy's daily radio show pitches him slightly to the right of Vlad The Impaler.
"My purpose is to look through the night of nitwittery, cut through the political correctness, and blow away the bravo sierra to find the good, the true, the prudent and wise so you can act upon it to the benefit of you personal, family, working, community, and national life as an American citizen," is his flowery if rather over-long clarion call.
Despite the fact that his luxuriant moustache makes him look like a former member of The Village People, Liddy never misses an opportunity to stick it to the left, aided and abetted by an inexhaustible supply of Bill Clinton jokes:
"An aide asked the President, 'Mr President, what do you want me to do about the abortion bill?' Clinton answered, 'Pay it, I guess.'"
http://www.rtis.com.liddy