Updated April 4th 2003
The weird thing about
listening to many audio tapes from your life 15-20 years ago is that,
while looking for the right material, you can easily get completely
lost in the "time". One event reminds you of another and so
on.
I was listening to one of my first broadcasts (as a newsreader) on Nova
which dated April 1984. On air at the time were people like
John Clarke, Bob Gallico, Sybil Fennell, Dave Johnson, Declan Meehan
and so on. I actually didn't know most of these people at the time,
apart from listening to them on air before joining the station. Putting
faces to names (and voices) was a bit like meeting the stars you always
wanted to meet. I do remember doing sport on a saturday afternoon on
Nova, while Hugh O'Brien was on the air.
Well,
gee, but I didn't (and still don't) know a thing about sport, so duly
buggered up names of soccer players. Hugh O'Brien came roaring out of
the studio after my broadcast and verbally beat the living shit out
of me for ruining his programme with my mis-pronounciations! In retrospect
I can understand where he was coming from, but it frightened the hell
out of me at the time!
Actually one of my first broadcasts on Nova was a time when there was
a lot of stuff going down in Derry, Northern Ireland. A story came in
on the Press Association wire at 1 minute to the hour, about a bombing
in Derry. I didn't have time to edit the story, but it was a lead item
so I read it straight from the press wire. For those of you not from
Ireland or Britain, you'll need to understand that the British called
Derry "Londonderry" rather than "Derry". This was
a delicate issue. Reading straight from the PA Wire (which came from
London) I read the story, and naturally read out "Londonderry"
as I read it. Oh boy! Did those calls start coming in! Only on the job
a week I was sure I was fired. But I wasn't. Sybil (Fennell, head of
News, Nova) was always good like that. I spent a further three years
on Nova and related stations.
I have never thought of myself as an anorak, because
I never really understood all the technical stuff, like transmitter
details etc. But in some form I have always been obsessed with broadcasting.
I remember the Nova Newsroom had CNN on, as a news-feed. Hell, NO ONE
had CNN at home in the mid-80's! Now, as I am writing this, George Bush
is "live" not on just CNN, but BBC World, FOX NEWS (Uggg!),
SKY, Bloomberg, and possibly thousands of local stations too. Thing
is, broadcasting is now so global, rather than just local, and it astounds
me. I can't really get used to it. I think it's the concept of such
mass communication that I like. This can be great for humanity in terms
of bringing people together. The internet does the same thing. I like
it. I like it a lot!
I
talk to my dear old mum 13,000 miles away on the phone, and she always
says to me "Isn't it incredible talking to you on the other
side of the world". Well, I kinda got used to that, but the
broadcast thing still gets me. Probably because we're not just talking
about low-quality voice, but high-quality stereo sound and vision. And
the station that gets me the most is BBC World. As with many of you,
I grew up with the Beeb. The test card you see on your left was always
on in our house! I have yet to hear/see a better, more professional
outfit than the good 'ol Beeb! And I'm not just saying that because
the owner of this site (Paul Buckle) works for them! haha... anyway,
I want to talk more about the massive change in broadcasting trends,
and will do so in depth on the radio home page (that's this page folks!)
in the near future.
I digress. As I said at the start of this piece,
I listen to old tapes from the 80's while preparing audio shows for
this website and Phantom FM, and it truly throws me into those heady
days as a spotty 19 year old in Dublin, fighting between the mighty
microphones that lured me into radio stations, and Madonna-like girls
that lured me into those ghastly Leeson street niteclubs!
Sometimes its fun to look into the past (as long as you don't become
obsessed with it!) and no better a place to recall these memories than
on a website where the past has arrived! irishpirates.com.
Hell, you gotta stay tuned!
Read
previous radiohome pages:
ARCHIVE 3 -
PETER MADISON
ARCHIVE 2 - PRE-SUPERPIRATES
ARCHIVE
1 - BROADCASTING TO THE WORLD