Radio Nova
The last big FM licence to be awarded to the Dublin market came on air today.
Radio Nova 100.3FM, named after a local legendary 80s pirate, is running a classic rock format.
The elaborate launch at 1pm involved a barge on the River Liffey, at the epicentre of the city, on which a Guns’n’Roses tribute band played live. Banner branding on the barge, the river quays and even a light aircraft above made a big splash. The on-air side of the launch was strangely muted though as you’ll hear from the clip below.
It reminds me of this day 21 years ago when we launched Atlantic 252 across the UK. The excitement of being properly “on air” was immense. Sadly launch excitement is short-lived and it took us a full six months to actually settle in and begin building an audience. Once we got rolling though the station turned into a juggernaut eventually hitting 5 million listeners within four years.
Even though Nova have entered a tough market they have a very experienced team and a killer niche format in their favour.
On the surface they appear to have a secured a derogation on the normally required 20% news & current affairs content allowing them to concentrate on the music and rock related talk as they should.
The day-time schedule kicks off with Pat Courtnay a Dublin morning show legend from the 80’s/90s. The remainder of the day is held by three DJs; Greg Gaughran, Marty Miller and Enda Murphy all holding longish music shifts from 10am through midnight. All three also work weekends. The station also carry Rick Wakemans syndicated show on Saturday teatime.
Carol Dooley, an Irish lady with major US market programming experience at KISM Seattle, is the station PD while David Tighe, former CEO with UTV’s Live 95FM in Limerick takes the same role at the helm of Nova.
It’s interesting to see the reaction from other stations in the market. 98FM are changing their breakfast and drive shifts plus have new imaging in place. FM104 are also making morning changes and Q102 which targets a similar 35+ adult audience today started a €5,000 Three-in-a-Row competition where the first song is the most classic of rock tunes “Bohemian Rhapsody”.
Great to have a bit of fun back in the market!
Radio Nova’s website is www.nova.ie and they’re running 128k mp3 and 32k aac live streams.
Also, if you missed it, their on-air launch is below.
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