Taoiseach embroiled in scandal will depart May 6th.

The audio track of a BBC TV news report about the upsurge in ‘pirate activity’ on the airwaves of Dublin. This was broadcast on 31st May 1978. Hear a ‘young’ Kate Adie visit the Dublin stations in those early full time days.
tnx & 73’s to the irish era for the clip

Ex. Aer Lingus Chief Executive Willy Walsh is spectacularly proving in Heathrow T5 this weekend gone that airlines need staff. Not even £4.3billion alone makes it work, you need workers, working in their jobs to get the job done. Slashing the workforce, removing previously bargained conditions & taking money from workers pay packets does not get the job done. People (17 million more this decade to last) want to fly places and while Dublin Airport is 4-5X busier the previous Aer Lingus slash & burn plans of Walsh & Cahill has left the staff numbers well short of what they used to be. But still 5X busier.

RTE reports tonight

Last year, Aer Lingus Chief Executive Dermot Mannion promised shareholders that he would implement the staff cost savings from the beginning of 2008.

However, so far none of the proposed measures have materialised because of ongoing negotiations over new work practices and rostering.

SIPTU workers have voted 3:1 in favour of keeping their existing work practices (3:1 against new work practices)

If managements need to cut costs is so out of touch with reality that it leads to a lockout or strike then Mannion should step aside. Take the airline back out of the hands of the sharks on the markets and keep on flying. Remember Ryanair own 4% more than the Governments 25% stake in the airline. CEO’s job is to deliver a working airline, in chasing cost cutting to please shareholders (not the working shareholders) Mannion may end up without a job himself.

200 people attend Dublin public meeting to discuss national health crisis by Michael Murphy

Approximately 200 people packed into Wynns Hotel, Dublin, on 29 January, to attend a meeting hosted by the Socialist Party on the issue of the health crisis in Ireland.

The meeting was organised to discuss the health crisis and to raise the demand for “a public health service for all”. The meeting was addressed by two hospital consultants, Professor John Crown and Dr. Orla Hardiman, a nurse, Triona Murphy, and by former Socialist Party TD [member of Irish parliament] Joe Higgins. Professor Crown has won a very high profile in the media over the last year for making significant public criticisms about the neo–liberal agenda of the government for the health service. All the platform speakers graphically outlined the real crisis facing patients and workers in the health service. Many other health workers and representatives of campaigns spoke form the floor.

Ireland in 2007 was dominated by the crisis in the Irish health service. However there is much confusion over the cause of the problems and how they can be resolved. Despite a booming economy over the last ten years, health spending in Ireland is only about 90% of the EU average. The health service in Ireland was decimated in the 1980’s, with 6,000 beds lost and which have not been replaced, despite the economic boom. In that period the population of the country has increased by 25%.

The other problem with the service is the hybrid nature of health care in Ireland. There is not a National Health Service, as in Britain: health in Ireland is funded by taxation but if you can afford private health insurance you can gain quicker access and receive better treatment than those who do not have health insurance – health is based not on need but ability to pay.
Susie Long tragedy

The death of a woman last year, Susie Long, exposed the health crisis. Susie Long died of cancer aged 40. She was referred by her doctor for a scan. She sat on a waiting list for seven months before she received the scan which revealed that the cancer had spread to her lungs, Susie died eight months later. If Susie had private health insurance she would have been seen quicker and would, in all probability, be alive today. This is the reality that has forced 52% of all Irish people to take out private health insurance.

The Dublin public meeting agreed to establish a broad campaign, beginning with a national meeting in March or April, to bring together all the groups campaigning against hospital closures and cutbacks. The health trade unions also have a crucial role to play in this campaign. If the government’s agenda of privatisation and cutbacks is to be halted, it will take a mass campaign of people power. This successful meeting clearly reflected the anger felt by people about the appalling state of health care in Ireland and there was agreement that the way to resolve the crisis is for a free public health service based on need, not ability to pay. The meeting was an important first step in the establishment of this campaign.
full video & Audio

rte say no one /very few complain or notice when their AM services are off air. perhaps those that do notice have no faith in reporting it to RTE! I have to add that MW 2nd helpings closed today and will not be split on LW with FM/DAB/SAT - it will be on RTE Choice in 4 cities (if you can get it) otherwise it said goodbye today.

first blogged Saturday, September 8th, 2007
RTE are still testing 252LW with Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) signal beyond the end of publicly stated tests. They tested up to 6am on Saturday the 8th September and stopped leaving a silent carrier until 12:09 pm (6 hours later) when the 252LW tx was switched off. It returned two minutes later with RTE Radio 1 programming midway through the MF Sunday Show. This i live blogged in my micro blog on twitter. [1] [2]

photos of 252LW

What I still love about podcasting is the edge it still has over broadcasting. podcasters media is on demand. broadcasters media is post air archive. Subtle difference that will blur more as podcasters lose that edge. But as we lose that edge we can broadcast more, not in real time or any time but all the time cheaply and without transmitters.

I just got sent a twitter message about TCP Show 004: Coaching Versus Mentoring now I can listen now or later, listen a bit now more later, subscribe to it on my podcast player of bookmark it. What I do not have to do is think, when is this on, am i in the same time zone, will i listen live or record, where is the recorder, is it full etc.

For all the right reasons podcasting is radio, but too many people associate that with AM/FM. Radio content is what alot of audio podcasts are like and that’s what they will replace.

Next Saturday I will be podcasting 3 years, in May i will 23 years on/off and in love with radio. I may have been preoccupied by the medium wave closure at RTE for the past weeks, but these changes bad and good amount to a changing industry.

Some new stations that are on DAB are arguably no worse or better than your own hard disk of music, and if you could deliver your home hard disk of music from home to street to car then why on earth would you want these new services (you want radio for what you can’t get from a hard disk). 2 years ago the doop corporate server had equal capacity to the bleeding edge storage of a 5th Gen iPod. Such devices with more capacity than average music ownership allows for short term choice, in the end I feel that DJs who were unstoppable tippers are still needed. Perhaps their xml suggestions will be pushed by the Metro News (website) via the free sheet to gain your attention as the WashOverMe airwaves diminish as a medium of influence.

one thing the online radio and podcasters must steal from the broadcast radio guys is marketing. Radio enjoyed its pride of platform, the oxygen of publicity (so toxic then kept the provos off the air under section 31) was their ever reaching radio dial or 6 button TV set. As channels go from 6 tv stations to 60 radio stations to 600 home shopping channels to 6,000 internet radio streams to 60,000 podcasts the divisible cake for making money is long gone, (unless you are building walled gardens like DAB) but so to is market penetration, you may have the walled garden but the kids are outside spraying and pissing on your walls, with so few listeners so thinly spread into units so small they are harder to market, and its a few select dinosaurs that have spectrum worth the propaganda that may battle for audience with the young agile trend setters with enough clout to reach the thin layers of audience all networks will have to be happy with.

If you like radio, like I like radio - join our network ilikeradio.ning.com

the howling wind and the leafless trees
it’s a winters breeze in summer
it’s rain not dew on the ground
it’s spring all around in summer
it’s damp and there is an evening chill
there’s an autumn still in summer

From outdoor

a poem by brian greene about the 4 seasons in one (in ireland)

JOHN COLLINS IRISH TIMES 21/03/2008

RTÉ WILL cease broadcasting on medium wave (MW) next Monday just as it expands its digital radio service to cover almost half the population.

This week the State broadcaster extended its trial of digital radio technology to Cork and Limerick, making it available to 44 per cent of the population.

Based on the Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) standard, the trial broadcasts include seven new RTÉ digital radio services including a children’s radio service and a dedicated news headline channel, as well as content from commercial broadcasters.

However, some industry observers have wondered if the State broadcaster is backing the right technology, particularly in light of its statutory obligation to broadcast to the Irish abroad.

Brian Greene, a digital media consultant, says “killing MW to fund DAB is a crazy move by RTÉ” because DAB has a short range while MW can be picked up by listeners in the UK.

For its part, RTÉ maintains that its services are available on the Sky Digital platform and over the web.

According to JP Coakley, RTÉ Radio’s head of operations, the broadcaster will save €1.5 million in annual running costs by shutting down MW, of which €1 million relates to electricity costs.

Coakley says the MW infrastructure had “an immediate need to inject circa €2.4 million in capital as the installation is reaching the end of its natural life”.

The savings will not just fund DAB but a number of online projects, improvements to FM broadcasting and additional programming resources, according to Coakley.

“That said, national DAB has to stand as a separate business and rationale - it’s about an industry moving together to provide the next generation of radio to the listener, rather than just what RTÉ can fund on its own,” says Coakley.

The replacement that RTÉ is proposing for MW is long wave (LW). RTÉ installed a new LW transmitter in 2007, which also supports broadcasting in a newer digital technology called Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM).

However, Greene maintains that because DRM is more efficient, it has to be broadcast at a lower power. As a result, an Algerian radio station also broadcasting on LW252 is causing interference with RTÉ’s signal.

Coakley concedes Tipaza in Algeria interferes with LW252 at night in London and parts of southeast England, but points out that MW is not available at all in London.

This month Greene wrote to Cathal Goan, director-general of RTÉ, raising questions about the broadcaster’s transmission planning and move to digital.

He also questions just how successful DAB has been in the UK, despite the fact that well over five million receivers have been sold there and the format dominates sales of kitchen, portable and clock radio sales.

He says DAB is now 23 years old, having first been demonstrated in 1985. It uses lower quality MPEG-2, compared to the more efficient MPEG-4 used by DRM and newer digital standards such as DAB+, and has yet to be a “roaring success” in the rest of Europe.

In many ways RTÉ has made a pragmatic choice by choosing DAB given its installed base in our largest neighbour and the spill-over of retailers from Britain that are selling DAB receivers in Ireland.

“We see DAB and DRM as complementary in the same way that we see FM and LW as complementary,” explains Coakley. “They do different things. One gives a good quality domestic service, the other is poorer quality but has a greater reach.”

Coakley believes, however, that DRM is still unproven. “It is still very difficult to find reasonably priced sets and there’s no new content available.”

Digital radio primer: the facts

RTÉ is one of the main players in an industry grouping giving trials to Dab (digital audio broadcasting) in Ireland.

RTÉ began a public digital audio broadcasting trial in the first half of 2007 and the broadcasts are now available to 44 per cent of the population.

An independent industry group, digitalradio.ie, has been formed to smooth the transition to digital radio and to promote its uptake.

Dab receivers automatically tune into available stations and there is much less crackle and hiss compared to FM.

Additional information such as the artist and song title can be embedded in the Dab broadcast and displayed on the receiver’s screen.

Companies such as Virgin are giving trials to Dab for multimedia services including the delivery of TV and music downloads to mobile handsets.

© 2008 The Irish Times

Blog post #995 - since 01/02/2003
for larger europe zoomed map http://url.ie/ajz
this is the overseas MW sound RTE do not want you to have and it is available now.

1 transmitter 4 programmes stereo sound text & pictures - but no DAB is better - no its not - meanwhile RTE are pumping licence money into the GAA as sponsorship.

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