Licensed service for three counties
North West Radio
North West Radio broadcast to an area encompassing Sligo, North Leitrim and South Donegal. It was the last of the country’s licensed local stations to come on air in the first round of licences following the 1988 pirate shake-up. It is no longer on air.
Mainly based in studios at Market Yard, Sligo, North West Radio started broadcasting on November 2nd 1990 on 102.5MHz and 105.0MHz. The licence area covered south Donegal, Sligo and north Leitrim.
It was the first franchise area where a licence was awarded to a consortium which included groups already involved in independent broadcasting – the franchise is partly owned by Midwest Radio, Mayo. This followed the original franchise winners handing back the licence as they did not consider it viable.
Programming was also shared between Mid and North West Radio with twelve hours programming coming from the Sligo studios and six from Midwest, with an opt-out each day for 90 minutes to broadcast their own programming.
The station proved to be hugely popular in their local area with consistently high JNLR figures. Despite this, when the franchise licence was advertised for renewal in 2003, a new consortium won the right to broadcast to the area. A sustained campaign ultimately failed and North West Radio said goodbye after 14 years on the air on September 30th 2004.
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