Buzz FM was Chris Cary's last foray in to broadcast radio but he never gave up on the dream of a return for Radio Nova and to rekindle past glories. Whilst Buzz - a station already in its throes when he took it over - failed to deliver the buzz he so craved, his mind was always looking at the next big get rich quick money-spinner. Ironically he found it via satellite technology, the very technology through which Radio Nova had failed to deliver.
In a chance encounter with Kevin Branigan with Radio Nova on air as a legal service, Cary admitted that the buzz had gone out of it. That was the great Cary paradox: he fought for legitimacy, yet legitimacy removed the danger and defiance that energised him. He was brilliant at storming the castle, far less interested in administering it once captured.
When the frontier became an office, Cary went looking for another frontier — and inevitably found one on the wrong side of the law. The swashbuckling days didn’t merely suit him; they seemed to be what kept him interested.
Sky TV, launched in 1989, was slowly building up its subscriber base and becoming a challenger to conventional, terrestrially delivered TV channels. The turning point was sudden and dramatic. In 1992, a newly-formed breakway top tier division in English football turned its back on the 30 live matches a year deal made available free to air through the BBC and ITV and jumped into bed with Sky, agreeing on a package with a vastly increased number of live games. This was a big money deal. Sky's plan was to recoup the outlay by screening the matches behind a paywall. Football was made sexy again by sky's clever marketing, shaking itself free of the negativity that engulfed it in the 1980s. Football supporters signed up in droves and satellite dishes sprung up everywhere.
The encrypted signal was descrambled with the use of a subscriber card entered into a slot on the receiver. It didn't take long before entrepreneurs managed to break the encryption and sold pirated cards to consumers at a fraction of the price of the Sky package. Chris Cary was one such entrepreneur.
Alive and Hacking
From 1993, Cary - originally operating out of Innovation House which is where Nova had been based - sold pirated smartcards which were earning him thousands of pounds. Thanks to crackdowns on his companies in Britain, Cary started trading as Megatek, a shop based in Dún Laoghaire shopping mall, which was pulling in up to £20,000 a day until authorities closed it in June 1996.
When the case was brought to court in 1998, Cary pleaded guilty and was bailed whilst awaiting sentencing on the condition that he report to police daily.
When the day of sentencing arrived, Cary changed his plea to not guilty. When asked why he had changed his plea, he told the court: "I am not guilty. I went along with it in a confused state because it seemed to make people happy. It was a ridiculus thing to do and I knew it was stupid even then. I regret how totally wrong it was. I really am innocent - I wouldn't do it otherwise."
He said he had brought up his family to be truthful and could not bear the thought of them knowing he had been wrongfully convicted.
Echoes of the day he told a judge in Dublin that he didn't realise he was breaking the law by operating a pirate radio station!
Cary was sentenced to four years for conspiracy to defraud but managed to escape in August that year. Under a false identity he fled to New Zealand where he was eventually tracked down by private detectives working on behalf of Sky.
Chris was handed a new sentence but it was whilst he was serving time in Parkhurst Prison that he suffered a stroke which left him partially paralysed.
Long Wave Plans
On his release in 2001 he was sent to the Isle of Man for specialist treatment. Whilst there he discovered that the Island had an allocated long wave frequency which was not in use and this set his mind racing which led to negotiations with the Isle of Man authorities. In the meantime, early in 2002 Ireland's long wave frequency, which had been occupied since September 1989 by Atlantic 252, a joint RTÉ/RTL venture, and then the failed Teamtalk 252, was now out of use. Chris turned his attentions to Ireland and started working on a plan to relaunch Nova across the whole of Britain and Ireland via the huge antenna, located in Trim, Co Meath. There were obstacles, he would have to persuade RTÉ to let him take over the facilities, but at the time he believed that their commercial interests would win out. They didn't!.
Cary also expressed interest in a commercial licence to be advertised for Dublin in 2003. Unfortunately he was destined not to broadcast from Ireland again.
In 2008, whilst in Tenerife hoping to launch Radio Nova there, Chris had a second stroke, which totally paralysed him. He also suffered a lung infection and after spending a number of weeks in a Spanish hospital, sadly passed on February 29th.