The Orwellian year arrived with Radio Nova facing big bother from an organisation that wanted to exert totalitarian control over the airwaves, denying listeners choice and forcing them to tune to their brand of state-sponsored radio.
In so many ways the year 1984, as envisaged by George Orwell, provided the perfect backdrop for RTÉ’s intense jamming campaign against Radio Nova (and Sunshine Radio too).
In the lead-up to Christmas, a lot of threatening noises were emanating from RTÉ, or agents speaking on their behalf. They had grown tired of government inaction and were threatening to take the law into their own hands in a do-or-die campaign to rid the airwaves of the pirates—and Radio Nova in particular.
“It’s now a question of who goes – Nova or RTÉ. The country is too small for the both of us. Nothing short of the total shutdown of Radio Nova will satisfy the trade unions,” one antagonist is quoted as saying.
True to their word, RTÉ began interfering with Radio Nova’s broadcasts as the festive season approached. It was a deliberate act of sabotage with RTÉ arguing that they were protecting their own advertising income at a lucrative time of the year.
December’s jamming was little more than fun and games compared with what Radio Nova faced in January. RTÉ initially jammed the link to Nova Park from a communal ariel at the bottom of Scholarstown Road.
As the month progressed with RTÉ denying any involvement, they eventually confirmed that their transmissions were causing massive interference on the frequencies used by Nova and Kiss FM. They claimed that they had been granted permission by the Minister of Communications to transmit test broadcasts over certain frequencies – some of these just happened to be the same ones that Nova were broadcasting on.
Speaking on behalf of Radio Nova, Tom Hardy claimed that the entire FM band was affected. This meant that listeners were being denied not only local unlicensed broadcasts but also legal services emanating from Britain. The other FM pirates also made the same claim although RTÉ and the BBC both say that this was not the case.
As Kevin Branigan says: “That would’ve been hard to do – even for them – back then.”
Kiss sacrificed
Kiss FM became a casualty of the campaign on January 15th. Advertising income had fallen and, with Nova jumping around the band in an effort to escape RTÉ’s interference, the Kiss transmitter was needed for the main service.
Specialist and News programmes were also severely affected. The nightly magazine programme Dublin Today was dropped and news output was cut back.
Scott Williams, pictured in Herbert Street, was one of those let go
Unfortunately, a number of employees were let go. Cary was down a station, losing advertising income and unable to broadcast a number of programmes. Amongst those to face the sack were station manager Tom Hardy, presenters Chris Barry, Scott Williams, Shane McGabhan and Tony Fenton, plus newsreaders Ken Hammond, Linda Conway, David Malone and Jenny McIver.
He felt he had no choice. Which most people – bar those in Donnybrook – would have sympathised with. For whatever reason though, Cary decided to dismiss his employees without notice, holiday pay or other legal entitlements. Six of the employees were members of the National Union of Journalists – inevitably the situation led to an official dispute with pickets placed on both Herbert Street and Nova Park.
Move to the Park
In an effort to counteract the jamming, Radio Nova moved its studio location to Nova Park bringing them closer to the transmitter site. Before they moved across, temporary studios were the order of the day.
John Clarke remembers this incident from the early days of the jamming…
I was broadcasting from Herbert St and the lads in Donnybrook took ‘the law’ into their own hands – ‘we can’t complete with this Nova station, so let’s jam them off the air’.
When they switched on their jamming, it was so loud in my headphones I nearly went deaf. Anyway, Chris was having none of it and by the second day of the licence-funded jamming Chris had secured a large portacabin and overnight he had it installed as a temporary broadcast studio over in Rathfarnham.
So, day two of the jamming kicked in within 10 minutes of me starting the show. A call came from Rathfarnham: “Grab a taxi and 100 carts and high tail it up to Greenacres…”
I was there within the half hour. Music continued from Herbert St, along with the R T & É jamming. As soon as I got from the taxi and into the cabin we went live from Greenacres – and they couldn’t find a way of continuing to jam the Mighty 890!
John Clarke – Rockin’ above the bay
I was secured into the portacabin, merrily jocking, ‘playing your favourites’ from carts along with the commercials (a flawless professional). Then I heard the sound of chains and the cabin began to rock and sway a little. I looked out the window and to my shock the damn Portacabin was being hoisted sixty feet above the ground by a crane. You see, because of the urgency with which Chris ordered the Portacabin, it had been dropped at the wrong end of the car park and the technical staff were at the other end of the Park!
So, for fifteen minutes I was rockin’ & rollin’ above the car park, sixty feet up…sounding jolly and ‘playing your favourites’.
When the cabin, with me in it, was lowered Chris opens the door with the words: “Well done, great job, we have the cabin in the right location.”
“Fine,” say I, “but you could have warned me!”
Chris smiled and said: “Well you wanted to work on the pirate ships of the ’60s – well that experience you just had sixty feet up was just like the winter gales and high seas we endured on Caroline!”
Rumours were starting to abound about the imminent demise of Radio Nova. Cary himself suggested it was a real possibility.
Unintended interference
More than rumours were the reports that emergency services were suffering interference as a result of the mixture of signals on the areas of the band that RTÉ were affecting Radio Nova. In their arrogance, this didn’t halt RTÉ’s campaign. Their argument was that they were the only broadcaster authorised to use the frequencies so the interference was solely as a result of illegal broadcasters. Which wasn’t strictly true…every time Nova moved to avoid RTÉ’s high-pitched whining (the sound of the signal that is, rather than the DG!), the test broadcast would follow them.
Sybil Fennell in the Nova Newsbooth
Sybil Fennell, who was now doing a nightly phone-in show on LBC Radio in London having left Nova at the start of the year, expressed her disappointment in the national station in an interview with the Evening Herald:
“The jamming of Nova is unnecessary. Nova is no threat to RTÉ. RTÉ is the national station and Nova is purely a Dublin station. Anyway, competition is healthy.”
She displayed no hostility towards RTÉ and acknowledged that the national broadcaster had to be all things to all people. She did, however, admit to being disappointed by its news service.
RTÉ were not alone in chasing Nova; the taxman came knocking in mid-March, demanding a payment of £150,000. For Cary, already stressed beyond belief, this was a final push over the edge.
Once again, newspaper reports had Nova closing ‘within days’ and this time the likelihood of it happening was considerably more real. On air, apart from RTÉ’s screeching, it was hard to tell that so much was going on behind the scenes – the professionalism remained as evident as ever.
After several days of massive uncertainty, an announcement was made that the station’s future had been secured thanks to investment from a consortium of businessmen. This would result in the station's parent company Nova Media Services`stepping down and another company to be set up to keep the station operational. All employees were immediately given notice to quit, but were retained on a week-to-week, freelance, basis. Mike Hogan, the Station Manager, resigned, unhappy at the treatment of the station’s staff.
Attention switches to Portmarnock
Meanwhile, with Radio Nova off FM and seemingly on its knees, RTÉ - undoubtedly ecstatic at the effectiveness of their nefarious campaign - turned their attentions to Sunshine Radio. At this point, it might be worth highlighting that RTÉ was/is mainly funded through the TV licence. Questions were being asked in the Dáil but nobody seemed to want to answer them.
Sunshine rallied their listeners but to no avail. The jamming was now alternating between themselves and Radio Nova. RTÉ intended to rid the airwaves of their two biggest Dublin rivals and it seemed that they were not going to stop until they succeeded.
In what sounded like a familiar refrain, Sunshine Radio newsreader Bob Powell laid the blame for the jamming of Sunshine firmly squarely at the feet of Chris Cary. He claimed that the hostile attitude towards Radio Nova from within RTÉ did not extend to them. The high pitched whistling on their signals should have served as a clue to how RTÉ felt about them, surely?. This lack of self-awareness echoed the reaction to the raids less than a year earlier when Sunshine felt that Cary was to blame for the raid putting them off the air.
In April, Radio Nova were exclusively on 102.7MHz for most of the first half of the month, with RTÉ following a pattern of hitting Nova one day and Sunshine the next. 88FM was switched back on on April 19th. With RTÉ only able to jam two FM frequencies at any given time it was hoped that both stations would at least have one FM outlet operational
Always ahead of the game, Chris Cary (now back from a long exile in London) switched on a second medium wave transmitter on 729kHz which meant they could now broadcast on two FM frequencies and two MW frequencies.
At this stage, RTÉ were building a new medium wave jammer at the site of the ‘Old Piggery’ in Beaumont. Cary was safeguarding Nova against this but RTÉ put the new jammer into action by hitting Sunshine Radio on their 531kHz frequency on April 25th. Incredibly, in attempting to silence Sunshine with a barrage of noise, they also managed to knock out their own broadcasts.
The RTÉ jamming campaign continued into May against the growing backdrop of a massive public backlash of disapproval with even government ministers indicating they were not happy with what was happening.
RTÉ. as ever proving to be a law unto themselves, continued undeterred and hit both Radio Nova and Sunshine in the first few days of the month. However, out of the blue, the jamming stopped altogether on May 4th, For no apparent reason at the time. There were rumours, later proven to be correct, that government intervention had
forced RTÉ to pull the plug.
