November 1987 is one of those months in the history of Irish radio which was quite seismic – and felt like it at the time. The government in power finally appeared to have got their act together in terms of the ‘pirate radio problem' and this time around the announcements that new legislation was coming had substance.
Meanwhile, in 144 Upper Leeson Street, unbeknownst to anyone bar a select few, Chris Cary had returned to Dublin with plans to bring Radio Nova back to the air. At the start of the year he had applied for transponder space with a plan to broadcast Radio Nova via satellite, which in turn could be relayed via cable and even terrestrially. He was still waiting to receive the goahead by the time he returned to Dublin. At midday on November 9th a new, strong signal, appeared in Dublin on 100.0MHz emitting test tones. This was replaced with continuous music on November 12th – no announcements, no promos or idents, just crystal clear stereo FM music with a quality of signal which the anorak community believed could only be capably achieved by one man – Chris Cary. The rumour mill went into overdrive. The new Radio Nova was located on the top floor, in a small bathroom off to the side of Energy’s on-air studio. In action were a cartridge machine, two CD players and an automated mixer. For most of Energy’s time broadcasting in 144, the building next door in 143 resembled a bomb site. By November it had been restored, put to auction and bought by Chris Cary – or a company acting on his behalf! On November 12th 143 Upper Leeson Street became the home of the new Radio Nova. Meanwhile, 144 was also going through some changes of its own. The old Newsroom became the new on-air studio and the Production Studio was moved upstairs.Hot 100
At 7am on November 18th Niall McGowan presented the first live programme on Radio Nova – The Hot 100, which had by now shifted slightly to 99.9MHz. A big play was being made of the fact that every song was from CD. Other voices heard were Tim Kelly and Noel Clancy and an old familiar address of 19 Herbert Street is given out over the air for correspondence. For most people it was surreal hearing the old Radio Nova jingles playing out over FM in Dublin after a 20 month absence. The station also started carrying the Energy 103 news broadcasts – which were rebranded to Independent Radio News.
Niall McGowan vividly remembers the first broadcast:
My memories of that day are of ‘terror’. I was told the day before that I was opening Nova 100 at 7 in the morning and thought “great”. When I got into the station next door to Energy I was shocked and stunned because there was no carts and no records - we had a new thing called CDs and I had never seen one before!I remember the first hour was a steep learning curve; the CD player acted funny and we all had no idea what the buttons on the CD player did.
We did not know many of the songs and that is why the music is a little strange and not entirely ‘hits’ and I only had about 20-30 to choose from. When you put a CD in the player it seemed to take an age to load and most of the time I just played the first song that loaded. I was so so nervous but full of the beans of being young and I soon felt confident.
I remember going into Tony McKenzie after the show and asking ‘Hey Tony, do you know how to work a CD player?’
He answered ‘no.’Day 2 was much better and I had lots of CDs to play.
On November 24th at a staff meeting, those present are informed that the new Radio Nova would merge with Energy Power 103FM from 1pm the next day.
Next morning, when Tony McKenzie failed to appear for his mid-morning show at 10am, Niall McGowan stepped in to cover. Niall - of course - was one of the voices on the new Nova but he appeared to have forgotten how to use his voice on this particular norning, at least until 12.30pm when he read out the positions for the Job Spot and gave the first hint to listeners that something was in the air.
Tony was actually doing engineering work, preparing for the merger.
Cassidy Jones joined Niall on air and the two continued a frenzied build-up to 1pm.
At one o'clock the waiting was over. The first item on the News was this major announcement...
Energy Power 103FM and the new Radio Nova have amalgamated in view of the pending legislation on independent radio for Ireland, as announced by the Minister for Communications, Ray Burke, last week. The station name, as from now, is 'Nova Power 103FM'.
In line with the legislation outlined last week, 20% of the daily output of Nova Power 103FM will now consist of news, information and current affairs of particular relevance to Dublin city.
Nova Power 103FM is proud to be associated at this time with Dublin's Millenium Year, and for this reason, we'll be placing special emphasis during the coming months on Dublin, its past and future.
'Dublin Today', an hour-long programme of news and items of current affairs, will be aired each weekday evening from 6-7pm, as and from this evening.
Nova Power 103FM is particularly proud of its News service and will be making a special effort to provide as much information on a variety of subjects as possible, paying particular attention to the Dublin community. And Nova Power 103FM will now be providing a news update on the half hour, in addition to its hourly bulletins.
Chris Cary, the founder of Radio Nova, has been hired on a consultancy basis by Nova Power 103FM to steer the programming of the new station.
Brian McKenzie has been appointed as station manager and joins the board of directors.
Sybil Fennell becomes chief executive and Tony McKenzie and Brian McKenzie become joint shareholders and directors.
Nova Power 103FM now broadcasts on 99.9 and 103FM and on 738AM.
Nova Power 103FM brings you this new programme lineup as and from this afternoon, with 'Dublin Today' on air from 6-7 this evening'.
Chris Cary made an appearance on the first edition of Dublin Today's return, explaining that the merger was designed to prepare the station for a licence application.
Whether we will get one, I think, is entirely up to the performance of myself and the staff that work here, and the reaction of the listeners. Do they like it? If it attains a high enough profile, I think it'll be well considered.
Commenting on the changes to programming content, particularly the increase in speech output, Cary said:
I think all the stations in Dublin, the major three, have gone up a CHR road, Contemporary Hit Radio, with less and less content because it doesn't cost much to play records. The content does cost money and time and effort.
I think the formula we want to put together is if you're not listening to Nova, you don't know what's going on because every other link will be telling you something you might want to know.
One listener thought it might be better if the two stations had stayed seperate and done their own thing. Chris agreed that it would be better if they were seperate...
...but there's not the finances to do it. And if you've read the bill or read comments in the paper, there's only going to be two stations, maybe three at most, in the Dublin area. So it's far better to condense and compile the thing together and try and make ...the best of the event.
I mean, Brian McKenzie and a group of people set up Radio Nova, which I thought was perhaps a good idea and I was going to help them out and see if we could recreate Nova.
There's not a lot of time left to create anything. Here is Energy, you know, number one, number two, depending which set of research you look at, with a high profile, a lot of great talent, up and running. It seemed more sensible when the approach was made to say, okay, we'll join forces.
Brokefast Club
In a baffling move one other major change to the schedule was made. In his first decision as station manager, Brian McKenzie opted to replace Pat Courtenay on the Breakfast Club with Cassidy Jones (right). The Flying Kiwi would instead be flying solo in a new mid-morning slot, although thankfully, Bob Gallico continued to work the excellent double handers with him – unfortunately, though, they were much less frequent.
Speaking To Radiowaves fm, Pat Courtenay says he understood why the decision was made and felt that the Breakfast Club with him at the helm had maybe run its course. He also felt that because of the new legislation the desire to tone down on the ‘zany’ aspects of the schedule played a part in the decision.
Whatever the reasoning, Cassidy Jones didn’t manage to build the same rapport with Bob and Lisa (which is not to denigrate him in any way, just like the impossible comparisons with Nova in Energy’s early days, Cassidy had a lot to live up to).
What's My Name?
Unfortunately, Nova Power 103FM didn’t make it to Christmas. By mid-December, in a move to protect the goodwill associated with the name Radio Nova, the receiver for Nova Media Services sought an injunction preventing Energy/Chris Cary from using ‘Nova’. In a strange move, the station decided to simply drop Nova from the name and identify on-air as 'Power 103FM'. A few days later it was back to Energy 103 which led to head-scratching bafflement from listeners, and even one or two presenters, and derision from other stations.
Energy never really recovered from the chaos surrounding the name changes and the changes in schedule. In just a few weeks it had gone from being one of the best stations Dublin had ever produced to becoming a shadow of itself.
One wonders what the thinking was behind starting up Nova The Hot 100 and merging it with Energy 103. Designed to enhance its reputation and give it a better chance of attaining a licence, it had the complete opposite effect, and in hindsight that could have easily been predicted.
Whatever gains there were to be had from using the Nova name, and with the general listening population they were huge, those gains would have been offset by the amount of organisations and powerful individuals who had huge issues with Cary and Nova.
Putting the 20% speech requirement in place was definitely a clever move, especially when other stations were dropping, or cutting back on, news and infotainment progranming.
What was obvious to most was that Chris Cary would have no hope of being given a licence...so why not keep his name (and Nova) out of the mix and apply the changes to Energy, which had worked so hard to shake off the association with Nova?
Even if that had been implemented, or Nova Power 103FM had've worked out, we'll never know how the first few months of 1988 would have panned out in light of developments to come in March.
The new year came round and on day one, in a nod to past glories, Pat Courtenay presented a show which played back all the best sketches from his time on the Breakfast Club. When the laughter had died down it only served as a reminder of what had been, and the heights that the station had reached, before that fateful day of November 25th.
Energy 103 basically ticked along through January and February. In hindsight, it is obvious that Cary had lost interest in it for reasons that would soon become clear. When you factor in that Sybil Fennell was enjoying new-found motherhood then, although it came out of the blue in one way, in many others it wasn’t a complete surprise when Energy 103 ceased broadcasting on March 11th.