Submitted by johnh on January 19, 2008 - 17:58.
RTÉ Radio 1 will go dark on 567kHz in eight weeks.
Yup, the so-called national flagship station will at that point become unavailable to:
a) Anyone in the sticks who can't pick it up on FM
b) Anyone listening on a receiver which doesn't have FM (they didn't need it, they listened to Radio 1).
c) Anyone at sea, who probably isn't using it to pick up the Shipping Forecast at the moment. (Though, to be fair, anyone thick enough to listen to Met Eireann instead of the UK Met Office shipping forecast on BBC Radio 4 LW more or less deserves to drown.)
d) Touchy subject, this one: Anyone in Northern Ireland outside the FM coverage area. Officially, that's all of them. In practice, it's Goodnight Coleraine because it's almost impossible to buy a long wave receiver for less than a hundred pounds anymore.
e) Liverpool, Manchester, Stranraer and the M6/M74 corridor through Cumbria and up to Glasgow. No Irish people there, though, so not to worry, eh?
And finally, since it's Saturday and this is my gaff:
f) Anyone listening on a weekend who would rather not, on balance, listen to a bunch of people who know fuck-all about football talking about football, nor any extended coverage of the bloody GAA.
I live in Cork, so my radio options are extremely limited anyway, but right now there's exactly one station available on the band which is neither playing inept sport coverage nor trying to spoonfeed aural prions directly into my brain (And now on County Sound, and on Red FM, and on 96FM, it's the daily Simply-cocking-Red/Damien-"RhymingSlang"-Blunt/Lighthouse-Family 20-hour marathon!).
It's Radio 1 on medium wave, with its "Second Helpings" slot all afternoon. If they shut down the service, I will no longer be able to set a clock radio alarm for lunchtime on a weekend for fear of having reheated pretend-live reports shouted in my ear from Stamford Bridge over the IRN satellite by some wanker who ended up on the sports desk at the Eckythump Telegraph because he was too thick to pass his court reporting exam.
Never fear, though - this alternative programming strand "is also available on RTÉ's trial digital service, RTÉ Choice". Whoop-fucking-ee.
Allow me to demonstrate:
On the left, a crude map of the Pale (shaded red) about 550 years ago. On the right, RTÉ's entire universe of editorial interest, and the total extent of RTÉ's digital radio transmissions. That's the footprint of the Three Rock and Clermont Carn transmitters, shaded dark green.
If you're not in that space, you can't receive RTÉ Choice. It's not on Sky, it's not on FM, it's not on AM. It's not even on the intertubes. Chances of DAB being extended to the rest of the country during a period where the state-funded broadcaster and the regulator haven't even decided what format to broadcast in when it comes off trial? Zero.
So enjoy what's left of Raidio Éireann while it lasts. You have two months.
Meanwhile, let's see if any of us can figure out why RTÉ is so institutionally wedded to a six-hundred-year old boundary, shall we?