Such was the response to the Irish release of our 2fm U2 ‘New Roots’ album Universal Music Group have decided to release the album globally! Incredible news for LauraLynn, Ireland’s Children’s Hospice and an amazing showcase for the Irish music acts involved. Huge thanks to U2 for their generosity in waving all their royalties and sharing an exclusive live track from The Joshua Tree live tour.
When I was a teenager Oasis was one of my favourite bands of all time. Spent many a day daydreaming away to “Live Forever”, “Rock ’n’Roll Star”, “Wonderwall”, “Whatever” and my favourite Oasis track of all time “Slide Away”. Noel Gallagher was in my eyes the greatest songwriter in the world.
I never thought 22 years later that (A) I’d get to meet the man and (B) that he would record a track in our 2fm studios that he was so happy with that a year late15r he would include on his new album ‘Who Built the Moon?’. The track ‘Dead In The Water’ recorded in RTÉ 2FM’s legendary Studio 8 and engineered by the brilliant Damian Chennells is sublime and it’s a real honour to have RTÉ 2FM associated with the album.
I love what I do for a living. 15 Year old Alan would have lost his little mind if he knew that this would happen in the far off year of 2017.
Ships has been announced as the winner of the RTÉ Choice Music Prize Irish Album of the Year 2017 for the album Precession (Ships Music label). The judging panel, made up of Irish music media professionals, deliberated at length tonight before choosing the winning album.
Ships received a cheque for €10,000, a prize which has been provided by the Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO) and the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) – as well as a specially-commissioned award.
The winner of the RTÉ Choice Music Prize Irish Song of the Year was also announced and Chasing Abbey won the prize for their song “That Good Thing”. Decided by the public via the RTÉ and Choice Music Prize websites, fans got behind their favourite song in big numbers.
The sold-out event in Vicar Street was hosted by RTÉ 2FM’s Eoghan McDermott and was broadcast live on the station on a specially extended Louise McSharry show.
RTÉ2 will broadcast a one-hour TV highlights programme of the RTÉ Choice Music Prize featuring performances from the acts and interviews by Bláthnaid Treacy on Sunday March 18th at 11pm.
Earlier during the day, the inaugural “Conversations” took place at the Morrison Hotel, a music forum attended by international and Irish industry.
One of the most satisfying aspects of my job is discovering new Irish acts and one of our goals for 2017 was to open our legendary ‘Studio 8’ recording space to as many unsigned & independent Irish acts as possible. One project to benefit from this was the ‘Irish Youth Music Awards’. The IMYA’s is a community based youth music project for teen bands and musicians aged 12-19 years old, across the whole island of Ireland. It is a music led, music based project which honours the most effective music projects run by groups of young people each year. The principle aim of IYMA is to give young musicians access to industry professionals to benefit from their advice and knowledge.
Last year over 15,000 young people engaged in the initiative and it is still growing. The 2018 IYMAs National Day is set for April 21st in Croke Park. IYMAs partners and supporters include The Department of Children and Youth Affairs, RTÉ 2FM, BIMM Institute Dublin, LinkedIn Learning, IMRO, Music Maker, Gaisce – The President’s Award and Youth Action Northern Ireland
With that in mind I’m proud to announce that we will broadcast the Studio 8 session with 2017 IYMAs recipients ‘Liquid Space’ this Wednesday February 21st!
How temporarily changing the name of our radio station helped one of Ireland’s most loved charities.
Cardiovascular disease is Ireland’s number one killer but a temporary tattoo can make a permanent change. #showsomeheart this February and get a tattoo in any Insomnia Coffee Co, Daybreak store or on https://irishheart.ie/
For a one week period 2fm rebranded on-air to Tattoo Fm
The shortlist for this year’s RTÉ Choice Music Prize, Irish Album of the Year 2017, in association with IMRO & IRMA, was announced today on RTÉ 2FM’s Tracy Clifford Show by Tony Clayton Lea, chairman of the judging panel. The shortlist is as follows:
Come On Live Long – In The Still (self released)
Marlene Enright – Placemats and Second Cuts (self released)
Fangclub – Fangclub (Universal)
Lankum – Beneath the Earth and the Sky (Rough Trade)
James Vincent McMorrow – True Care (Faction Records)
New Jackson – From Night to Night (All City)
Otherkin – OK (Rubyworks)
Fionn Regan – The Meetings of the Waters (Abbey Records)
Ships – Precession (Ships Music)
Talos – Wild Alee (Feel Good Lost)
As part of RTÉ’s continued commitment to promoting Irish music, RTÉ 2FM celebrates the announcement of the shortlist across its schedule throughout the day with All Irish Music All Day from 6am to midnight. As part of this Louise McSharry will present a two-hour special programme on this year’s RTÉ Choice Music Prize, Irish Album of the Year 2017 shortlist from 8-10pm this evening. RTÉ 2FM will continue to mark the announcement of the shortlist this week and beyond through a mix of airplay of tracks from the shortlisted albums, interviews with this year’s shortlisted artists and live performances.
The shortlisted albums can be enjoyed in full on the RTÉ Choice Music Prize website www.choicemusicprize.ieand on www.2fm.ie/rtechoicemusic. The winning album will be announced at the RTÉ Choice Music Prize live event, held in Vicar Street, Dublin on Thursday 8th March 2018. As part of the partnership with RTÉ, the event will be broadcast live on RTÉ 2FM in a special four-hour extended programme from 7-11pm and on RTÉ2 as part of a special RTÉ Choice Music Prize TV programme, approximately one week later.
The 13th annual RTÉ Choice Music Prize will once again celebrate and acknowledge the best in Irish recorded music. The prize has become one of the highlights of the Irish musical calendar since its inception in 2005 and is awarded to the Irish Album of the Year, as chosen from a shortlist of ten releases by a panel of twelve Irish music media professionals and industry experts.
The winning act will receive €10,000, a prize fund which has been provided by The Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO) and The Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA). All of the shortlisted acts will receive a specially commissioned award.
RAAP, Culture Ireland & Golden Discs are also official project partners.
Culture Ireland will fund the attendance of influential overseas Industry executives to attend the RTE Choice Music Prize Live Event on March 8th while Golden Discs will feature special stands showcasing the RTE Choice Music Prize nominees across their stores nationwide.
RTÉ Choice Music Prize – Irish Song of The Year 2017
The shortlist for the RTÉ Choice Music Prize – Irish Song of The Year 2017 will be announced on Wednesday 31st January 2018. A special event featuring exclusive performances from both Album of the Year and Song of the Year nominees will be held in Dublin’s Tramline venue that evening.
Tickets for the Choice Music Prize live event are available at all Ticketmaster outlets and at http://www.ticketmaster.ie priced €28.00 including booking fee
What a fantastic night at the RTÉ 2fm Xmas Ball last night in aid of ISPCC Childline! To all the acts who gave so generously of their time and talents, The Script, The Coronas, Róisín O, Gavin James, Hudson Taylor Hermitage Green, Little Hours & Wild Youth, to all at MCD, 3Arena, RTÉ 2fm and numerous generous suppliers we are truly grateful
A staggering and vital €500,000 was raised for Ireland’s 24 hour listening service for children and young people. This support will help ensure the ISPCC remain there for children and young people 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
The 2fm Rising list is a culmination of an incredible year of music on 2FM which included our various live events with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, our best selling u2 Joshua Tree ‘New Roots’ charity album and our new partnership with the RTÉ Choice Music prize.
The strength of the list previews what an exciting year lies ahead for the Irish music industry. The breath of sounds and styles from these great Irish acts is stunning.
For full details and to hear some of these exciting new Irish acts, log onto 2fm.ie/rising18.
He started on radio.
He’s back on the radio.
100% worth the wait.
“SiriusXM made me an offer to return that I couldn’t refuse,” Gervais said in a statement. “my own playlist and absolute freedom of speech,” he added. “It’s the perfect platform for me, and hopefully the listener too.”
Ricky Gervais is Deadly Sirius- Pilot Episode from DeadlySiriusSXM on Vimeo.
“Ricky Gervais Is Deadly Sirius” will debut Tuesday, Oct. 24, at 11 a.m. ET on SiriusXM.
While Dropbox (or whatever cloud service you use to save your files) is now the go to place to store old word documents, ideas and doodles, it was just a few years ago a trusty USB key or a concrete block of a external hard drive was the only way of keeping your files archived and safe.
Only yesterday while rooting in a wardrobe did I find an old USB Key marked ‘Ideas 07-10’. Instantly it felt like finding an old scrapbook in an attic. Plugging it into my macbook I was greeted with a ton of old photos, random text files and a scattering of MP3 tunes. One file that my attention was immediately attracted to was a folder entitled ‘IDEAS and BITS’. In I clicked and there was whole host of radio/tv/online ideas that I had either produced or left to ferment like a bottle of fine wine (or potentially a bad batch of home brewed beer). Great memories from my days of setting up the programming of iRadio and later during the 3 years of producing the “Breakfast with Hector’ radio show.
Some ideas good, some ideas not so good.
I thought though I would share with you a small selection of the ones I think grabbed attention and cut through. Hopefully it might spark some ideas and encourage you to go searching for the USB you think you’ve left in a drawer somewhere.
The iRadio Naked Bus
This was by far the strangest charity competition i’ve ever run but ended up being incredibly successful making all the national news outlets. We used rising fuel prices (this was in 2007) as the premise for people to ditch the car and take public transport naked all in the name of charity.
The station invited listeners to participate in the “Naked Bus Challenge”, whereby they were collected from their homes and driven to work naked. The bus delivered one person per day to their place of work.
The completion element was simple: whoever raised the most money would be named the Naked Bus champion winning a load of prizes. The promotion was very visual with a fully wrapped bus driving through every town in the staton franchise area. It drove huge awareness which in turn put the ratings through the roof. This was before Twitter, Instagram and Facebook really took off. A huge hit on BEBO 🙂
The Birth Notices
Believe it or not in Ireland the ‘Death Notices’ is one of the most listened to radio segments on local radio. Basically one person reading out funeral arrangements for about 10 minutes straight. It’s usually the biggest time block success for local stations that drives huge listenership. My idea was to do the opposite and broadcast the ‘Birth Notices’ once a week to welcome brand new listeners to the station I was working for. We created specially branded baby bibs and the segment was inundated with families trying to get on the slot.
Here’s some audio
Granny Gran Prix
How can you not love a daredevil Granny?
The premise was simple – Could we find the fastest granny in Ireland? To make sure the show did not encourage or glorify speeding, the show requested that any granny applying was doing so in the knowledge that they needed proper professional help to make them a better driver, and ‘Breakfast with Hector’ would give them the vehicle (pardon the pun) to do so!
The shows host invited callers to share their granny stories which provided some fantastic on-air moments. From hundreds of nominations, we selected our Top 10 Grannies including the previous year’s champion and brought them to Ireland’s top racing track Mondello Park to compete in an intensive time trial race! The promotion proved to be a huge success particularly with families looking to nominate their grannies!!
2nd Chance Debs
Very simple mechanic. A chance to relive or have your debs/prom for the first time. People won tickets by sharing their horror debs stories. Worked brilliant on air and the night itself as you will see below was incredibly fun.
Obama FM
Ah yes jumping on any Irish roots connection story….. From the original press release below.
“A regional radio station in the midlands will change its name to Obama FM tomorrow when it broadcasts from the Irish ancestral home of US president elect Barack Obama. i105-107 FM will broadcast all day from Moneygall in Co Offaly on the eve of the historic inauguration. We just thought we should do something to celebrate Barack Obama’s Irish roots. It will be such a historical occasion, we had to mark it some way,” said Alan Swan, i105-107 FM programme director.
We ended up winning Irish radio Innovator of the Year at the Irish Radio Advertising Awards 2010 and a ton of national & international press. It cost very little and delivered massively for the fledgling station.
‘Ireland’s Biggest Simultaneous Aerobics Class’
Limerick gym instructor Richie Clifford was the break out star of TV Show ‘The Gym’ on RTE Television. Following an on-air call with Richie, The Hector Breakfast Show decided to plan ‘Ireland’s Biggest Simultaneous Aerobics Class’.
The idea was to try and convince as many gyms, schools, and offices to switch on the breakfast show at 8am and join in on a live aerobics class from one of Ireland’s biggest sports arenas at the University of Limerick. Yes… an aerobics class on the radio did sound like a ridiculous idea but somehow it captured the imagination of our listeners and caused huge talk-ability.
Over 600 listeners took part in a live outside broadcast while the show received enormous social media feedback and national press. You could do this idea again and pursue beating the record of the longest ever aerobics class which stands at 39 hours 20 minutes.
Tommy and Hector Podcast
One of the highlights of being the content director at iRadio was launching the Tommy and Hector show. Way too much fun. I look about 10 in the video below.
