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A Radiowaves Special: From Cork's Eastside to the Sound of the South - The Inside Story of Radio ERI

This extract from 1984: A Holding Year of Partying and Sales Where We Knocked Out Our Competition

Joseph O'Connor writes:
I vividly remember the last few days of the year and being in the city office at 117 Patrick Street with all the staff gone home for the holidays. I looked around and saw that it was very untidy and bedraggled. It occurred to me that the radio station needed a new shift at that point. On-air it was running on John Creedon’s efforts as well as great talent, including Liam Quigley, and by then we also had Neil Prendevile (who was called Jim Lockhart) and Hugh Browne. I still call Neil Jim.

Hugh ran many great promotions but there were so many ideas on-air throughout 1984 that it made up for the fact that the overall format was not as tight as I would have liked it to be, or as sharp. It ran on enthusiasm and personalities. I found that John Creedon did not want to keep ideas for too long. I wanted to institutionalise, orchestrate them and commercialise them. He saw them as broadcasting works of art. I felt that he saw me as a greedy capitalist who was profiting from his undoubted genius which, of course, I was – although with a bit of decency.

There was always some tension between John and me which erupted violently in 1986 but I always respected him. By that time Ber Horgan of CCLR, who effectively ran that station and owned it, had joined our sales team when it closed down. I became very fond of Ber who became a top member of our sales team. By coincidence, when Ber was young, my mother, just out of the convent, was one of her teachers in St Angela’s Girl School on Patricks Hill near my old school, which is the 96FM studios today on Patricks Place in Cork.



There'll be another extract tomorrow but for now, today's recording comes from April 23rd and features some airchecked output from that evening.
Click here to listen.

To follow the story of ERI from the start click here.
If you have anything you can contribute - photos, recordings, memories, anecdotes, memorabilia, corrections - please contact us at radioeri@radiowaves.fm.