radio

radio. Broadcasting in independent Ireland began with the Dublin Broadcasting Station, generally referred to by its call sign 2RN, which began transmitting on 1 January 1926. A second station in Cork, broadcasting some local programmes along with relays of 2RN, opened in 1927 but closed again in 1930. From 6 February 1933 2RN was superseded by Radio Athlone, whose high‐powered broadcasts reached a wider geographical area. From 1937 the station was generally known as Radio Éireann, although this did not become a legal entity until the Broadcasting Act of 1960 created the Radio Éireann authority.

Widespread evasion makes the number of radio licences an inadequate guide to audience size. However, drives against unlicensed sets pushed licence numbers up from 100,000 in 1937 to 139,000 in 1938, and from 187,000 in 1947 to 261,000 in 1948. In 1961, the last year before the advent of television, 502,000 licences were issued. In 1979 the authority belatedly responded to consumer demand by launching a pop music station, 2FM. An Irish language station, Radio na Gaeltachta, began broadcasting in 1972.

In Northern Ireland, transmissions by the British Broadcasting Corporation began in 1924, and the opening of a new transmitter at Lisnagarvey near Lisburn, Co. Antrim, in 1936 permitted reception beyond the 50‐mile radius round Belfast. By 1939 124,000 licences had been issued, suggesting that perhaps half of all Northern Ireland families had a radio, compared to around one in four in the Irish Free State.

As a body under state control, 2RN and its successors played an important part in the dissemination of an official culture, notably through Irish language broadcasts, and through programmes devoted to traditional music and Gaelic games. In Northern Ireland, by contrast, efforts to promote a distinctive local culture were inhibited by intense political and public hostility to anything suggestive of an ‘Irish’ identity.