More bus station than radio station access chaos

If you're seeking the classic newsroom environment, made famous by so many movies and TV programmes, where chaos rules and nobody sits still for more than a moment, don't come to a large newspaper or broadcaster. Most media organisations are well resourced and highly organised, so the atmosphere is more routine and predictability than hustle and bustle.

Community radio, on the other hand, does tend to fit the stereotyped image, with literally never a dull moment.

"More like a bus station than a radio station," is the description offered by Mary Ruddy, manager of Connemara Community Radio, housed in the former industrial school in Letterfrack. "We have so many different groups getting access to the studios," she says. "A huge amount of time is taken up by training our local volunteers, FAS workers and Transition Year students."

As Conal O'Carroll, manager of Dublin South Community Radio, explains, "the day-to-day life in the station is dictated by the raison d'etre of community radio, which is access for everyone in the community."

"Our ethos is to be representative of the whole community, with people doing it for themselves." What this means in practice is large chunks of that community passing through the doors every week.

"Every day is a story of mixing our registered volunteers - who range in age from 16 to 82 - with FAS assistants with community groups," says Conal, without a hint of weariness. "You never know what's coming next.

"Most programmes are made by local groups or volunteers and our three studios are in use from morning 'til night. For most it is a hobby or a way of promoting their own organisation."

With so many people to be organised and so little money to do it with, it's remarkable that the stations manage to broadcast for so many hours each day. North East Access Radio in Dublin, for example, broadcasts from 9 a.m. to midnight seven days a week.

"You have to wonder sometimes how it doesn't all fall apart," admits Ciaran Murray, station manager (see `a day in the life', right). "With over 100 community groups using the station, diplomatic skill is needed. Right now I'm trying to settle a `debate' about which should get studio priority: St Paul's Transition Year radio training session or the recording of Lorcan Brassband's special."

Diplomacy is only one of numerous skills required of the station manager. In practice he or she is commercial manager, controller of programmes, personnel manager, FAS administrator, training officer and sometimes even presenter.

If proof were needed that community radio is non-commercial, it is provided by Connemara Community Radio, which has plans to open a fourth studio on the island of Inishbofin, to add to the two in Letterfrack and its new third studio in the van which formerly housed the Bank of Ireland travelling bank.

Inishbofin (population about 100) could hardly be classed as a commercially viable catchment area. "Decisions are based on giving studio access to those people with the least access," Ruddy explains.

Broadcasting still costs money, and this ethos doesn't generate much of it. "Our facilities just don't bear comparison to commercial stations," Ruddy says. "We think of ourselves differently anyway. Community radio arose out of a community development philosophy." But she says that if she had one wish it would be enough funding to increase the number of full-time staff from two to five.

Is all the hard slog worthwhile? When Ruddy begins to doubt it, she glances at a letter received in the station's early days from a Letterfrack woman: "For the first time I feel I live in the centre of where things are happening."