Religious radio groups at odds on funding

Media Watch:Among the issues separating the two groups applying for the State's first quasi-national Christian and religious radio licence is the level of funding needed to get such a station up and running, the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) will be told by the two applicants when they address a public hearing later this month.

The Spirit Radio consortium has a budget of €2.4 million to get on the airwaves, all of which will come from its backers. Half of the total will be financed from loans, paid back without interest, chief executive officer Dave Heffernan said.

The other applicant, Yes Radio, plans to invest €4.7 million in the venture should it win out. Yes spokesman Stuart Kenny defended the need for such expenditure by saying that an AM licence would be costly to operate and it wanted to "allow for all implications".

Yes hopes to have 40 full-time/part- time staff, twice the number Spirit plans to hire. It proposes to rely largely on advertising and programme sponsorship for revenue. Spirit's emphasis will be on seeking donations, similar to what the religious and Christian stations in the US do by staging several "shareathon" fundraisers during the year.

Kenny said the Yes consortium had already spent more than €150,000 on its BCI application, based on a feasibility study by Millward Brown IMS. More than 90 per cent of people in Ireland describe themselves as Christian, whether practising or not.

If successful, Spirit expects to have a 1 per cent share of the national audience reach by the end of its first year on air. Yes proposes a daytime schedule targeted at an audience aged from 15 upwards.

Heffernan said Spirit would home in on a daytime market aged 25 and over, while relying on a younger audience later in the day. "If people want comparisons with other stations," Heffernan said, "we'd probably be akin to RTÉ Radio 1, while Yes will be more like Today FM. There's been a lot of talk of new stations starting up, but except for Newstalk, most of them rely on the same pop format.

"Ireland is the only country in Europe which doesn't have a religious station. Even Saddam Hussein granted a Christian licence for Baghdad. Whichever consortium is given the go-ahead by the BCI, it can only be a win-win situation," Heffernan added.

Heffernan co-founded East Coast Radio and is station manager of Life FM, the Cork Christian service awarded a licence by the BCI last year and which is due to go on air by the summer. Heffernan joined 5,000 delegates in attending the recent National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) conference in Orlando.

Other Spirit directors include Seán Ashmore, chief executive, Dublin's Country Mix 106.8; property developer Basil Good; Mary Seery Kearney, chief executive of Dublin YMCA and Tom MacGuinness, managing director of Horseware Products.

Yes is chaired by businessman Joe Kelly and its chief executive is Stephen Cardy. Board members include journalist David Quinn and Dr Philip O'Regan from the University of Limerick

Yes has "a foundation network" of advisers, including Sr Stanislaus Kennedy, the former moderator of the Presbyterian Church, Dr Trevor Morrow, and the Rev Remba Osengo, who chairs the African Churches Network. The public hearing will be held in the Burlington Hotel in Dublin on March 26th. The BCI is due to award the religious licence in May.

People power

Shifts in how consumers use media and pointers on how marketers can capitalise on lifestyle advertising where the customer dictates form the focus of a new report released this week by PricewaterhouseCoopers and confirming many other current analyses.

Consumers want entertainment and real information, not ads. Convergence has blurred the lines between content, advertising, media and consumer. PwC predicts that major advertisers will transfer huge amounts of media spend to other marketing tools.

College contract

UCD has awarded a three-year PR contract for its Smurfit and Quinn business schools to Dublin agency Corporate Reputations after a six-way pitch which included Fleishman-Hillard, Weber Shandwick and WHPR.

Corporate Reputations is run by Niamh Boyle, formerly head of marketing at the Smurfit School. An agency to handle the business school's international PR will be appointed soon as UCD strives to improve its ranking among full-time MBA programmes.

In the 2007 Financial Times analysis of MBA degrees, the Smurfit School fell nine places to 98th in the world, while Trinity's MBA climbed 15 places to 70th spot. Elsewhere on the PR front, Gibney Communications has won the An Post-operated Prize Bonds account.

Sweet salute

Ad agencies are notorious for embracing awards. Chemistry creative duo Emmet Wright and Adrian Fitz-Simon must be feeling loved this week, having won international gold and silver for their National Newspapers of Ireland "Press Builds Brands" work.

From almost 2,000 entries for the first World Press Awards (WPA) conducted online, only 11 of the WPA's Ferrero Rocher-style gold balls are en route to agencies.

Sporty crowd

Given Setanta Sports's success in winning major TV rights - not least this year's Rugby World Cup in France - a full house will be expected for the Association of Advertisers in Ireland president's lunch in the Radisson hotel in Stillorgan next Friday, when Niall Cogley, chief executive of Setanta Sports, will be the guest speaker.

Michael Cullen is editor of Marketing, Ireland's marketing and media monthly;