RTÉ Radio 1 has reached agreement with Eamon Dunphy for the format of his new Saturday morning radio programme, which will be a mixture of live and pre-recorded interviews with high-profile personalities.
Conversations with Eamon Dunphy will be broadcast on Saturdays at 9.10am from September 30th. It will feature "prominent Irish people" discussing their lives and passions and the music that inspires them. Mr Dunphy said yesterday that he hoped to provide interesting guests, humour, insight and a relaxed Saturday morning atmosphere, but he declined to name guests already lined up.
"I'll be interviewing people I admire, people I'm curious about, people I know and like. The show is going to have a nice and intimate feel to it.
" When you are in the same line-up as top broadcasters such as Marian Finucane, it's a huge challenge and one I'll take very seriously."
Describing negotiations with RTÉ as "quick" and "very direct", Mr Dunphy said he was glad to be moving from commercial radio and joining the national broadcaster.
His new programme will be followed by Ruth Buchanan's Playback, which moves to the later time of 10.02am, and by Marian Finucane, who continues in the same Saturday slot at 11.02am.
Head of RTÉ Radio 1 Ana Leddy said she was confident the Dunphy programme would appeal to a wide audience. "Over the last couple of weeks we've been ironing out the finer details of the programme. We assigned a producer a few weeks ago and the three of us have talked at length about the type of programme we want to broadcast."