A NEW national news service Independent Network News (INN) will be on air from June 9th, offering a service to the 21 local stations.
The service will be headed by Mr Andrew Hanlon, who was head of news at 98 FM and with 98 FM's national service, Ireland Radio News. Mr Hanlon will be managing director and editor.
Mr John Cooney will be the political correspondent and Ms Mary Kerrigan will be deputy editor. Mr Cooney is a former political correspondent at The Irish Times and the Irish Press. He also worked at the European Commission in Brussels.
Ms Kerrigan is former deputy editor of the Sunday Press and was press officer for Fianna Fail.
It is known that INN has attracted a number of journalists from RTE as well as Radio Ireland. It is known that Ms Anne Cadwallader, a news editor with Radio Ireland and formerly with the Irish Press, is leaving to join the new service.
INN is owned by the local stations and some individual shareholders, including Mr Hanlon.
It was established following some years of local stations getting national and international news from 98 FM's service and, more recently, Dublin's FM 104 service.
Neither was ideal for the provincial stations, which are not as reliant on a music driven format.
The new service will be financed by 2 1/2 minutes of advertising a day spread out with each news bulletin. It is believed it could earn well over £3/4 million a year. The news service will be fed to each station by satellite, with the advertising, which means a local radio service will be able to offer national advertising to about 50 per cent of the radio audience.
Such an arrangement means a new outlet for national radio advertising, which can offer bigger audience figures than Gay Byrne's morning radio show, for instance, and much bigger than Radio Ireland.
The satellite feed is also being used by Independent Radio Sales, the company that sells advertising for local radio. It will also be able to sell national advertising via local radio.