THE PHOTOGRAPH in The Irish Timeslast week of broadcaster Brendan Balfe marking the end of medium wave transmission on RTÉ brought back those types of memories that you think you've forgotten and probably had until something sparks the brain into life.
Who now remembers Radio Éireann, never mind 2RN from days when the radio was the wireless? Then, an outside broadcast consisted of a reporter with one of the heaviest tape-recorders man has ever carried - the L2 - which looked like something a small army would use on manoeuvres for sending un-hearable messages on crackly lines, when a race-course tic-tac man would have sent the same message in a few seconds.
I spent many happy Saturday evenings in the late 1960s working on Bunny Carr's Later Than Late on Radio Éireann. We followed The Late Late Show and the plan was to pick up where Gay Byrne had left off. One night sticks in my memory. Gay had discussed communism. Bunny sent me out to vox pop, that is, ask people in the street their views on communism.
I went out three, maybe four times, embarrassingly to the same group of men gathered in the gloom near the GPO. Reason for repeat visits? The men were articulate, had fascinating memories - including one who had known James Connolly. Trouble was, the L2 never told you, never gave a clue as to when the batteries were going to give out!
Semi-professional memories, however, are overwhelmed by the memories of Radio Éireann. If you are 55 or over surely you remember some of the great programmes? Who can forget The Foley Family, The Kennedys of Castlerosse, Living With Lynch.
And what of Take The Floor with Din Joe, a variety show which included Rory O'Connor tap-dancing on the wireless? And no Sunday afternoon was complete without Micheál O'Hehir and his seminal broadcasts from Croke Park? Then along came Terry Wogan and Hospitals Requests which marked the great man's first steps to a glittering career in broadcasting.
George Burrows, long gone, was a sub-editor on The Irish Timeswhen I joined as a baby reporter in 1968. He was also among the regular contributors to Topical Talk, broadcast at lunchtime just after the news where his enthusiasm for the wildlife of this country came through with every word. The late Michael Dillon, the finest agricultural correspondent you could hope to meet, managed to do his cattle market reports for Radio Éireann and later RTÉ, and then arrive at The Irish Times to write - and all without removing his hat or coat.
For many listeners from those days, I suspect an abiding memory will be the presence of the Droitwich whistle - a piercing sound that would make you jump from your seat. It lasted only a few seconds, but the added anxiety was you never knew when it was going to happen again. It was the most annoying thing about trying to listen to the wireless in the 1950s and 1960s. Most families, my own included, had a big old-fashioned wireless: a Bush was a popular one. They had tuning aids in-built: ours had a glass eye.
It was green and had two black halves , one on either side of the eye. As you got closer to the station you required the black halves disappeared until the green eye suggested you were spot on. Sneaking down stairs at am to listen to the BBC broadcasting the cricket from Australia, I'd eventually give up on the green eye and take whatever the signal sent me. Thus I managed to get Frank Tyson's six wickets for 16 runs against Australia and the late Archbishop David Shepherd's century in perfect sound but from memory, that was about it in a five-match Test series!
Droitwich is a spa town in Worcestershire which has had a noble history in British broadcasting. The war ended on May 8th, 1945. In the previous year the BBC's director-general had promised that within 90 days of Victory in Europe, peace-time broadcasting would be restored. On July 29th, 1945 regional programmes were resumed, the original National Programme was replaced by the Light Programme and carried by Droitwich Long Wave on 1500 metres and 200 kilohertz. An additional service started the following year, called The Third Programme.
This was broadcast from Droitwich on 583 kilohertz using a transmitter released from wartime service. But. . . but. . . but. The Droitwich transmitter had to run on low power because the frequency was shared by a station in Latvia. That one was unstable, causing it to deviate from the agreed frequency. It was this deviation which caused what wireless buffs call a heterdoyne whistle to chip into the Droitwich signal and ruin Radio Éireann's programmes!
The BBC Monitoring Service, then at Tatsfield in Surrey and now in Caversham in Berkshire, swung into action. Instructions were relayed to Droitwich to " steer" a specially designed piece of kit to the same frequency as Latvia and though the change didn't get rid of the whistle totally, in most cases it reduced it to insignificance. It didn't require listeners to re-tune their sets but it had the bizarre effect, with the whistle almost gone, of letting Radio Éireann listeners every now and then hear Latvian Radio.
Interference from foreign stations is always worse during the hours of darkness and in the days I'm referring to the BBC Third Programme went on the air only in the evenings, so the problem was even worse. Eventually Latvia moved to another frequency and the situation resolved itself.
One final memory. I was brought up in Athlone in Co. Wesmeath where there was a radio transmitter for Radio Éireann.
As a child I really thought it was great that my town was on the tuning dial along with Hilversum (wherever that was!) and, of course, Dublin. The transmitter was a few miles walk from where we lived and my dad used to tease me when we walked out there that if I listened really, really carefully I could hear Radio Éireann. . . even without a wireless. I never heard any programmes, no matter how hard I tried. . . just the Droitwich Whistle.