A chara, - Your usually incisive Media Correspondent seems not to have noticed a significant change in the arrangements announced by the IRTC for sound broadcasting services in the Dublin Region. The new community-of-interest Irish-language service, rather than being re-advertised on the present 102.2 MHz frequency used by Raidio na Life, is to be superimposed on the signal of an existing illegal station on 106.4 MHz. This is significantly removed from the established dial position of the Irish-language service broadcasting successfully in Dublin since 1993.
Over the past six years, voluntary effort has painstakingly built up a young, enthusiastic and widely dispersed listenership for Irish-language radio over the Greater Dublin Region. Listeners have been attracted by the strong identity and brand image of "Raidio na Life, Ceadis-a-Do Beo", just as 98FM has successfully established its own image in the commercial milieu. Yet, when 98FM strongly objected to its frequency being taken for the new Lyric FM service, that new national service was obliged to yield to IRTC pressure to protect the audience built up by 98FM in Dublin.
One would have expected that the Government-appointed IRTC would also be striving to protect the Irish-language community of interest in Dublin from having the basis of its own brand image at 102FM destroyed, rather than forcing any group seeking to continue broadcasting an Irish-language service on a voluntary basis to face the real danger of audience fragmentation, or even dissipation, by superimposing its new signal on the already established illegal signal of VIBE FM at 106.4MHz. - Is mise, Fionnuala Mac Aodha,
Bainisteoir, Raidio na Life, (on behalf of theManagement Committee), Merrion Square, Dublin 2.