The Goo 1
AUG-SEPT 23 ANDREW MCGAHON Tell us of your involv
ement with 8Radio? Well - today at 8Radio, I work with Simon Maher and Ruth O’Connor, as the management team - making sure the 8Radio machine keeps humming along. Ruth looks after all our offair communications, Social Media, PR, listener queries... everything - she is amazing! Simon manages Programme Output and the day-to-day running of the business - also a huge task. I got the easy job - I look after Station Operations, I look after Events and I also work on-air; I present The Essential Album on a Saturday night from 8pm - where we explore a classic album infull and play the record start to finish. I also present regularly on our daytime schedule on weekdays. What makes 8Radio so special? For me, 8Radio is all about our team. We are a dedicated and passionate team of music lovers and we all share that thing of wanting to tell someone else how great these records are. Unsurprisingly, we all - generally speaking - share the view that it used to be the case that typical, widely-accessible radio was diverse - and authentic in doing so. At 8Radio, we bring our listeners curated playlists that we pour over, with genuine love and interest, and we want to be the ones championing the voices and sounds that seem to be missing from mainstream. And make no mistake - it’s not simply because these songs are outside the mainstream and so we have to play them, because they’re cool… We play them because they are utterly brilliant! We play them because we like them, and we want you to like them too! 8Radio - playing the music we like. It’s that simple. And then, we also play absolute stone-cold classics from every era - and those are utterly brilliant too. That’s utterly brilliant music, x2 - and then our team curates all those along with their own individual selections, so it’s now this truly multi-genre, multi-era, curated musical experience from people who love music, just as much as the people listening. and then for 10 days in a row from Friday 8th to Sunday 17th September. Frequencies are 105.2FM in Dublin, 106.7 in Cork, 105.5 in Limerick and 87.9FM in Galway. The FM Broadcasts are a perfect billboard for what we do, and what we want to do going forward. We want to be in your kitchen, in your car, on your phone or tablet, on your laptop and desktop, on your console, your smartwatch, your GameBoy and your Commodore 64. That breadth of platform allows 8Radio maximum opportunity to develop and grow. As a business - through a lot of hard work - we’ve passed the litmus tests of tough economics and global pandemics, and we continue to thrive. We play great music, support new talent, share our passion and enthusiasm and love for music. WE BRING OUR LISTENERS CURATED PLAYLISTS THAT WE POUR OVER, WITH GENUINE LOVE AND INTEREST, AND WE WANT TO BE THE ONES CHAMPIONING THE VOICES AND SOUNDS THAT SEEM TO BE MISSING FROM MAINSTREAM How important is the FM broadcast for the station? This year - we’ll be on FM in September celebrating our 10th Birthday. Details are; 8Radio is on FM from Friday September 1st to Sunday 3rd, We’ve shown we have a loyal audience, and as a listener supported service, I want to specifically thank them - thank you to the 8Radio audience!. We also have a great relationship with our clients and partners - particular mention to Whelans and The Mercantile Group. We work with brilliant people who advertise and collaborate with us, and put on great shows for live music fans. We showcase our online offering when we’re on FM, and we love hearing that we are a distinctly new and interesting flavour of radio, to the people who mainly listen to Radio on the FM band, and very often, those people make the switch to listening to us online permanently, after first hearing us on FM. PAGE 33