Digital streams won't kill the radio star, says Nova supremo

Times

10 hours ago

In January 1988, Kevin Branigan and Mike Ormonde, two 15-year-old budding entrepreneurs, appeared in an interview in the Sunday World newspaper.
The Dubliners had set up an 'illegal' radio station, Signal FM, in the shed of Ormonde's family home in Rathfarnham and reckoned they were Ireland's youngest owners of a pirate station.
The article, complete with photos of Ormonde 'at the controls' and Branigan 'cueing up a record', recorded how the pair spent IR£600 of their pocket money on the venture. They had '100 per cent backing' from their parents, who knew the boys wanted to work full-time in radio and saw it as an education.
'We were both obsessed with radio and had met as 12-year-olds cycling over to see the original Nova in Rathfarnham. It was an enormous, professional operation despite being a pirate radio station,' Branigan says.
Nearly four decades on, he and Ormonde own the entirely legit Radio Nova, Classic Hits Radio and Sunshine 106.8 and are fully paid-up members of the licensed independent radio sector.
Last month Bay Broadcasting, their company, announced the seven-figure acquisition of Galway Bay FM from the Connacht Tribune Group.
Galway's most popular radio station, with a market share of 34 per cent — higher than RTE Radio 1 and Today FM — will add 132,000 weekly listeners to the Bay Broadcasting audience.
Branigan says the acquisition makes Bay the second-largest independent radio group in the country, behind only the German-owned Bauer Media Audio Ireland.
'The acquisition propels us into a different league in that it moves us into the status where we become something of a radio group,' Branigan says.
'When you add the listenership of all of our radio stations together, it brings us up to 810,000 a week, which we believe is a really healthy number.'
While Ormonde is still a director and shareholder, Branigan heads up Bay Broadcasting, which includes Classic Hits Radio, Ireland's only multi-city radio station, which is broadcast to eight counties including Dublin, the commuter counties, and Cork, Limerick and Galway; and Radio Nova, which has a licence for the Dublin region.
The company owns a 46 per cent share of Sunshine, an easy-listening radio station available across Leinster, which is run by Seán Ashmore, a one-time DJ on Signal FM.
All three radio stations are operated from Castleforbes House in Dublin's north docklands, which is also home to the offices of the Pearl & Dean and Adtower businesses owned by Ormonde's investment company Step Investments.
The Galway Bay FM acquisition will result in the headcount across the various radio stations rising from about 60 to 85.
Bay Broadcasting does not release consolidated accounts for its various businesses but Branigan says the group is profitable. He expects turnover to hit €11 million this year, rising to about €15 million in 2026, driven by both growth across the group and the acquisition of the Galway station.
Branigan has long pitched Bay Broadcasting as the plucky David to the powerful Goliath of media conglomerates such as Bauer, owner of Today FM and Newstalk, and Onic, owner of Q102, FM104 and Cork's 96FM.
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The privately owned Bauer operates in 14 countries and has €2.2 billion in annual revenues. Onic is part of the international media group News Corp, which last year had revenues of more than $10 billion and counts The Sunday Times, New York Post, Dow Jones and TalkRadio in its stable.
Branigan is never one to shy away from fighting his corner. Last month Bay Broadcasting secured a temporary injunction against Bauer, preventing it from launching the brand Greatest Hits Radio on the digital platform DAB+ in the Republic of Ireland.
Bay has argued that the name was too close to its Classic Hits Radio and initiated the proceedings after discussions with Bauer came to an impasse.
Bauer temporarily changed the brand to GHR. The parties are due back in court on Tuesday.
Classic Hits is a client of Media Central, Bauer's media sales house, which provides advertising solutions to media agencies. Bay also takes news content from Bauer.
'It is undoubtedly going to have an impact on all of the commercial areas that we deal with Bauer in. I don't think they've thought it through and that's a shame. They should have more respect for us,' he says.
Branigan revels in his role as an industry firebrand. Last year, in response to the government committing itself to a three-year funding model for RTE, he told The Irish Sun: 'It doesn't surprise me at all because the government always rolls over when it comes to RTE.'
He would like to see a 'more transparent' state-owned broadcaster. 'Nothing has changed since the Oireachtas committee meetings,' he says.
Last summer he also wrote a letter to Kevin Bakhurst, director-general of RTE, and Catherine Martin, then minister for arts, offering to buy 2fm for €10 million. He was told the national pop music station was not for sale.
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Branigan insists the offer was not a publicity stunt. 'It was a genuine attempt to buy it. It doesn't seem to be performing very well but we felt it could be turned around and that it would be a big opportunity for us to get bigger. It would have put us into a completely different league, having a national station.'
National exposure is a core ambition. Branigan has repeatedly applied to extend Nova's licence across the country.
'Once every three years there is an opportunity to suggest that your licence area be extended. I've tried many times but I haven't managed to convince them [Coimisiun na Mean and its predecessors] yet.'
He is as obsessed with radio now as he was as a child being raised with his two siblings in Stillorgan, the son of a school teacher, Ciarán, who taught at St Mary's College in Rathmines, which Branigan attended.
'All I wanted to be since the age of ten was to be in radio. I just love radio,' he says.
Leaving school, he convinced his education-focused parents that a law or engineering career was not for him and they allowed him to do a communications degree at Dublin City University.
After graduating in 1993 he got a job at Reelgood Studios, a production house. Outside the day job he had not given up on pirate radio. He and Ormonde set up Kiss 103 FM.
At that stage the vast majority of pirate stations had closed following the introduction of the 1988 Radio and Television Act and the imposition of heavy fines on advertisers that patronised the pirates.
Kiss ran for eight months, was raided three times and had its signal jammed on multiple occasions.
'The gardai would come in and raid us, take all our equipment and within a few hours we would be back up and running again,' Branigan says.
'I'd never condone illegality now but pirate stations are where a lot of people got their start. So many great broadcasting talents that are around today, such as Brian Dobson and Colm Hayes, began in pirate radio.'
Branigan became a producer at East Coast Radio before being appointed head of production at Dublin's FM104.
In 2000 he diverted his attention away from radio when he set up nightcourses.com, a website that lists adult education courses, and careers.ie, a jobs search engine. The company behind both sites, Jazbury, is still operational, employs six people and had a small profit of just over €16,000 in 2023.
Through Bay Broadcasting, Ormonde and Branigan joined a consortium including Thomas Crosbie Holdings, The Irish Times, the radio executive Dermot Hanrahan and the businessman Ulick McEvaddy to apply for a licence for 4FM, a radio station targeted at the over-45s.
The station launched in February 2009 in the midst of the recession and with an investment of €1 million. Losses quickly racked up and it struggled to gain audience share.
'There was a tense board meeting and the majority of the shareholders wanted to hand the licence back and close the station down,' Branigan says.
'We brokered a deal that we would take over all the debts if they gave us all their shares.'
In 2011 the station rebranded from the 'stodgy' 4FM to Classic Hits Radio. It has grown its market share to 3 per cent.
'We had some really very difficult years but we finally began to come out the other side at the end of the last decade, in 2019,' Branigan says.
Radio Nova was launched in 2010 with the backing of Hanrahan's Vienna Investments, Des Whelan, founder of WLR FM, and the late tech tycoon Pat McDonagh. Bay bought the shareholders out in 2017.
In the meantime, the company had bought into Sunshine in 2013 when Seán Ashmore was rebranding the station from Country FM.
There was an element of faking it till it made it when it came to promoting Nova. Latest JNLR (Joint National Listenership Research) figures show the station has a 9.4 per cent market share among adults in Dublin from 7am until 7pm. Sunshine has a share of 8.9 per cent.
'From the moment that Nova came on air we always tried to project that we were bigger than we actually were. We presented ourselves as being the underdog who was trying to fight the big guys, the likes of the FM104s and the 98s. We just got bigger to the point that we finally did become No 1 two and a half years ago,' Branigan says.
He bristles at the idea that radio is a sunset industry as intimated in a recent trade publication by Al Dunne, a former shareholder in 4FM and co-founder of Q102 — 'a cheap potshot from somebody who isn't involved in the industry any more'.
'People have been [heralding the demise] of radio for years. Remember the 1980s hit song Video Killed the Radio Star? Yet radio carries on as a really strong medium. The independent sector employs 1,500 people in Ireland,' he adds.
Branigan points to the entry of Bauer into the Irish market in 2021 when it paid €100 million for Denis O'Brien's Communicorp and its subsequent local radio acquisitions. 'Why would Bauer be buying radio stations if they thought radio was going to die?'
As reported in The Sunday Times, DMG Media Ireland is in talks to enter the market with the purchase of WLR FM from The Irish Times group.
'There is a great future in radio. For me the pandemic was a defining moment. It showed once again, as radio has done many times, that it is such an important medium and that it isn't a medium that's going to fall out of fashion,' Branigan says.
He said the number of people listening to Bay's radio stations online had grown significantly in recent years. Radio shows are turned into podcasts, allowing listeners to tune in at their convenience.
'Our ambition would be to expand further. We don't have any specific plans or any discussions going on … but we believe that there are big opportunities. Radio is a really strong medium and it will continue to surprise people.'
Age: 53Lives: Leopardstown, DublinFamily: single; father of four sons — Alexy, 14, Ciarán, two, and twins Jack and Kevin, one — and a stepdaughter, Katie, 23Education: communications degree from Dublin City UniversityFavourite book: Jack Reacher series by Lee ChildFavourite film: I love any of the Star Trek films, and the TV shows too
Working day: I generally get up at 6.45am and spend about 45 minutes with the kids and start working at 7.30am. I take Ciarán to the creche at about 9am and then go into the office. I spend my day having lots of meetings. I have a really good management team, with a can-do attitude. I come home at about 4.30pm or 5pm and then catch up at nighttime.
Downtime: I spend time with the kids, and I like to go on walks.