Episode 58 - Kevin Branigan

The 738am podcast - talking to people about stuff

Kevin Branigan is the Chief Executive at Radio Nova 100 Dublin. He's also one of the first guys I ever did radio with back when we were just teenagers broadcasting from high up the Dublin mountains. I couldn't remember how it was we got together, so to speak, but Kevin's memory of a late night phone call to Radio Dublin, where I was working at the time, helped put some of the pieces together. We went from Signal 106, to radio stations operating out of a corner to Kevin's bedroom (much to the continued displeasure of his father who always looked most disgruntled at the constant stream of people traipsing through his house), to the super-popular Kiss 103.2 FM. That was a station which attracted a huge audience, and because it was just years after all the stations in Ireland had gone legal, it was one that also attracted a lot of the wrong kind of attention. The Department of Communications, the Gardai, angry radio stations and more meant our time on the air was short, but we burnt brightly. Kevin remembers meetings with the police, and finding evidence of just how popular Kiss FM was while working for FM104. We talk about the infamous mountain raid, what happened after the close down, and take it to the modern era to chat about what's going on at Nova, what the plans for the future are there, and lots more. It's full of [pirate] radio goodness.