Just to point out a few updates made to the site which are detailed on the news page.
The WordPress upgrade should see put a few new tools at my disposal for the blog and has already allowed for the easy import from blogger, something I was unable to do manually for some reason.

I would also like to point you in the direction of the Irish Election Blog, something set up by Cian over on Where’s Me Country?. With enough support the site will become the one stop shop for anyone interested in the Irish election coming up next year; I’m delighted to be able to take part in it and I hope others interested in politics will show some support too.
I’ve made a few adjustments to the blog listing on the site too, just to make it easier to navigate; if you’d like to be added just send me an email or pop a comment up and I’ll see what I can do.

Newstalk 106 has been a reasonable success story since its creation only 4 years ago. Starting out in Dublin as a speech-based radio station seemed like suicide or at the very least a mis-guided step but with a mix of strong advertising, high quality hosts and persistance the station has now moved up to a 5% market share in the city; putting it just over 1% below Today FM.
The fact that Denis O’Brien now has his hand in the pie is not a bad thing, of course. Since his dealings with the station began we have seen the likes of Eamon Dunphy and Sean Mocrieff come on board, along with an even stronger advertising campaign start up across the city. Now, however the station has set its sights beyond the capital and is hoping to operate on a ‘quasi-national’ basis. It can afford to, it has no competition in the application process and it has been hotly tipped to succeed but what will it mean for the station and most importantly for that 5% that listen regularly?
Newstalk have made it clear in their application (scroll down) that they do not intend on simply broadcasting their tried and tested style to a bigger audience, instead they will change their setup in many ways.

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