INN to cease broadcasting

tommy249

http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/1001/inn.html

INN to cease broadcasting on 30 October
Thursday, 1 October 2009 14:14
It has been confirmed that the Independent Network News agency will close on 30 October.

The future of INN had been in doubt due to a dramatic fall-off in advertising revenue.

Management called staff to a meeting this afternoon to discuss the future of the operation.

INN employs around 16 people and supplies national and international news to Ireland's independent local radio stations.

A meeting of the board took place yesterday and a decision to wind up the INN operation was made.

Local radio must comply with a 20% news content condition under the terms of licences granted by the Brodcasting Commission of Ireland.

The closure of INN will present difficulty to the stations to meet their obligations under the news requirement conditions

Kensington

That's going to be a severe blow to many stations. Dublin's Country Mix bulletins are all provided by INN. Phantom, Q102, East Coast, KFM, LMFM all source their overnight news bulletins from them regularly too.

I'm pretty sure that Radio Kerry still use INN for their overnight bulletins. This will certainly be a problem for the smaller stations.

INN was a merger between two different operations at the time, one of which was IRN - started by 98FM after the demise of Century Radio who used to provide news feeds for independents. In the early days, 98FM allowed other stations which could pick up its news feed to rebroadcast it themselves.

Our man in Havana

Something like that will need to happen again or many of the stations will be in trouble with the BAI.

flazio

Are all the other independent stations such as Today FM, iRadio and Spin SW producing all their news content in house?

icdg

Karsini wrote: »

I'm pretty sure that Radio Kerry still use INN for their overnight bulletins. This will certainly be a problem for the smaller stations.

INN was a merger between two different operations at the time, one of which was IRN - started by 98FM after the demise of Century Radio who used to provide news feeds for independents. In the early days, 98FM allowed other stations which could pick up its news feed to rebroadcast it themselves.

98FM ran two different feeds for most of that era - "98FM News" which aired on 98FM itself and "Ireland Radio News" which was the network feed.

FM104 ran only one feed "Network Radio News" which ran both on FM104 itself and on other stations (sometimes with the same jingle introducing it!). This unfortunately left FM104 not very well able to handle Dublin regional stories or to promote itself in JNLR stories (often on the day the JNLR results were released, FM104 would run an extra segment after NRN to promote their JNLRs - I remember this particular on the day they overtook 98FM for the first time.

As for what will happen now, the two Dublin stations, Today FM, or Newstalk would possibly step into the breach. Someone will have to. The major difference between now and then is that the stations are now part of groups and what you might find is that group news operations might be created. Indies (are there any left?) might latch on to a nearby big group, or in extreme cases, take the UK Independent Radio News feed and add an extra local news section (this might satisfy the BAI as a stop-gap).

Our man in Havana

Is it not too much to expect in this day and age for local stations to produce their own news?

icdg

icdg wrote: »

98FM ran two different feeds for most of that era - "98FM News" which aired on 98FM itself and "Ireland Radio News" which was the network feed.

I certainly remember in 1996 that IRN utilised 98FM newsreaders.

Deise Tom

Who provides the news now to the local stations when they are not putting out their own news.

brettmirl

Newstalk to most, UTV to the rest.