The official Christmas FM thread

I believe that was Walter Hegarty that closed it off last time. He is one of the principals. He used to call himself Greg Townsend on air!

I agree the fella that closed the Fm broadcast could barely string a sentence together, it all felt very ad-hoc and a sense of relief that it was over with so they can pack it away again until next year. I kinda feel like they wont be in that "ask paul" place in stilorgan come next fm broadcast.

As was discussed here previously, I suspect animal charities may struggle to attract the same kind of numbers in terms of donations, and with a licence far from guaranteed each year maybe there's pressure each year to justify its place on the airwaves hence using similar types of charities each year. That's a complete guess on my part btw, fwiw I'd love to see the dspca/ispca or dogs trust be given a shot. We'll see come august/September anyway.

May not be at all. But as the station is so associated with charity partnerships maybe they themselves feel under pressure to perform and maybe feel a poor return one year could jeopardise the licence application, but as I said, just a guess on my part.

The chosen charity and end result in terms of donations are highly unlikely to affect any application in reality but that doesn't mean it isn't a consideration for those making the application.

A lot of animal charities don’t receive any government funding and solely rely on donations from the public, I have a select few I donate to every year and that won’t change but it would be nice to see different charities every year on the show.

One thing that I was happy about this year was I caught one of the older presenters discussing the start of Christmas FM and found out the first ever song played & last song on 2 of the other years I hadn't gotten previously. So as it stands its just 2009 & 2010 I'm missing from having a record of the first & last songs broadcast each year ( That's just the FM broadcast for clarity)

Was surprised to hear the first ever song played was Shakin Stevens, merry christmas everyone.

No idea who the presenter was TBH, I was driving home from work and had it on but missed the start & the end of the presenters stint so never got the name.

Looking likely that the late late toy show will be on the last Rudolph day of the year!!

Thank you for the vote of confidence! I don't know much about that end of things actually. If I do find something, I will update here, but I'm not overly hopeful. There must be someone else here who might he able to find or point towards those details.

Incidentally, for the first time this year, and the first time since they ceased their FM transmissions, I happened to put on Christmas FM briefly this evening. They were playing This is Christmas by the Goo Goo Dolls. I really like that song.