DLR/HITS 106

I always remember hearing a tennis report on DLR..... 2 French players at Wimbledon.

The report mention Guy Forget and pronounced it as Guy Forget in a Dun Laoghaire accent rather than the way the French would as "Ger Forg-jay".

Guy was playing another French man whose name I can't recall but it was funny hearing both of them pronounced phonetically.

Loved it. Great station too.

DLR aka HITS 106 was a great radio station with a po box number 106 (handy to have a postman working for the station ).

DLR stayed on air until 2001 i recall correctly.

By that stage the FM band was fairly full compared to when DLR first came on and basically had south Dublin to itself.

Raided for being a commercial threat to the launch of 'East Coast ' , others can confirm but this was possibly the raid where the wrong address was on the warrant ! , and left the airwaves after further threats of raids in 2001.

You'd know that Big John Daly was off on his holidays when the station would do 180 degree format flips for a fortnight or so 🤓

Here are just some of the names that went through DLR and/or Hits 106 and ended up on licensed radio.

Nikki Hayes - currently with East Coast FM. It's gone full circle for her, having started her legal radio career with East Coast and being involved with many other stations including 2FM.

Dave Harrington, aka Captain Fantastic - Programme Director with East Coast FM. Like Nikki, it's gone full circle for him, having started with them and been with other stations for a number of years.

Mark Kavanagh - had a dance show on DLR. He was given a dance show on Radio Ireland (now Today FM) in its early days.

Mr. Spring, aka Tim Hannigan - 2FM. Although more associated with dance pirates and his dance events with former business partner Mark Kavanagh, he did do a brief stint with DLR.

Barry Dunne - 98FM. Barry went through a number of pirates in the first half of the 1990s.

Rob Gormley - East Coast FM and FM104

Ryan O'Neill - East Coast FM and iRadio

Les Vickers - was with East Coast FM, Dublin's Country Mix 106.8 and RTE Radio 1

Ronan Scanlan - was with South East Radio. Ronan turned up on many pirates during the 1990s and into the early 2000s.

Paul Osbourne - temporary licensed stations Choice FM and only last year Easy Radio.

Mark McCabe - iRadio

Brendan Whelan - he had been with the then licensed station for north Wicklow Horizon Radio, before the merging of the two Wicklow stations, and then returned to pirate radio on DLR/Hits 106 with his traditional Irish music programme.

If I think of more...

No, I wasn't confusing the two. I read that about Dave Harrington a number of years ago. Tim Hannigan used the pseudonym Mista Fantastic in his engineer role on dance records (nearly always stuff he did with Mark Kavanagh, such as their own combo Sound Crowd). I never personally heard Tim on DLR so I don't know what he called himself there, but I did hear him on Sunset and successor Rhythm FM using his real name.

I never heard anything about Jim Jim's radio career, pirate or otherwise, prior to his initial involvement with FM104.

I don't recall Mark McCabe at the station, but one more is John Power who started there before moving to Pulse, went by John O'Shea IIRC.

I manned the phones a few times there in the late 90's. Maybe spoke once or twice.

Always loved DLR.

I had wondered if Al Gibbs had been with DLR. Maybe I saw mention of it somewhere. Was Ben Murray one of the later presenters during the Hits106 era? I forgot about John Public - I had read that before. He has basically presented the same reggae program - Black Echoes - for about 40 years on various radio stations in Dublin, largely on the southside, as well as Bray's BLB. His last pirate was Jazz FM which he left in 2003 after it was raided. He has been with Anna Livia/Dublin City FM ever since, and he used to have a monthly slot with 2FM as mentioned.

Quote stopped working for me:

Fixed BLB!

What was Bud Johnson's real name if that helps to locate him?

Hits 106 had moved to the frequency of 106.1 during the '90s, but it would still have been too close to Newstalk on 106.0.