*Scariff Bay Community Radio founder, Jim Collins. Photograph: Ruth Griffin
EAST CLARE’s biggest radio force is to team up with one of the biggest public service broadcasters in the world.
Ahead of its ninth birthday, Scariff Bay Community Radio (SBCR) will be collaborating with the BBC with a special broadcast from London next month.
Flagship show, Saturday Chronicle will broadcast live from the home of the BBC on Saturday June 15th. Presenters Tom Hanley, Timmy Hogan, Jim Collins, Terry Hogan and Daragh Leamy will be heading across the water to go live to the East Clare masses from BBC’s broadcasting house.
Station manager, Jim Collins explained, “this is an idea that we had before COVID. Our aim is to serve and promote our communities of East Clare, wherever they currently live, and there is a large number of East Clare people living in and around London. We contacted the BBC, they agreed to host us and we are really excited to be transmitting Saturday Chronicle from BBC’s Broadcasting house. We will be at the Irish Centre in Camden Town, London on Friday 14th to record interviews with those who are unable to join us live on the Saturday morning”.
Persons with East Clare connections who would like to participate in SBCR’s London shows are asked to make contact with the production team by emailing sbcrinfo@gmail.com or by contacting +353 (0) 89 2582647.
Serving the East Clare area from Tulla to Killanena and over to Killaloe, SBCR has volunteers embedded across its catchment area. SBCR broadcasts on 88.3 and 92.7 FM in East Clare and online on www.scariffbayradio.com. Podcasts of interviews and talk shows are also hosted on all major podcast platforms.
A retired principal, Jim who founded the station in 2015 added, “we aim to provide a service to people of all ages across our community. Not everyone has time to listen in on a Saturday or Sunday so it’s great that they can catch up with local events at a later time. The podcast facility has been very popular and in five years over 250,000 episodes of shows have been downloaded and we are currently averaging well over a thousand downloads a week”.
Having recently launched the tagline ‘The Talk of East Clare, SBCR will live up to this with outside broadcasts for the June bank holiday festivals in Mountshannon and Tuamgraney plus full-day coverage of the election count on June 7th from Treacy’s West County Hotel. A taster of what is to come with the station’s political coverage can be expected in a local election special recorded on Tuesday whereby all Killaloe Municipal District candidates except Matt Moroney (II) and Audrey Flynn (GP) attended.
Broadcasting since 2015, SBCR’s journey commenced online and it has progressed to obtaining a thirty day FM licence from the BAI (now the Media Commission). It is now currently broadcasting on a 100 day licence on FM and online on Saturdays and Sundays with a full schedule of programmes. The station is anxious to obtain a full time licence, a process which started in 2020 but was put on hold with the pandemic.
