More than a year late, following a heavyweight court battle, popular pirate station Phantom FM is finally going straight, writes Brian Boyd
When, in November 2004, Dublin radio station Phantom FM was awarded a licence by the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) to provide a full-time alternative rock service for Dublin city and county, it put behind its days as a popular pirate music station and readied itself for its newly respectable legal status. The plan was to have the station up and running by the summer of 2005, when it would broadcast alternative music aimed at the 18-to-35 age group.
However, a series of legal battles kept Phantom off the air. But with everything now settled, the station will launch at noon next Tuesday. Simon Maher, Phantom's general manager, takes up the story: "One of the other applicants for the licence appealed the BCI decision and it went to the High Court and then to the Supreme Court. The appeal wasn't successful, and finally we are in a position to start broadcasting. It's been a frustrating time for us because when all of this was happening in the courts, we couldn't sign a lease on a premises, employ people, organise advertising and marketing - and everything else you need to do to get a station started."
The rival applicant, Zed FM, lost its final appeal in April of this year and, because Bob Geldof and Hot Press magazine were involved with the Zed consortium and MCD's Denis Desmond and U2 manager Paul McGuinness are involved with Phantom, the press saw it as a "Geldof vs McGuinness" battle.
PHANTOM ORIGINALLY BEGAN operating as a pirate station out of tiny premises in Dublin's Wexford Street in 1997, and was staffed entirely by volunteers. It was run on a day-to-day basis and was very much a labour of love for all concerned. Phantom saw itself as filling a niche for an audience not being catered for by the mainstream radio stations. Whatever about the legality of pirate radio stations, many of today's top DJ names began on them.
Due to its illegal nature, it was always difficult to estimate Phantom's listenership. "We got some sort of rough figure from the amount of hits on our website and the amount of people who rang into the station, but it could never be that accurate," says Maher. "We are now broadcasting over the general Dublin area and we are hoping for a 2 per cent share of the listenership in that area."
Maher is insistent that the station's musical ethos will remain the same as it was in the early Wexford Street days.
"The licence is for an alternative music station and I really don't see us straying from the sort of music we used to feature. There'll be a lot of new music, a lot of new Irish bands and generally just a sense of catering for the Phantom audience. We're not just going to become another mainstream station."
While most of the evening shows on the station are given over to specialist musical genres - ranging from metal to goth - the daytime shows, while also featuring music, will include current affairs-based discussions. "We'll be largely music-based but still addressing the social topics that affect our listeners," says Maher.
IN TERMS OF advertising, Maher believes that most of it will be "specific to the output of the station in that we'll be attracting music promoters who will have gig-related advertising. We also have deals in place with the 3 mobile phone company, and Budweiser will be sponsoring one of our evening programmes. There'll also be the more general type of advertising."
Operating out of a studio on Dublin's North Wall Quay (close to the Point Depot) with close to 30 full-time staff, Phantom is finally a legitimate presence on the airwaves, much to Maher's delight.
"It was great fun running the station in the early days but I won't miss the uncertainty of not knowing if the station would be there the next day. Now we can actually sit down and make plans for the next few years, which is a really big difference for us. There's always been a need for an alternative music station in this city and now, after a few delays, we're finally here."
Phantom 105.2 goes on the air on Oct 31; www.phantomfm.ie