Media

Newstalk renews local news contract

Communicorp station extends deal to supply 18 radio services

John Keogh, director of news at Newstalk, and Tara Duggan, the station’s deputy editor, pictured in Communicorp’s radio base in Dublin.
John Keogh, director of news at Newstalk, and Tara Duggan, the station’s deputy editor, pictured in Communicorp’s radio base in Dublin.
LSLATTERY
Thu Apr 25 2013 - 06:00

Newstalk has signed a new five-year contract to supply news to 18 local radio stations until 2018.

The contract, which begins from May, is a renewal of a three-year contract it first won in 2010 following the collapse of Independent Network News (INN).

The agreement comprises 18 separate contracts with stations including Highland Radio, Clare FM, WLR FM, Shannoside, KCLR 96 FM, Tipp FM and Radio Kerry.

Six months after the 2009 folding of INN, the Communicorp-owned Newstalk saw off a bid by UTV to provide a replacement syndicated news service.

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Newstalk’s director of news, John Keogh, said each station was “happy with the terms and conditions” of the service provided and renewed the contract for a further five years on that basis. The financial terms of the arrangement have not been disclosed.

“By and large what happens is that stations do their own local news during the day and have their own newsreaders from 9am to 6pm, or 7am to 6pm, and they have their own reports on their local patch and then they pick from the national and international news that we supply,” says Keogh.

“From 7pm or 8pm in the evening, they stop doing their own bulletins and join our networked news feed.”


More sophisticated
The audio packages supplied often include interview snippets from guests, such as Government ministers, who appear on the Newstalk Breakfast show, Keogh adds. Separately, Newstalk also provides news to fellow Communicorp stations 98FM, Spin 1038, Spin South West and Phantom 105.2, giving Newstalk's news service a total reach of 1.5 million, according to Keogh.

Its news production has grown more sophisticated in recent years, he adds.

“All our reporters are very much geared towards digital and it would be very common now for reporters to be shooting video, as well as recording audio for radio. That’s very much the road we are going down at Newstalk at the moment.”

Most of the local stations that source their news from News- talk hold broad-format licences that require them to devote at least 20 per cent of their airtime to news and current affairs.

Beat 102-103, however, has availed of a Broadcasting Authority of Ireland derogation on this requirement for niche services and it now has a 12 per cent news and current affairs quota.