Dublin's first talk radio station NewsTalk 106 is set to go on-air on April 9th but its management team is planning a low-key launch to mark the event.
The station is loosely based along the lines of BBC Radio 5 Live with rolling news programmes all day, bulletins every 20 minutes and a strict "no music" policy. Most of the on-air staff are now in place and the shows are being piloted daily.
Economist David McWilliams (who presents TV3's Sunday current-affairs programme Agenda) will host the breakfast programme from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. Former editor of the Sunday Business Post, Damien Kiberd, is in the chair for the lunchtime slot, which will run from noon to 2 p.m. RTÉ rugby pundit George Hook has taken the drivetime position and his show will go head to head with RTÉ's Five Seven Live and Today FM's The Last Word from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Journalist Daire O'Brien will host the mid-morning show, which will run from 9 a.m. to noon. The afternoon slot is to be a round-table review of what's going on in Dublin but no presenter has yet been confirmed. NewsTalk has its studios in Mount Street, Dublin 2.
- ANIMATION producer Cathal Gaffney (whose Give Up Yer Aul Sins is up for an Oscar in the Best Animated Short Film category) was one of three elected to the executive committee of Film Makers Ireland at its AGM this week. But Gaffney wasn't at the meeting to hear the good news firsthand - he was in LA preparing for tomorrow's 74th Annual Academy Awards.
The two others elected to the executive committee of Film Makers Ireland are Ronan McCabe of Double Z Enterprises and Gerald Heffernan of Frontier Films.
- IRISH filmmaker Barrie Dowdall of Telwell Productions has just returned from Afghanistan and Pakistan where he was directing a documentary for the PBS network in the US. The fly-on-the-wall film focuses on Belfast man Dominic McSorley, regional director of Concern Worldwide.
Dowdall and photographer, Siobhan Lynam, accompanied McSorley on a two-week field trip to the area to assess food and aid distribution. "It was an intensely interesting journey in so many ways," says Dowdall, "not least travelling on horrendous roads and through mountain passes in blizzards to outlying rural villages that have been completely devastated. In thick snow it's difficult enough to find the road, not to mention avoiding the landmines." The documentary was made for the weekly PBS current affairs series Now With Bill Moyers, which gets an average audience of one million. There are no plans to screen it in Ireland.
- BBC 2 swept the board at this week's Royal Television Society programme awards, picking up accolades in eight categories. The BBC 2 awards went to The Office, for best sitcom; The Weakest Link, for best daytime programme; Johnny Vegas (Happiness) for best newcomer and Perfect Strangers, for best serial and best writer. Channel 4 picked up awards for Banzai, best entertainment programme and Faking It, best features programme. BBC 1 scored with Eastenders for best soap and Clocking Off for Best Drama series.
It was a disappointing night for ITV, although Ant and Dec were named best presenters for the Saturday morning children's show SM:TV Live.
mkearney@irish-times.com