I attended the IMRO radio awards in Kilkenny last Friday night. I wasn’t up for a gong this year but I was there in support of my producer Ian Wilson who was a worthy and popular inductee into the Hall of Fame.

It’s a nice evening although I am not really a great man for these kind of gigs. But it was pleasant to be among fellow broadcasters from all across the country.

I remember the late Phelim Cox, a radio DJ and musician and a great character, taking me in his Fiat Panda to the Northern Sound studios in Monaghan almost 30 years ago when local radio was emerging across the country.

I had been on work experience in the Cavan Leader newspaper where Phelim’s day job was in the advertising department.

Once I entered the small studio in Glaslough Street, I felt like a child going into Santa’s grotto. It was like getting a calling. The buzz, the excitement and the thrill enveloped me and it never left. I still get a swell of butterflies remembering that exact day. This is where I wanted to be. Within a couple of years, I was working in that very studio. It proved to me, if you want something badly enough, you can get it.

Irish people are very loyal to radio, with around 85% of us tuning into a radio station every day

Fast forward three decades and I am still immersed in radio land. Working in radio is a bit like being an artist. It is about piecing together a programme bit by bit during the week before presenting it to air.

I don’t really call it work and so I feel so privileged getting paid for enjoying a hobby as, effectively, apart from a few, you wouldn’t go into this business for the money. But we are in changing times, not only in radio but right across the media landscape.

Thankfully Irish people are very loyal to radio, with around 85% of us tuning into a radio station everyday. We take ownership of it. And when there is a change in presenter, we don’t like it. It ruins our routine.

Listeners give out about us and in some cases dislike intensely various presenters. But they still listen, although the emergence of the podcast has given us food for thought. And so I worry a little bit as a broadcaster about the future.

Young people

Young people don’t watch TV or listen to the radio in a conventional sense. Will they change as they get older? Will the Six One news or Morning Ireland become important once they begin earning a wage or buy a house? One would hope so.

But the place of public service broadcasting remains sacred and, in a roundabout way, Donald Trump has reminded us of this by the very way he dismisses the role of the mainstream media in pushing his own jingoism.

We don’t always get it right and are not above criticism but the alternative to public service broadcasting is what exactly? Trump FM?

On another note, Darran McKenna was named the NDC/Kerrygold quality milk supplier of the year last week.

I travelled to interview him in Monaghan where my radio days began. His 11-year-old son Daithi arrived on the scene and wasn’t at all too shy to speak to me. He was a tonic and his few words on air attracted warm comments from our listeners. It was simple old-fashioned radio gold. It is what I love about this business.

Have we totally lost our minds?

Things are reaching a ridiculous level of silliness when you now have to ask for full-fat milk in a cafe. I’m noticing more and more of these hip coffee docks offering skim milk or non-dairy only to whiten the coffee. Have we completely lost our minds?