“Openness through Sound”: Dualcasting on Irish LGBT Radio

Abstract

This article explores how Ireland’s first LGBT radio station, Open FM, attempted to offer LGBT radio in a heteronormative media landscape. It uses semi-structured interviews with two of the stations founders as well as posts from online LGBT message bulletin boards to argue how Open FM ultimately became ambivalent about its LGBT status and adopted a dualcasting strategy. Despite its ambitions to be a community-led radio station for Ireland's LGBT community, the dualcasting strategy of the station framed many of its endeavors between the mainstream standards of radio broadcasting and the community of interest that their licence claimed to serve.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Páraic Kerrigan

Páraic Kerrigan is an Irish Research Council and John Hume Scholar in the Department of Media Studies at Maynooth University. He is currently completing his doctorate entitled Queering in the Years: Gay Visibility in Irish Media, 1974–2014. He has published work in Media History and LGBTQS, Media and Culture in Europe: Situated Case Studies.

Anne O’Brien

Anne O’Brien is a lecturer within the Department of Media Studies at Maynooth University. Her research focuses on gender and creative industries, women’s production work and representations of women in Irish broadcasting. She has published over fifteen peer-review articles, with work appearing in Feminist Media Studies, Media Culture & Society and Radio Journal.