KISS FM – Monaghan Town:

It has been said that KISS FM Monaghan was the best station that ever came out of Ireland. This was a discussion in 2004 at Tony Allan’s memorial party in Dublin, 16 years after the closure. Define “best” and everyone has of course a very different view. Some would have said TTTR’s country format was the best; some may suggest K-L-A-S with the classical music output stole that qualification. But for signal, music policy and consistency, KISS took some beating. The line up from the start to the finish was the virtually the same, rare in a radio station, although the whole lifetime of KISS Monaghan was only about 9 months.

KISS FM – Monaghan Town: KISS FM 103.7 broadcast with a massive ERP from a high hill in County Monaghan, beaming into Belfast. In Scotland the FM signal was often heard, and on a good day was recordable, being on the beam!! AM was on the Radio 10 Gold frequency of 1008, but at that time Dutch Radio signed off for the night. At night time, after Holland went off, the powerful signal could be heard across Europe. Unfortunately the distant listeners never had the chance to enjoy the daytime weekday programmes, much different from the night time and weekend output.

Included in the daytime line up were offshore favourites Nick Richards and Tom Hardy, and Susan Charles. Owen Barry, well known on the pirate radio scene in Co Louth presented the afternoon show. Others included Dennis Murray, Lawrence John, engineer Miles Johnstone, Roland Burke and others.

KISS was the favourite Irish pirate station of the writer. At that time luckily, there was a working reel to reel, although not an unlimited supply of the 7 or 8 quid blank tapes. A 7 inch triple play tape gave 6½ hours per track, of which there were 4. Compare that to an MP3 cd, which can hold just under this amount, or a DVD, which will hold an amazing 6 and a bit times that amount, or even 11 times the data on an 8g disk. Thus these mp3s are unique recordings from old reels, many over 6 hours long.

KISS were plagued by problems, especially at the start from sabotaged antennas, ILR Belfast etc. The AM was moved from 1008, to 1170, and finally to 1413, before going off unceremoniously one day, and was never switched back on. This hampered reception in Scotland a bit, having to rely on an FM signal coming across 3 countries before reaching us!!

Some of the recordings of KISS had a dreadful hum on the carrier, which was not the recording equipment, but actually transmitted. I am unsure if this was trouble with the link, or NWCR on 1008 from Buncrana, causing a bit of grief. Some recordings also seemed to have a noise on the link, especially during the tests.

Monaghan boasted 4 stations, all starting very late in the day, 1987 or 1988. KISS, KITS, Radio Star Country, and Northern Star Radio. The latter could be seen by just looking out the window of KISS FM, just literally across the road, off Old Cross Square. Notice the similar names.

Radio Star Country and Radio Dublin were the only stations staying on the air after legislation in 1988, and Star is still on air in 2012.

New in May 2008, 2 long recordings made from FM, recorded in Scotland, so slight fading at times, but mostly very good and listenable, and most importantly, unique six and a half hour recordings.