From lockdown project to licensed radio broadcasting across County Carlow

During lockdown in 2020, three friends Sean Power, Paul Kavanagh and Ralph McGarry, decided to make their dreams come true and start an online radio station.

“Like many people during the extended lockdowns I found I had more time on my hands than I wanted”, said Sean, the main driver behind the station. “I suggested to Paul and Ralph we set up an online station for a bit of fun. We got more friends involved, and before we knew it we had over a dozen presenters playing music and presenting programmes from their home studios”.

“I work in the broadcast technology sector and was familiar with home studio set ups so I was able to facilitate presenters broadcast from studios in their own homes. Since then, we’ve grown that number to 40 presenters who produce shows from as far afield as Vancouver, and New York, as well as closer to home in Dublin, Wicklow, Meath, Kildare, Louth, Galway, Tipperary, Cavan and Cork”.

“Whilst we started off as a Lockdown project during Covid, things have changed and we’ve had to build a brand-new studio to allow presenters who no longer wanted to broadcast from home to present their shows from a proper radio studio,” said Sean.

Following the success of their online station, the friends signed a contract from Coimisiún na Meán to allow Freedom FM to broadcast on FM radios for 30 days across the country.

Freedom FM will be reliving the 90s and noughties with a mixture of Pop, R‘nB, Dance and Rock music as well as specialist music shows around the clock during it’s time on air from 30th September until 29th October. The station will remain online during that time too.

Freedom FM will broadcast on 103.8FM to parts of Kilkenny and across Carlow and the South East, and on different frequencies in the other broadcast areas. Listeners can also tune in from Dublin City and County, Galway, Limerick and Cork cities, as well as to counties Wexford, Wicklow, Kildare and north County Cork.