Radio Production

Is there a story you know of that merits a wider audience? Interested in turning it into a radio documentary? Don’t know where to start? We can help bring it to life for you – and help submit it to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) for funding under the Sound and Vision scheme.

Go for a radio documentary with your local radio station and let us deal with the minutiae. Fancy a bigger audience? RTÉ Radio doesn’t expect you to be an expert in documentary making, but they do expect a good story to be told for their Doc on One. Let us help you make the grade.

The nitty gritty

We’ll help with the research, the recordings, the editing and the legal and logistical aspects. Then there’s the treatment, the liaising with the radio station all before that formal BAI application. You need a hand and we’ll be happy to advise on a lot of the red tape involved such as: –

Dealing with feedback from the BAI
Negotiating revised treatments and budgets
Setting realistic production schedule
Production insurance
Requirements from your bank
Requirements from Revenue
Signing a broadcast contract
Signing the BAI contract

Focus

Focus on your documentary and we’ll help sort out the behind the scenes details. The benefits will be that you have a high-quality segment of audio that will have been brought to a wider audience. Once broadcast, it will serve as strong marketing tool for helping attract people to your area – and it will be paid for by the BAI.

You’ll learn the following skills along the way: –

The delicate art of storytelling for a radio audience
The fundamentals of high quality documentary making
How to create a documentary that connects with your listeners
The technical components needed for each and every recording session

Below is our complete Rambling House radio series. Scroll down through the six episodes find a theme that may be of interest to you or click here to read more about each episode’s details. Please note that each programme started with a script and then invited ‘open mike’ contributions.

Treasure trove

We created Rambling House as a six part series of hour long programmes on a local station ICR up in Donegal, conjuring up a treasure trove of stories and lore about the unique area that is the Inishowen peninsula, as told by some of its most colourful local characters. These stories have been passed on to these locals from generation to generation and we are delighted to have been able to archive this material – before it is lost forever. Our contributors have a natural ability to tell a good yarn with perfect timing.

Rambling houses may be becoming a thing of the past, but it is comforting to think that in a handful of places around the country, starting with our six programmes, their spirit lives on for the future. Perhaps they’ll help your locality set up a rambling house to record the very best oral material on offer in your area?

There are a few factors to get right in establishing a good night’s storytelling and in ensuring that it can be maintained as a proper local institution for all to enjoy. Don’t leave it to chance, get in touch with us to get that mix right.

We gratefully acknowledge the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland’s Sound & Vision scheme in the funding of the series.

The maestro

Eamonn Kelly, the famous seanchaí, who hosted the 1950’s RTÉ Radio 1 series, “The Rambling House” described a rambling house as being a place “where the affairs of the day were debated, where entertainment mingled with education”. That programme began with the invitation:

”The ricket is thatched,
the fields are bare,
Long nights are here again,
The year was fine, but now ‘tis time,
To hear the balled men,
Boul in, boul in and take a chair,
Admission here is free,
You’re welcome in the rambling house,
To hear the Seanchaí”

Hear more about the great man from a 1980 RTÉ radio documentary.