Newstalk 106

Newstalk 106 is a talk-based national radio station. Its weekday schedule is current affairs-focused although it also includes magazine-style programming, a sports show and music/entertainment late night show. The station has been owned by Bauer Media Audio Ireland since 2021. 

Newstalk was established in response to a 1999 Broadcasting Commission of Ireland call for applications for a speech-based radio service for Dublin. The Newstalk consortium was originally constituted by all 21 of the then extant local commercial stations and headed by John Purcell, previously (and subsequently) of KCLR FM. As the only bidder, Newstalk was duly awarded the licence in 2000 but it was April 2002 before the station went on air. By that stage many of the original stations has disengaged from the project leaving 98FM (the largest but still minority shareholder), FM104, LMFM, WLRFM, East Coast FM,  KCLR FM and sports television broadcaster Setanta Media Holdings as the main investors.

The station initially struggled to secure listeners recording a 2% share of the Dublin market by January 2003. This prompted further disenchantment from some shareholders: WLR exited the station in April 2003 (selling its shares to 98FM owner Denis O’Brien’s Radio 2000 and KCLR) followed by East Coast Radio (again selling to Denis O’Brien’s Radio 2000) in May the same year. By May 2003, shares in the company were mainly held by Radio 2000 (38%), Setanta (27%), KCLR (12%), LMFM (9%) and FM104 (13%). Successive additional rights issues were needed to in 2003 to provide capital to keep the station afloat. When Capital/FM104 declined to participate in the first and second of these, it’s shareholding was diluted to 8.8%. LMFM and Setanta also declined to partake in the second new rights issues in September 2003. As a consequence, the main investor in those rights issues -  Denis O’Brien’s Radio 2000 - became the majority shareholder in the station by October 2003 at 53%.

This began to generate concentration of ownership issues, not least when Scottish Radio Holdings, already the owner of Today FM and Country 106.8, moved to acquire FM104 which would have seen SRH indirectly acquire FM104’s stake in Newstalk. The Competition Authority’s interest was also piqued by Radio 2000’s gradual acquisition of majority shareholder status in Newstalk launching an investigation in January 2004. 

In February 2004, the Competition Authority informed SRH that approval of the FM104 acquisition was conditional on SRH divesting itself of its resulting 8.8% shareholding in Newstalk. In March 2004, the Competition Authority completed its investigation in Radio 2000’s shareholding in Newstalk – by then 59.6% - concluding that Denis O’Brien’s stake in the station (whilst also owning shares in 98FM, East Coast FM and Sprin FM) did not undermine competition in the Dublin advertising market. 

De facto then, by mid 2003 Denis O’Brien was the controlling shareholder in Newstalk, a status reflected in his considerable investment in the loss-making station: the 2003 accounts recorded accumulated losses of €8m since the Newstalk 106 Ltd was established. Losses continued to mount - €17m by the end of 2006 – prompting a further exodus of shareholders until Newstalk was finally fully absorbed into Denis O’Brien’s Communicorp by the close of 2006. 

In the same year – 2006 -  Newstalk was again the only applicant for a licence for a quasi-national (80% plus of the population) service. Part of the calculation was an anticipated doubling of revenues – to €12m by 2011 – and the prospect of finally producing some profit in the same year. The national version of Newstalk commenced broadcasting at the end of September 2006 to a potential audience equivalent to 92% of the population. 

In 2007 Newstalk’s parent, Communicorp, successfully bidded for EMAP’s Irish radio services including the other national commercial station, Today FM. While Communicorp’s already prominent position in the Irish radio  market raised competition issues, Today FM – with its 16% national audience share, as compared with Newstalk’s 5% - offered a possible means of making Newstalk pay by potentially allowing for some sharing of costs across the two stations. In the event, the Competition Authority allowed the acquisition to go ahead: though permission was conditional on the sale of FM104, Communicorp was able to secure Today FM. 

Newstalk’s national audience share gradually increased there, reaching 8% in 2010 and 11% by 2015 (where it has broadly remained ever since). Newstalk-originated context also indirectly acquired a much wider audience from October 2009 after it was awarded a contract to provide news services to 18 local radio stations following the closure of their jointly-owned Independent Network News venture. By the end of the following decade, every local station in the country had signed up to Newstalk’s “rip-and-read” news service.

The station remained loss-making, however, and in 2016 Communicorp explored the possibility of divesting itself of Newstalk. In September 2026, Leslie Buckley, one of the directors representing Communicorp owner Denis O’Brien on the board of Independent News and Media (INM) communicated the potential availability of Newstalk to then INM CEO Robert Pitt. The purchase did not proceed as INM concluded that the asking price did not reflect the potential of the station. However, the potential purchase formed an element of an investigation into the governance of INM by two High Court inspectors sought the State’s Corporate Enforcement Authority. Robert Pitt had made a protected disclosure alleging that he had been subjected to improper pressure to pursue the Newstalk purchase. Although the inspector’s 2024 report accepted that pressure had been applied, they disagreed that this had been improper or designed to specifically benefit INM’s then largest shareholder, Denis O’Brien.

Further controversy followed: in September 2017, George Hook, presenter of Newstalk’s drivetime show, made on-air comments suggesting that a rape victim bore some responsibility for the crime. Although Hook subsequently apologised and withdrew the comments he was suspended and ultimately replaced. Hook’s comments were the subject of a critical op-ed piece by Irish Times columnist Fintan O’Toole. In response, in October 2017, Communicorp issued a ban on any Irish Times journalist appearing on any of their stations. (A separate ban was subsequently applied to journalists from The Currency online news website in 2019.) Although the NUJ expressed grave disappointment at the decision, the ban remained in place until June 2021, when new ownership took over the station.  

That new owner was the Bauer Media Group, the family-owned media conglomerate headquartered in Hamburg and led by chief executive and majority owner Yvonne Bauer. The sale – for a reported €100m – marked Denis O’Brien’s exit from the Irish media market. 

(Last updated in April 2026)