Kevin Brannigan

Kevin Brannigan is a 25 % owner of Bay Broadcasting Ltd. He has been Chief Executive Officer at Radio Nova since 2010 and has filled the same role at Ireland's Classic Hits since 2021, replacing Sean Ashmore. He has stakes in both through Bat Broadcasting and also has a 9.5% stake in Sunshine 106.8 via Bay’s 38.14% stake in that station.

Born in 1972, Brannigan was raised in Stillorgan and attended secondary school at St Mary’s College, Rathmines where his father Ciaran was a teacher. Obsessed with radio from an early age, by the time he was 15 he and his friend Mike Ormonde (who now owns the other 75% of Bay Broadcasting via his Step Investments vehicle) set up Signal FM, in the shed of Ormonde’s Rathfarnham home. Sean Ashmore, now co-owner of Sunshine, was one of Signal FM’s early DJs.  

He graduated from Dublin City University in 1993 with a BA in Communications Studies. While he started a day job with production house, Reelgood Studios, in February 1994, he and Ormonde launched another pirate station, Kiss 103, playing a solid diet of dance music. Repeatedly raided, the station closed after nine months but the following year (1995) saw Brannigan move to first East Coast FM as a producer, then to FM104 as Production Director until 1998. Another production house stint – at Tommy Ellis Studios – followed but he diverted into running two websites related to night courses and job services, through his Jazbury Limited company. (Jazbury still operates the “Careers Unlimited” recruitment services, sharing space with Radio Nova in  Castleforbes House in Dublin’s Docklands.) 

Brannigan and Ormonde incorporated Bay Broadcasting in 2005 to operate a number of temporary radio licences issued by the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland. In 2007 they were part of the 4FM (now Classic Hits) consortium which successfully bid for what remains Ireland’s only multi-city licence, targeting listeners aged 45 and older. A year later they were part of another successful consortium – Radio Nova -  bidding for a Dublin music radio licence. Two years after Nova went on air in 2010, Bay bought into Sunshine Radio and, more recently in 2025, acquired Galway Bay FM. 

In 2024, Brannigan wrote to RTE Director-General Kevin Bakhurst and then Minister for Arts, Catherine Martin offering to buy RTE’s ailing pop station 2FM for €10m.  Brannigan has insisted that the offer was sincere, designed to turn the station around but it also served to draw attention to the contradiction in a public service broadcast running a purely pop - and arguably purely commercial - station.  

(Last updated in April 2026)