Inside Track: Corrigan considering his options as LMFM scales back its workforce
Inside Track with Joe Carroll
You can only imagine the furore there’d have been had Radio Éireann – as RTE Radio was then known – pulled the plug when Micheál O’Hehir’s career was at its height.
To younger readers who weren’t around at the time, O’Hehir was the voice of Gaelic football and hurling.
His Sunday afternoon broadcasts were compulsory, and listeners didn’t have to be from one of the competing counties to tune in.
This was at the time when television had yet to come to this country, and travel wasn’t as available as it is today.
Ears would be cocked to the wireless, and daren’t anyone in the room cough, sneeze or bang a door, especially if the game was at a crucial stage. “Whisht” would be the milder of requests.
O’Hehir also commentated on the big horse races, and when television took over from radio as the main means of telling the stories from Croke Park, The Curragh and other major venues throughout the country, he was as still comfortable behind the mic.
Colm Corrigan has earned a reputation similar to O’Hehir’s in these parts.
For over 30 years, his daily bulletins have brought LMFM listeners up to date on local, national and international affairs, with an emphasis on matters closest to home.
He is, however, best known for his broadcasts from GAA venues throughout the county, and further afield when it’s mostly county teams that are involved.
These, along with interviews, have earned him a huge listenership.
If he lost the run of himself on the day of Louth’s 2025 Leinster final over Meath, who could blame him.
He is, after all, a staunch Louthman, and being there to commentate on the Delaney Cup coming this way for the first time in 68 years, would, you’d have to say, allowed him to throw Press Box protocol out the window. (By the way, he wasn’t alone then, nor again at Croker the Sunday before last.)
The news that Corrrigan is to have his role reduced on the local radio – and maybe even taken off the schedule altogether – has come as a huge surprise to his many listeners.
Indeed, it was as much part of the narrative among Louth supporters prior to Louth’s recent match with Dublin.
As part of one of those regionalised programmes that have greatly reduced workforces, in the communication industry in particular, LMFM is to be linked with other Irish local stations owned by a group headed by Australian media tycoon, Rupert Murdoch.
There’s the strong possibility this could mean the stations losing their ‘local’ flavour.
It seems the bottom line is all that counts, and even though the figure might still be on the plus side, making it bigger is now the driving force, and it doesn’t matter how many jobs have to be sacrificed.
Other long-established LMFM staff members are to lose their jobs, and while Corrigan’s commentaries might still be heard – he is said to be considering all options open to him – there’ll be no further programmes ending with the presenter’s distinctive dot i eeeee.