A 1980 photograph of Des Whelan, 23-year-old station manager and programme controller of the then-“pirate” Waterford Local Radio, which made its first official broadcast from the Butlerstown garage of his brother and founding director Rick on Sunday, 23rd June 1978.

The eldest of six siblings, Rick (pictured that year) had started a station in Cork when he was 19. With the essential help of electrical/technical whiz Egidio Giani, who he’d worked with on Leeside (and now a colleague of Butlerstown’s Lenny Burns at Waterford Harley Davidson), they decided to make radio-waves on Suirside.

Two months after launching WLR, they moved operations from the Whelan family’s shed at Newcourt, Killotteran, to a gate lodge just down the road. Des joined as a rock presenter a few weeks later. The following year WLR took the logical step of moving into the city (Wellington Street at the top of the town), though the new crystal-clear VHF signal was relayed on medium wave from the Butlerstown transmitter.

During its first 27 months on air, despite attempts to close it down (including a November ’78 raid by Post Office officials and Gardaí), the station grew from five part-timers playing records to broadcasting varied output across 19 hours daily and employing 10 full-time and 18 part-time staff — all from Waterford.

It took almost a decade of lobbying by Des & co before their ambitions to become a legal operation were realised in September 1989, coinciding with the opening of new studios at Georges Court, which gave way to the €5m Broadcast Centre at Ardkeen in 2003.

Main image: Des Whelan, station manager and programme controller, 1980. (Image from WLR yearbook.)