…well, that was a MUCH longer pause than I anticipated since my last post!  A few other aspects of work took up my time more than I’d hoped, but mainly it was because I began new research. After quite a few years focusing on late 19thC and early 20thC Irish media history, in 2017 I decided to change focus to mid-20thC media, and since then I’ve been researching and writing a book on Irish advertising and consumer culture of that period – which should appear in early 2022, so more about that some other time. But the shift in focus and time necessary to write the book caused a long pause but has also provided a lot of new material for the blog! So over the next while the posts will resume, mainly about post-Independence Ireland and its changed media landscape, beginning with a survey of what the landscape looked like and the extent to which the years immediately after Independence saw some dramatic changes in Irish media.  Not only did radio broadcasting begin within a few years of the founding of the State, but during the 1920s many older publications came to an end and many new ones began.

Upcoming posts will focus on that new world of radio – the 2RN station, its programming and advertising, and of course radio sets themselves – as well as on individual newspapers and magazines, the growing advertising industry which was underwriting most Irish media, as well as what we know about Irish readers and listeners of the mid-20thC.