Talk:2RN

National service
even at the time of the inception of the station, there were plans for a high-power transmitter to serve the whole country

Actually in the very days of 2RN there was some discussion over whether a national service should be provided via a single high power station (augmented by the existing low power transmitters) or a network of regional low power stations (mirroring the early structure of the BBC in the UK). Initially the latter was envisaged (hence the Cork station) however it was soon realised that both for economic (important in a country that was only just emerging from a very damaging civil war and where many still considered radio to be something of a luxury) and technical (available frequencies were been rapidly snapped up by other countries) reasons that the former structure was more practicable.

In addition the desire to reach as many Irish listeners as possible in Great Britain and Northern Ireland would have meant a high power station made more sense.

Return to Éireann
This short article makes no reference to the origin of the name 2RN. I'm sure I recall hearing a RTÉ Radio 1 documentary which said that the name was intended to evoke a popular song with the title (and/or refrain, I can't recall) Return to Éireann. (This perhaps works better if you're from Dublin: they pronounce the name of the letter as or, not the more usual are. Air would be even closer; maybe old Dubliners say that, I don't know.)

The article 2RN (RTÉ_Networks) has this to say: 'The repositioning renamed and rebranded RTÉNL to 2RN (the name comes from the original Irish Radio service known as 2RN or "to eireann")', which suggests my memory is not completely at fault.

TRiG (talk) 16:08, 26 October 2013 (UTC)