Thompson joins Wireless in battle for Cork audience

RADIO executive Liam Thompson is to take up a new role with the Wireless Radio Group in Ireland, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News UK.

From tomorrow, Thompson will be acting as a consultant to Cork’s 96FM and C103, which between them service Cork city and county.

Wireless has just undergone a restructuring, which has resulted in redundancies across the group. Senior roles are now shared at a number of stations, including Q102 and FM104 in Dublin.

News UK bought Wireless in June of last year. The stations had previously been part of UTV, which sold its Northern Ireland television assets to ITV.

Thompson began his radio career with Dublin station 98fm in the 1990s, eventually rising to head of music.

In 1999, he joined RTE and took the role of programme manager with 2fm, where he remained for three years. Then he returned to 98fm’s owner, Communicorp, and became programme director at the Dublin youth station Spin1038, where he remained for five years.

In June 2006, Thompson was promoted to group programme director and content for the organisation, until a move to the UK beckoned with the Bauer Media Group.

In August 2015, he took the position of programme director for Virgin Radio — part of the Wireless Group — which entailed launching the new station in London at the beginning of 2016.

His new role in Cork will see him tackle an extremely competitive area of the radio market, where there is a battle for audience share between the Wireless stations and the newer entrant, Red FM.

Wireless is the latest broadcasting group to cut costs and restructure. RTE is in the process of drawing up a redundancy programme, while Communicorp, owned by Denis O’Brien, a shareholder in the owner of this newspaper, INM, has also reorganised its structures.