Prior to Nova's arrival, Irish radio consisted of the government broadcaster
RTÉ and a number of local AM pirate stations. Radio Nova was the first station in Ireland to use a high-powered signal on FM. By 1982 Radio Nova was pulling in over 40% of the available audience around Dublin. In September 1982, Radio Nova (operating on 88.1FM and 819AM at the time) introduced a new service called Kiss FM on 102.7 MHz - inspired by Los Angeles-based
102.7 KIIS-FM. Radio Nova's jingles were produced by
JAM Creative Productions in Dallas, Texas (to the melody of
WLS FM &
AM, alongside KIIS). Prior to May 1983, the stations had been allowed to operate without interference from the Irish government. However, on 18 May 1983, officials from the
Department of Posts and Telegraphs together with Irish
Gardaí raided the transmitter sites of Radio Nova and Kiss FM. Both stations went off the air until the next day. Following the raids, the Minister for Communications claimed in the
Dáil (25 May 1983) that
intermodulation products resulting from co-located transmitters for Radio Nova and its sister station Kiss FM had caused interference to emergency services' frequencies around 74 MHz for a period in the previous month. On 19 May at 6.00 a.m., Radio Nova returned to the air to announce that they would be closing down at 6.00 p.m. that day. They urged listeners to protest against the government and to show up at the Nova studios in Herbert Street, Dublin 2 for a huge protest. The story was on the front page of every national newspaper and was headline news on RTÉ. The hysteria continued when a rival pirate Sunshine Radio was raided at 9.00 a.m. By 6.00 p.m., there were several thousand people outside the studios of Nova as the station played its last record. The political fallout of the Nova closedown was huge. More protest marches continued and following criticism of the government's action by the judge in the State's case against Nova, the station resumed broadcasting some days later. In December 1983, Radio Nova started test transmissions on UHF TV. The station was to be "
Nova TV" and was to run a similar format to
MTV in the United States. Tests stopped after the government raided the studios and warned they would not tolerate a pirate television station operating. More trouble was to hit Radio Nova in 1984. The state broadcaster RTÉ which had seen its audience dwindle due to the arrival of Nova and other large pirate stations started a
jamming campaign against Radio Nova. The jamming continued for some weeks and made the reception of Nova almost impossible at times. The station eventually went into receivership and shut down its Kiss FM operation. Eventually, the Irish government ordered RTÉ to stop the jamming and once again Radio Nova flourished. ==NUJ Dispute May 1984==