Competitors To IRN
IRN has faced many competitors during its history. ITN briefly ran ITN Radio News, which broadcast hourly news bulletins on the Astra satellite daily from 0600 to 2300. The service ran from 4 March 1990 until 4 July 1991 and clients included Jazz FM in London, East End Radio in Glasgow and a number of other small, incremental radio stations.
On 5 July 1991, Chiltern Radio launched Network News, which broadcast hourly news bulletins and audio cuts on Chiltern's Supergold audio channel on the Astra satellite. Bulletins were broadcast 24 hours a day from Chiltern studios in Dunstable utilising audio from Sky News and CNN Radio. Copy and scripts were distributed by stations via fax and a premium rate fax back service. Network News enjoyed considerable success and won the contract to supply news to Virgin Radio upon its launch in April 1993. However, it suffered a major blow when it lost the Virgin Radio contract to Reuters Radio News in April 1995, and GWR chose to close Network News in April 1996 when it took over the Chiltern Radio network.
Reuters Radio News ran from 1994 until June 1996 from studios at Gray's Inn Road in London. It supplied news to its own London Radio stations (formerly LBC), plus Scot FM, Heart FM, and Virgin Radio. Audio was mostly sourced from Sky News, who Reuters had a news supply agreement with at the time.
Traffic information service Metro Networks took over the Virgin Radio news contract following the closure of Reuters Radio News. Audio was sourced from Sky News and CNN Radio and Virgin bulletins were branded as "News from Sky". It provided bespoke bulletins to stations including Beat 106, Vibe FM, Kiss 100 and Magic 105.4, but did not provide syndicated hourly news bulletins. The news service closed down in November 2002, following the decision by Virgin Radio to produce their news in-house.
And BSkyB launched Sky News Radio in June 1999 as a rival to the ITN-operated IRN service. It initially provided bulletins to talkSPORT and subsequently around 80 radio stations before taking over the IRN contract in March 2009.
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