HIGHWAYS BLOCKED, ORBÁN Shocked … Trouble in the Hormuz.

Billy Joel wouldn’t be stuck for material for an updated version of the infinitely memeable We Didn’t Start the Fire, if tasked with penning new lyrics to cover the opening months of 2026. 

Ireland’s national broadcaster unveiling a suite of new idents and jingles for its flagship station probably wouldn’t make the final cut for our notional composition.

But, arguably, after a week of chaos and upheaval, the very last thing we needed was a change to the nation’s ever-present background music. 

That familiar ‘bling blong bling blong’ xylophone sequence that kicked off the top of each hour on Morning Ireland?

Gone. 

The reassuring ‘do do do do do dooo’ that heralded – over the past few decades – the imminent arrival on the airwaves of either Pat Kenny, Sean O’Rourke, Clare Byrne or David McCullagh?

Also gone. 

From Rising Time through to Late Date and across the Radio 1 weekend schedule, there’s new theme music across the board.

It’s all aimed, according to the RTÉ press release, at providing a “fully unified audio identity for the station” and the tracks have been designed “to further strengthen its appeal to audiences and maintain the station as Ireland’s first choice for radio”.

In other words, the idea is that whether you’re waking up to the irrepressibly upbeat tones of Shay Byrne at 5.30am or catching snippets of Late Date in a taxi home, you’ll instantly know which station you’re listening to just by hearing the jingles. 

RTÉ Radio 1 / YouTube

According to the press bumf, it’s the first time RTÉ Radio 1 has implemented “a fully unified audio identity across its output” and the new music has been produced to provide a “comprehensive, round-the-clock sound suite tailored to the station’s evolving identity”.

The London-based audio branding agency WiseBuddah spearheaded the new campaign, and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra was drafted in to play on key elements – including the brass and string sections of the tracks. 

And while there’s new music for each show, the new themes all end with a distinctive four-note ‘doo do doo dit’ coda that we’ll all no-doubt become reasonably comfortable with in the years to come. And in case the question happened to occur to anyone – a spokesperson for the broadcaster assures us no AI was used in the composition of the new music. 

As the existence of Newstalk’s long-running slogan encouraging listeners to ‘move the dial’ deftly illustrates, radio listeners really, really hate any kind of change. With that in mind – for what it’s worth, here’s the initial take on the jingles from the news team here at The Journal: 

“The end of the Morning Ireland one sounds like something from Gladiator.”

“The Late Debate one … I feel like I would have gone to see a downtempo DJ in that style, and it’s made me feel old that those choices are now RTÉ background music.”

“They all remind me a lot of my alarms. It’s a no from me.”