South East and Waterford-based radio stations got their share, albeit a small one, of the BCI funded Sound and Vision scheme which gave out over 1.1 million euro to radio stations across the country, both commerical and community, to make feature programmes.

Beat 102-103 FM and Waterford Local Radio (WLR) FM received over 30,000 Euro from the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) under round 6 of its Sound and Vision Programme.

Three allocations were made to the stations under the scheme from a total of 91 funding grants given with the lion's share of the funding going to national Public Broadcasting station, RTE Radio One and Newstalk, who received ten funding grants alone.

Beat 102-103 received the funding for a programme with a provisional title of 'My J1' under the category 'Documentary/Culture'.

Meanwhile, WLR FM received funding totalling 18.500 euro for two project for documentaries under 'History' and 'Arts' categories respectively.

According to Beat 102-103's Orla Rapple, who applied for the funding for 'My J1', the programme will centre around the experiences of two participants in a series of five programmes who will be going to the United States for the summer.

Rapple also said she hopes to document the experiences of the students in the United States with the fifth programme being a broadcast, hopefully with a representative of USIT involved.

The programme is hoped to be airing by next October, which Rapple says would be ideal as many J1 students will be returning home and others, returning to college, will be considering their options.

WLR FM's programmes were listed under the titles 'The Sisters of Mercy are not departed or gone' and 'The Tops', the latter which was applied for by Wayne Brown.