As Wednesday's deadline approached, the tension among the protagonists was all too apparent. Every spin of the radio dial seemed to bring a change of mood, the airwaves full of optimists, pessimists, and even outsiders who seemed unable to acknowledge that the situation is bound to change.
Whatever the final settlement - and that might not be clear for several months, after this intense period of documents being exchanged and scrutinised - some people will be left behind, some will opt for conflict rather than inclusion.
Yes, the Independent Radio and Television Commission has shaken up the world of pirate radio in Dublin. The commission's insistence that any applicant for one of the "special interest" licences for the capital had to be off the air by last Wednesday meant change was in the air.
Clearly, some of the applications will come from erstwhile pirate operators. Thus the rather narky Pulse FM morning presenter who gave way to a test signal by Wednesday evening, and the insistent on-air party atmosphere at Phantom FM, where the exuberant indie types were talking (exuberantly) about this month's written applications to the IRTC, and even the autumn's oral hearings.
Then there's the defiant likes of Jazz FM, the black-music station which coolly (as you do) marked its fourth birthday on air, on Thursday. Or Radio Dublin, which was still pumping out Garth Brooks and company past the deadline. Around the dial, the drum-and-bass stations seemed to be carrying on, and the pirate that played Bob Marley's Jammin' seemed to be daring the IRTC to do just that. Phantom is definitely one of the stories to watch. The lads say they'll be broadcasting on the World Wide Web within a week or two (www.phantomfm.com), and the station is well integrated on the city's gig scene and among record-business types. As well as playing good tunes ("rock and Irish" is how one presenter described the forthcoming angle with the IRTC), Phantom has a can-do buzz about it which could, I'm afraid, be described as entrepreneurial. Will the confidence be catching with the commission?
At the time of writing, that other deadline is 12 hours gone and there's little confidence about. Broadcasters obviously went big on the Stormont talks, but in general the participants were less interesting than the observers - at least until midnight approached and tempers frayed. Mitchel McLaughlin, who on Wednesday's Morning Ireland (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday) set out to break his own say-nothing record, was suddenly a font of information on the negotiations by evening.
And Sinn Fein's Pat Doherty, who drew the short straw and had to stay awake for Thursday-morning interviews, was shockingly blunt. Would he not accept, Aine Lawlor asked on Morning Ireland, that the Unionist hesitation over the decommissioning offer was based on a genuine moral dilemma rather than mere bigotry? "No." If Tonight with Vincent Browne (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Thursday) was disappointingly tribunal-heavy as the deadline approached - though it caught the rivettingly pissed-off Adams and Trimble press conferences - there was always Late Night Live (BBC Radio 5 Live). With plenty of time to do more than pick through the entrails, Nick Robinson led (followed, actually) a panel through a fascinating, real-world discussion.
Actress and writer Annie McCartney was brilliantly dismissive of the politicians' addiction to the 11th-hour attention and adrenalin; Eamonn McCann was provocative about everything, including Tony Blair's contribution - which he reckons history will judge harshly; John O'Farrell of Fortnight was revelatory, sharing behind-the-scenes gossip about Blair's alleged meeting with most of the IRA executive on Tuesday and giving us loads of other genuine-sounding mood-setters besides. All of them were encouraged to mix the personal and political, making for rambling 5 Live discourse at its best.
Nothing so up-to-the-minute on Fanning on Sunday - The D Files (2FM, Sunday), which re-broadcast a rather good interview from 1993 that Dave Fanning did with Leonard Cohen. At least, I think it was Leonard Cohen: the RTE Guide listing said it was Leonard Goren - perhaps betraying its hand-written origins (which is kind of nice) and/or the youth of the sub-editor (which is kind of sobering).
Anyway, the guy on the radio sounded quite a lot like the Canadian poet, singer and songwriter so popular with long-gone generations, and the old folks who tuned in would have heard loads to sustain their interest, from his defence of the imperial spread of the American burger ("a pretty good piece of meat") to his insistence that writing good songs and poems has less to do with great suffering - to which artists, he said, have absolutely no special access - than with hard work - to which artists, he said, are unfortunately too rarely inclined.
You couldn't much fault his honesty, either. Asked about having kids, Cohen was not the first parent to note that the arrival of children moves the adult very definitely off centre-stage, but I haven't heard many fathers couple the insight with a blunt admission of how much they hated that decentring. In spite of what he says became a good relationship with his children, Cohen has not turned into an advocate of family life. When Fanning questioned him about the rapid burn-out that seems to afflict the romantic attachments in his songs, Cohen suggested that such mercurial passion is all most people can manage nowadays.
"The real monastery of our time is marriage . . . that's what only very few people are suited for."
Which is my segueway for a little preview as opposed to a review, a toe-stomping crossing of this column's usual boundaries - but in a very good cause. Next week BBC Radio 4 is broadcasting short stories from the 1997 volume, If Only: Short Stories of Love and Divorce by Irish Women Writers. Apart from being a good book, the royalties of which go to the Marriage and Relationship Counselling Service, it features work by two local heroes around here, Maeve Binchy and Mary Maher.
Their stories, and works by Katy Hayes, Sheila Barrett and Jennifer Johnston, are on the schedule for next week's series, which goes out on Radio 4 Monday to Friday at 10.45 a.m. and 7.45 p.m.