Atlantic 252 - terrible radio?

Lucozade man

I am surprised at all the people these days that talk about atlantic 252 as if it was the golden age of radio. Atlantic 252 was a terrible radio station, It had a playlist of about 30 songs and the dj names just got really stupid Dicky bow? Wtf?

dulpit

Longwave radio, Atlantic 252 will forever remind me of either being home sick from school, or being in Galway at an adventure centre when I was in 4th year, and it was the only station that the bus could pick up.

Crap station though, you're right...

Bummer1234

I would love to half it back now...Top 10 every evening and played decent tunes all the time....Listening to it playing football with the neighbours....Whats everyone at now...Sitting on there bebo and Facebooks!!!!....

eth0_

Atlantic 252 was actually a very influential station. Nothing like it existed in Ireland at the time and it influenced 2FM and other pop stations a great deal.

Tapes

Little did the irish teens who was listening to it know that RTE owned 75% of it and pat kenny was the chairman of the board.

kippy

Tapes wrote: »

Little did the irish teens who was listening to it know that RTE owned 75% of it and pat kenny was the chairman of the board.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_252
I never knew ANY of that!

It brings back a lot of memories when I hear people speak about it.
Good times.
No matter what the quality.

DenMan

I remember they did the Euro top 20 chart and the World top 40. I thought that was brilliant. Good station but very repetitive.

Benny_Cake

I have very fond memories of it in the early 90s,but in later years it seemed to be all R&B, all the time. At it's peak it was a very influential station, particularly in a time of less choice in stations, it seems to have had a huge impact in rural areas where 2FM would have been the only other choice.

Liam Byrne

Woeful playlist and the "is it English or Irish" question combined always put me off it.

Nova Europe or Radio Luxemburg beat the pants off it any day.

Declan A Walsh

My first car had only MW and LW Radio and no tape facility - never mind CD player! Atlantic 252 was a Godsend at the time as I could pick it up anywhere in the country - sadly Century Radio was not great for picking up on MW.

As others have said, it was a very influential station. I accept that over time it became very repetitive. Then, I changed car and that was the problem solved!

Here are just some of the people (and you should certainly recognoise some of these names) who did stints on Atlantic 252:
Brian McColl (Nails Mahoney)
Liam Coburn (Batman Gomez)
Rick O'Shea
Enda Caldwell
Mark Byrne
Al Dunne
Paul Kavanagh
Steve Hayes (Hollywood Haze)
Henry Condon (Henry Owen)
Derek Flood
Dusty Rhodes
Simon Bates (possibly syndicated)
Dickie Bow
Cliff Walker
Pizzaman
Bam-Bam
Cousin Brucie
Jo King
Jeff Graham
Charlie Wolf
Andrew Turner
Kevin Palmer
"Magic" Marc Henry
Mark Noble
Tony West
Mark King
Robin Banks
Mary Ellen O'Brien
Desparate Dan

GSF

It was great radio if you were a teenager. You werent meant to listen to it 24x7 and it would upset serious radio critics but it was sure better than 2FM or any other the other limited alernatives of the early 90's.

Autosport

Ah that brings back some great memories, i loved the fact that they played RnB music

squonk

I remember it from being home sick and school trips when it was alway on on the bus. I remember they played Celine Dion like crazy, but it was one of her first singles and it wasn't a bad song, before she lost all cred! If you listened to it all the time you'd go mad but an hour or two here and there made for great radio. I don't think the current crop of younger people actually could imagine what it was like when 2FM was the only option you had in rural areas. Now thanks to the internet there's such a wealth of choice.

splendid101

Don't see why the Irish teens listening would have given a riddler's who owned it or was on the board.

I remember listening when Gangster's Paradise was played what seemed to be every 15-20 minutes. Great!

Autosport

splendid101 wrote: »

Don't see why the Irish teens listening would have given a riddler's who owned it or was on the board.

I remember listening when Gangster's Paradise was played what seemed to be every 15-20 minutes. Great!

Classic tune

dulpit

Oh dear...

Kensington

Tapes wrote: »

Little did the irish teens who was listening to it know that RTE owned 75% of it and pat kenny was the chairman of the board.

The wonders of clever marketing eh!

I'd imagine the majority of Spin 1038's listenership today don't realise it's the exact same people running Spin as is running the "boring old stations" like Newstalk or Today FM.

Liam Byrne

Autosport wrote: »

Classic tune

Maybe, but every 20 mins ?

Declan A Walsh

The best think about Atlantic 252 is that, provided you had long wave on your radio (and many did in 1989 and the early '90s), you could pick it up practically anywhere in the country. The worst thing, which became more prevalent as time went on, was the repitition of songs over a short period of time.

During the first year or so, Atlantic 252 used to have a classic rock show on Sunday afternoons, playing the sort of stuff you would now hear on Radio Nova. That was great for general rock fans. That did not last, though. Paul Kavanagh was one of the presenters of the rock show. I think Al Dunne did a stint too and possibly Mary Ellen O'Brien.

Don't forget it was also training ground for a number of Irish broadcasters. There were of course British presenters too, as the station was aimed mainly towards the English market, even though it actually broadcast from Co. Meath.

By the way, the other main owner of Atlantic 252 was Radio Tara, who were the owners of Radio Luxembourg. One of its early presenters, Jeff Graham, went off to be PD with Radio Luxembourg and was to oversee the latter's move away from Medium Wave and to be exclusively on the Astra satellite platform.

KrazeeEyezKilla

splendid101 wrote: »

I remember listening when Gangster's Paradise was played what seemed to be every 15-20 minutes. Great!

I remember my brother spent a whole Sunday listening waiting for it to come on so he could tape it but it didn't come until about midnight, this was right at the point when it was No.1 any other day it would have on about ten times. The Rhythm & Dance direction improved things little bit towards the end as endless Garage music was better than the likes of Westlife but it too late at that point.

The replacement sports station TeamTalk 252 was awful. Their coverage of the 2002 World Cup was incredibly amateurish. I remember listening to a phone-in the night after Irelands win over Saudi Arabia and all the callers were taking the p!ss and deliberately acting the bollix.

mike65

I remember that, they were sat in front of the telly with a "crowd" track mixed in with the mic channels. Anyone who's seen Escape to Victory will have an idea of how it must have sounded (and looked in the studio).

Fuzzy Clam

Declan A Walsh wrote: »

By the way, the other main owner of Atlantic 252 was Radio Tara, who were the owners of Radio Luxembourg.

Eh???

baalthor

It was controversial at the time. There was no legal independent radio in Ireland when it started so there were questions about why 252 was allowed to operate.
There were also complaints from other countries about unfair competition and signal interference, allegedly it was blocking Radio Algeria at one point !

Fuzzy Clam

baalthor wrote: »

It was controversial at the time. There was no legal independent radio in Ireland when it started so there were questions about why 252 was allowed to operate.
There were also complaints from other countries about unfair competition and signal interference, allegedly it was blocking Radio Algeria at one point !

Dublin's Capital Radio was already on air a couple of months.IIRC. The framework was also in place for more licenced stations.

I don't remember any controversy at all.

mike65

I do, the residents of Clarkestown were convinced they were going to be barbecue by the transmitter. There was some fuss from local stations in the UK esp the NW where the signal would be strongest as they reckoned ad revenues might suffer. 252 also demanded its Djs stand up which must have caused some disquiet among the more portly/older voices.

Fuzzy Clam

mike65 wrote: »

I do, the residents of Clarkestown were convinced they were going to be barbecue by the transmitter.

Ah yes, i remember that.
Having met some of the locals in a pub near there, I think they may have had a point....

Declan A Walsh

Declan A Walsh wrote: »

By the way, the other main owner of Atlantic 252 was Radio Tara, who were the owners of Radio Luxembourg. One of its early presenters, Jeff Graham, went off to be PD with Radio Luxembourg and was to oversee the latter's move away from Medium Wave and to be exclusively on the Astra satellite platform.

Fuzzy Clam wrote: »

Eh???

Sorry, I got a bit confused there! Radio Tara was the name of the company which owned Atlantic 252. This was a joint venture between RTE and RTL, with RTE having the larger share of ownership. RTL were also the owners of Radio Luxembourg - not Radio Tara. Sorry about that!

splendid101

KrazeeEyezKilla wrote: »

I remember my brother spent a whole Sunday listening waiting for it to come on so he could tape it but it didn't come until about midnight

Yeah, I recorded Gangster's Paradise off the Station using my sister's toy recorder with the big chunky microphones on either side.

Other song's which were always being played at that time were some Simply Red number and the one about missing someone like the "desert misses the rain". I hated that song.

kippy

splendid101 wrote: »

Yeah, I recorded Gangster's Paradise off the Station using my sister's toy recorder with the big chunky microphones on either side.

Other song's which were always being played at that time were some Simply Red number and the one about missing someone like the "desert misses the rain". I hated that song.

Fairground - I absolutely detested that song as well and have since grown to detest anything Simply Red.
I remember recording on the aul tapedeck so much music off of A252. Those two tunes you mention bring back so many memories of back in the day! Good times....

brianwalshcork

Atlantic 252 was all I could get on the radio on the tractor :-(

TRSJ

kippy wrote: »

Fairground - I absolutely detested that song as well and have since grown to detest anything Simply Red.

you and me both. It turned me off simply red for life.