Atlantic 252 What happened?

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Century Radio: September 1989 to November 1991 - bit more than 9 months! It launched on Monday September 4th. Atlantic 252 got in just ahead on Friday September 1st.

Where did the DJs live?

I always remembered 252 being pitched up but that recording sounds slower than usual to my ears. Then again, that could have been the tape machine it was recorded or played back on.

Another Radio Luxembourg connection: Jeff Graham, one of the original presenters on Atlantic 252, went off to RL to take up the position of PD. He oversaw its move from Medium Wave to the Astra satellite.

Re Radio Luxembourg, I forgot to mention Enda Caldwell, who went on to do a stint there some years later.

John O’Hara too .. he was briefly with Century in about 1991 I think

Re Century, I forgot about John O'Hara's involvement there. That's two, so.

As regards Today FM, I have been reminded of some others from a reliable source:

Cliff Walker

Steven Cooper - hosted some cover shows

Producer Emily Owens from Atlantic 252, who was a "spinner" from '95 to Closedown, now is head of commercial production with Bauer IRL and Today FM.

A Big LW station was being planned in '00s and a LW rig was being stored in Surrey to take over the IOM 279 project !

The original idea for 'export radio ' was Novas 500kw LW project from Mosney , which then became the Exidy 738 project .

Nova clearly felt that their Dublin FM/MW station would be unaffected by a station aimed at the UK.

Technical issues which while resolvable, would have been expensive , resulted in Nova replacing Exidy.

What made things different in '89 and why A252 made an impact in Ireland was the lacklustre new independent stations and Atlantic effectively being the revival of the hugely successful Sunshine 101.

Would Atlantic have made an impact in the 80s? , probably not ,and even if it did the FM pirates would quickly adjust.

A252, 500kw by day , 100kw by night , was weak in London so Laser 558 wouldn't have been impacted , BBC potentially. The ILR'S in the UK were already taking a big hit from Nova and later Sunshine and Q - Their FM signals proving crystal clear along the west coast.

Re using the RTE studios - I doubt that would have been an option - this was also a joint venture with RTL , Dublin was never in the mix as a transmission site , and just to add that initially there was a FM link to the TX site.

Even if Atlantic 252 had been on the go earlier in the 80s I think most of the Irish pirates would've come along anyway. I grew up outside Dublin so I never heard Nova or any of the other pirates there. But down the country where I was, the main pirate station was a less polished but remarkably similar version of the local station that succeeded it later on. In other words, along with pop music it aired plenty of céilí, country & Irish and showbands. I think they had a bit of local news too but that detail is a bit fuzzy in my mind now.

No matter how long the station had been running, I think it would've closed at the same time it did. It's one of those things that was good while it lasted but was then overtaken by something better. Also, LW started to disappear from consumer electronics. It wasn't on any of the Sony Walkmans I had in the 90s, nor was it on the double-deck I saved up for. If Google's image search is anything to go by, there was no LW on the radio in our family car. As I got older, the only place I consistently heard the station was on buses.

Walkman's or Personal Stereos never had LW on this part of the world.

Again, I forgot about John O'Hara! Now that I think of it, John O'Hara was also with Radio Nova. I did not know that Henry Owens did a stint with Nova.