Longwave Radio Atlantic 252

Fuzzy Clam wrote: »

Studios in Trim and London.

Tribute site here http://www.atlantic252.com/149 with some video footage of the studios in Trim.

The old transmitters were scrapped a few years ago and RTE installed a new one at the Clarkestown site.

Marty Mc Fly aka Jim Sweney can be heard Mon-Fri on LMFM from 6pm. A great voice and jock who doesn't get the credit he deserves

no way! I always wondered how LW 252 had such a following in the Irish Market too!

Shane10 wrote: »

i always used to think it was an english station, when i used to listen to it i cant remember hearing any irish dj's on it.

Me too! I do remember the answer the phone thing " I listen o longwave radio alantic 252 ":D

Summer of 95 if my memory serves me correctly

Btr wrote: »

A lot were Irish such as Robin Banks and Mark Collins who both hailed from Kilkenny. 2fm's Rick O'shea and I think Dusty Rhodes.

i dont remember hearing any irish voices when i was listening in the 90's. i do remember specificily the first time they played the spice girls very first song..wannabe. DJ kept saying coming up these are going to be huge amd here's there first song, stick around. i was interested so did and remember the first time i heard them. thats a pretty lame story but always remember when i heard them first.

The idea was not to identify it as being Irish or even British, the whole set up was very American (mid-Altantic maybe) they even had a female with a nice North American accent,(she may have been Canadian) where you were stood up as apparently this created more energy in the presenters "shick".

airhorn wrote: »

God them were the days!

It never rained that summer either! And the pop was sooo fizzy and it never got dark..

I remember once we played ball till 3 in the morning and than watched road runner at 7 in the morning..

Those was d days!

mike65 wrote: »

TeamTalk 252s use was a joke, anyone else remember their World Cup 2002 coverage from in front of a tv screen?

Yup I remember that Mike. Though it was a joke when I heard it first! They called it "off tube commentary"

Enda Caldwell was on 252 as well I believe. It was very successful for a while in the UK but seemed to die off just as fast.

Atlantic 252 (defunct)Broadcast areaRepublic of Ireland (official) Britain and Ireland (de facto)Frequency252 kHz with 500 kW (100 kW nighttime) powerFirst air date1 September 1989FormatContemporaryOwnerRadio Tara Ltd (RTÉ/RTL Group)
Atlantic 252 was a long wave radio station broadcasting to Ireland and Britain on 252 kHz (1190 metres) from its 1988 purpose built transmission site Clarkstown radio transmitter, which provided service to Atlantic 252 from 1989 until 2002. The station's studios were located just 12 km (7 mi) away in Mornington House, Summerhill Road, Trim, County Meath. Atlantic 252 also had sales offices and studios at 74, Newman Street in London. In 2002 the station's former frequency and transmitter were used for the failed TeamTalk 252 project.
The frequency was re-subsumed by RTÉ in 2002 to provide a version of RTÉ Radio 1 to the expatriate community in Britain from the Clarkstown radio transmitter




URL="http://www.boards.ie/w/index.php?title=Atlantic_252&action=edit&section=1"][COLOR=#0645ad]edit[/COLOR][/URL Early history

The concept of Atlantic 252 can be traced back as far as August 1986, when Irish state broadcaster RTÉ announced it was to use their allocated longwave channel for a new pop music station. They teamed up with RTL Group/Radio Luxembourg to form Radio Tara - the trading name of Atlantic 252, which being long wave, enabled reception in Britain and Ireland. This was following Chris Cary's test transmissions from Clogher Head, County Louth in the mid 1980s with 254 kHz Longwave as "Radio Exidy"
In 1987 RTÉ commenced building a giant 3-sided 248 metre broadcast mast in Clarkstown, County Meath, using a specially built pair of both air and water cooled 300 kilowatt solid-state transmitters (which could be combined to give double power) built by Varian Associates, Texas, despite protests from local residents. Studios were set up in Mornington House, in the nearby town of Trim. The station cost £6m to set up. Just over 47m people were in the station's broadcast area.
At 8am on 1 September 1989, Gary King announced on Atlantic 252, "Mine is the first voice you will ever hear on Atlantic 252." This was followed by a specially produced pre-recorded introduction tape that introduced everybody employed by the radio station on its launch day, from engineers, administration, management like Travis Baxter and John Catlett, and the station's personality music presenter lineup including ex-Laser 558 presenter Charlie Wolf, MaryEllen O'Brien, Andrew Turner, Nicky Schiller, Henry Owens, Al Dunne, Tony West and Jeff Graham. An appearance was even made by Rosalyn Reilly - who was to remain the station's cleaning lady for its entire twelve year history. The first record ever played on Atlantic 252's test transmission was "Ain't Nobody" by Rufus and Chaka Khan ('89 Remix); the station's official "first record ever played" was "Sowing The Seeds of Love" by Tears for Fears shortly after 08:00 local time on 1 September 1989. The second record played was "Monkey" by George Michael[1].
Although the transmitter was in the Republic of Ireland, the signal's reach meant that it was often considered to be a "UK" national station - the signal had even been received in Brazil at night-time, with other reception reports from such locations as Berlin, Finland, Ibiza, and Moscow. The Scottish musician Mylo has claimed it was the only station with listenable reception on the Isle of Skye. At launch there were no UK-wide commercial stations (the first being "Classic FM" in 1992), and the lack of a UK broadcast licence attracted the attention of the IBA. Although the transmitters were theoretically capable of being combined to operate at 600 kilowatts output power, International agreements limited the station's power to a maximum daytime output of 500 kW, or 100 kW at night.
URL="http://www.boards.ie/w/index.php?title=Atlantic_252&action=edit&section=2"][COLOR=#0645ad]edit[/COLOR][/URL Mid-1990s peak

Initially, the station transmitted only from 06:00 until 19:00, outside of which listeners were invited to tune to Radio Luxembourg. In 1990 the station began broadcasting until 02:00, and eventually by September 1991, a 24 hour service with the overnight automated slot called "The Big Mattress". The music format consisted of high-rotation mainstream pop and rock music, with influences borrowed heavily from American radio, and through to 1993, the station was known to play much of the music mostly from the top part of the US charts. The station mixed the best songs from the last few years along with the best songs from the top 40 - this was called "Today's Best Music Variety". Commercial Radio and the BBC initially objected to the station, seeing it as a commercial pirate. However, as UK commercial radio developed and deregulation saw many more stations launching, formats similar to Atlantic's began to appear on FM offering superior audio quality - an issue compounded by modern radio receivers tending to have an inferior audio reproduction on LW compared to that of older receivers. Atlantic 252's audience began the inevitable decline. Attempts at repositioning followed, including "Real Music, Real Radio", when the station attempted to tackle BBC Radio 1's "new music" format. At the peak of its popularity in the mid-1990s, Atlantic 252 had in excess of four million listeners, but vastly increased competition from local radio stations with similar formats and superior FM audio quality, as well as the renaissance of BBC Radio 1 and the repositioning of BBC Radio 2, saw this take a dive below one million by 2000.
URL="http://www.boards.ie/w/index.php?title=Atlantic_252&action=edit&section=3"][COLOR=#0645ad]edit[/COLOR][/URL Decline in popularity

During the 1980s and 1990s Long wave suffered a gradual decline in listenership, partially because of the reduction of signal quality and also due to more choice on higher quality platforms. Radio receiver manufacturers concentrated on FM and AM-MW bands, with fewer and fewer radio sets capable of receiving Long wave at all, and most of those that did having very poor audio.
URL="http://www.boards.ie/w/index.php?title=Atlantic_252&action=edit&section=4"][COLOR=#0645ad]edit[/COLOR][/URL Relaunch attempts

In late 1998 under the direction of David Dunne the station responded to dropping audiences by shifting its format to concentrate on indie and dance music, but it continued to lose listeners. This included 30 hours of 'specialist' music including programmes from The Wise Guys, Eddy Temple Morris and the Trade nightclub. Though money was spent on advertising and a high profile breakfast show was attempted fronted by Marc Brow (including several innovative ideas like travel news backed by new age chill out music (called 'Traffic Calming') and specially re-formatted youth news presented by Specialist Producer Mark Ovenden (which included one of the first broadcast uses of the term The Naughties), in 1999 the station suffered its lowest Rajar ratings since it first came on the air, with the audience falling to just under 1 million listeners in the last quarter of the year.
Then in November 1999 with the arrival of John O'Hara as the new Managing Director the station found a new focus and re-launched in February 2000 as "The New Atlantic 252" The format was Rhythmic CHR and the station was repositioned as "Nonstop Rhythm and Dance" The station played 12 songs in a row and featured Tony and Becky at Brekkie plus a brand new website at www.atlantic252.com. There was over £1million spent on rebranding and marketing the station to a new audience and media buyers. However, although the station did see a rise in audience again back to around 2 million listeners during 2000 and 2001, the writing was on the wall when the sale of the station was announced in early 2001 by its owners RTÉ and CLT.
URL="http://www.boards.ie/w/index.php?title=Atlantic_252&action=edit&section=5"][COLOR=#0645ad]edit[/COLOR][/URL Last broadcast

The very last show on Atlantic was presented by Enda Caldwell on Thursday 20 December 2001, This was followed by a Tribute show produced by Enda Caldwell and Eric Murphy celebrating the station's 12 year history of broadcasting and featuring classic airchecks of each year of Atlantic 252's history then the station went into automation and continued broadcasting music without continuity and just commercials that had been booked for the month of January 2002 for about two to three weeks afterwards until the carrier fell dead and the music stopped playing.
URL="http://www.boards.ie/w/index.php?title=Atlantic_252&action=edit&section=6"][COLOR=#0645ad]edit[/COLOR][/URL Replacements

It was briefly replaced by a sports station, TeamTalk 252, which opened in the early days of January 2002. This faced competition from BBC Radio 5 Live and talkSPORT, and was itself closed in the summer of 2002, just a few months after its launch. The frequency is now used by RTÉ Radio 1. DRM tests have been heard on this 252 kHz frequency since 2007. Mornington House is now regional offices for Meath County Council.
URL="http://www.boards.ie/w/index.php?title=Atlantic_252&action=edit&section=7"][COLOR=#0645ad]edit[/COLOR][/URL Presenters


The presenters that worked at Atlantic 252 were what made the station so popular and different. The funny names idea originated in the USA at stations like WHTZ FM Z100. Many of the original presenter line-up came from Laser 558/UK Commercial Radio and BBC Radio One. The Irish presenters on the air came from Dublin Superpirates like Sunshine 101 and SuperQ 102.

• Gary King (first live presenter 1989-09-01)
• Paul Kavanagh (Classic Rock Sunday)
• Henry Owens
• Dusty Rhodes
• Tony West
• Charlie Wolf
• Nicky Schiller (News and Presentation)
• Ray Billings (News)
• Maryellen O'Brien (News and Presentation)
• Al Dunne
• Jeff Graham
• James Whale
• Captain Kevin (aka Kevin Palmer)
• Batman Gomez (aka Liam Coburn)
• Robin Banks
• Mark Collins
• Hilary The Distillery
• Rosie The Cleaner
• Sandy Beech
• Cousin Matty
• Cass Jones
• David Lee Stone
• Andrew Turner (News)
• Jo King aka Jus' Plain Jo
• Nails (Cool Cat) Mahoney.
• Hollywood Haze (aka Steve Haze)
• Simon Bates (Our Tune)
• Mark Byrne
• Bam Bam (radio presenter)
• Simon Nicks (aka Nicksy)
• Dickie Bow (aka Mark Whelan)
• Beverley Hills
• Lois Lane (aka Katherine Orman)

• Bruce Morrow
• Rick O'Shea
• Cliff Walker
• The Pizzaman (aka Gary Wilkinson)
• Yorkie (aka Keith York)
• Dan The Hitman - Dave Sherwood
• Magic Marc Henry
• The Cisco Kid
• Jammin' Matt Finlay
• Elvis O'Brien (aka Steven Cooper)
• Nice Guy Eddie
• Wayne Scales (aka Stu Smith)
• Tony Dibbin
• Mark Little
• Will Clarke
• David Dunne
• Eddy Temple-Morris
• Mark Colvendent
• Chris Coco
• The Wise Guys
• Ben & Elliot
• Mark Ovenden
• Janice B and Lorraine Ashdown
• Jamie Wood
• Greg Parke
• Derek Flood
• Tony Wrighton
• Becky Chippendale
• Simon Hardwick
• Dave James
• Matt Mackay
• Harvey Lee
• Alison Mulrooney
• Enda Caldwell (last live presenter 2001-12-20)