A real end of a radio era....farewell Atlantic 252.

In the media industry the phrase “and end of an era” is frequently used, and rarely correct, but this month, in a rural part of Ireland an era did surely end.

It was a business story of its time - a cross-border commercial radio station taking the listening time and the ad revenue using technology that was out of date even as it launched.

For millions of kids in the UK at the end of the 1980’s, throughout the 1990s and early 2000 this rural site close to the Irish border played a crucial role in their popular culture.

Only the arrival of digital music, the take-off of FM radio, and a massive change in which wavebands actually appeared on home and car radios caused the winddown to begin, although the “end of the era” took another two decades to eventually occur.

Mention to almost anyone in the UK in their 40’s or 50’s the radio station Atlantic 252 and they will smile, it will bring back adolescent memories of cool DJ’s and amazing music.

But for the audience very few knew that the service was broadcast by Ireland – backed by Irish national broadcaster RTé partnered with the parent company of Radio Luxembourg, RTL.

The project was originally called Radio Tara but by launch had been christened Atlantic 252.

It was broadcast from a huge 800 foot mast at Clarkestown near Summerhill in County Meath on the unfashionable long wave frequency – but the station hit exactly what the market wanted and showed that if your product was good, you would attract listeners even though FM was better quality.

For the radio “anoraks”, the transmitter consists of a single 248-metre-high mast, which is one of the tallest structures in Ireland. The mast is surrounded by a 1.5-kilometer-long copper wire ground system, which helps to improve the efficiency of the antenna.

The station's studios were located a little way away in Mornington House in the town of?Trim.

So good was the service that by the early 1990’s official listening figures showed that Atlantic 252 had more than 5 million weekly listeners, almost a million more than the next largest commercial station measured which was Classic FM

The high rotation playlist and sharp presentation followed the US model while UK commercial radio still felt very old-fashioned. Atlantic 252 was cool – talked about in the schoolyard and became the go-to pop station for my generation as “Radio Luxemburg” was of our parent’s generation.

The station went on air at?8.00am on 1 September 1989 with the voice of Gary King and the first track was Sowing the Seeds of Love by Tears for Fears, followed by "Monkey" by?George Michael.

Again for radio enthusiasts, the first ever song played during Atlantic 252's test transmissions had been Ain'tr No Body by Rufus and Chaka Khan.

Although the transmitter was in the?Ireland the signal's reach it was available across the whole of the UK.?

Reception reports were received as far away as?Moscow and Berlin and Finland and Ibiza. The signal had even been received in?Brazil at night-time.?

The station mixed the best songs from the last few years along with the best songs from the top?

It stayed on air through the 90s and into the new millennium until audiences finally declined and the station closed.

The last live show on Atlantic was 20 December 2001. This was followed by a tribute show celebrating the station's twelve years on the air.?

The station then moved to an automated service and continued broadcasting music without continuity, along with pre-booked commercials, until midnight on 2 January 2002, when Atlantic 252 transmissions ceased.

The frequency was then used for a trial sports talk station but failed.

From 2004, RTé used the longwave service to rebroadcast RTE Radio 1 (their kind of equivalent of BBC Radio 4) and there it stayed – broadcasting to the Irish diaspora audience in the UK, but as technology changed – audio aps and longwave no longer being on car radios – plus the huge power cost of LW transmission a true end of an era was announced earlier this year and the beast of a transmitter and the service being powered down on April 14 2023.

With hundreds or radio stations, audio services, streaming and podcasts – not a great deal really cuts through these days, but for a while in our very analogue past – Atlantic 252 broadcast from a very unfashionable part of Ireland on a very unfashionable technology really was cutting edge. Farewell long wave radio Atlantic 252.