About

Century Radio was the ill-fated first attempt at a licensed national station

Based at ChristChurch in Dublin city, Century Radio was a licensed national radio station which launched to a fanfare of publicity on September 4th 1989, but proved disastrous and was short-lived, eventually closing on November 19th 1991.

Born out of the radio shake-up of 1988, Century has been embroiled in controversy even for years after its final broadcast.

It never even actually achieved national FM coverage, with transmitters mainly covering the Dublin, Cork & Limerick areas, with only the Dublin one within their intended frequency range as belied by the station’s name…especially when they identified as Century 100!

The station went off the air suddenly following a short 6pm bulletin from newsreader Dairena Ní Chinnéide had the unenviable job of announcing the station’s closure on the 6.00pm news.
Most of the station’s staff, including Marty Whelan (pictured above) heard about the closure in the same way as the listeners did – on that final bulletin!

Anorak Facts

• Launch was at 8am on September 4th 1989
• Terry Wogan’s was the first voice heard
• First song played was Pride – In the Name of Love by U2

Frequency Logs

• 100.3MHz (Dublin); 98.8MHz (Cork); 98.4MHz (Limerick): September 1989 – November 1991
• 1143kHz

radiowaves.fm 2019