Millennium Radio

Millennium Radio was a short-term music-based service ran by RTÉ to mark Dublin city’s millennium celebrations. Its first day of broadcast was March 16th 1988 from studios located at the GPO Arcade – just a stone’s throw from where 2RN, the first Irish service launched in 1926, had been based. A glass front meant that passers-by could see into the stdios.

Its focus was to highlight Millennium celebrations and festivities whilst entertaining listeners in the capital.

Due to close at the end of the year it was given a special extension to cater for a city devoid of local services because of the forced closure of pirate stations on New Year’s Eve. It eventually closed on April 30th 1989.

Millennium Radio broadcast daily from 8am-2pm weekdays and 10am to 4pm at weekends with hourly news on the half-hour. John Clarke, Maxi, Jimmy Greely and Declan Meehan were just some of the familiar names involved.

Frequencies were 88.0MHz and 1278kHz. 1278kHz was the local RTÉ Radio 2 frequency, this continued to relay RTÉ Radio 2 after Millennium closed down each day.

All of the images on this page are by very kind courtesy of Kieran Murray…who says:

I worked on Millennium 88FM as a General Assistant. I looked after Ad Traffic which used to arrive from Donnybrook by courier each evening (a bag with a bunch of carts!).

I had responsibility for making sure the commercials were transmitted and had to sign off on this, each day.

I also worked on the Public Reception area and got to drive the Millennium 88FM cars!

I read the sports news and also did vox pops and special insert reports – all about Dublin’s Millennium.

Sample schedule (Dec 31st):

8am After Eight with Scott Williams;
11am The Dublin Chart Show with Declan Meehan;
2pm Out and About with Robbie Irwin;
5.30pm City Limits – Magazine;
6pm As RTÉ Radio 2