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Founded on September 4 , 1989 , Century were intended to be the first licensed alternative to RTE Radio 1 . The licence was issued in an attempt to kill the Pirate Radio tradition in Ireland. Century never managed to reach full coverage in Ireland, covering little outside of Dublin , Cork and Limerick . The station closed in November 1991 , having lost £7 million ( Punt ), a huge amount for an Irish business at the time. Dogged by problems from the start, it has recently been revealed that Century's licence was issued illegally, as the then Minister For Communications , Ray Burke received a bribe in the region of IR£100,000 to issue the licence. Its investors, who included Terry Wogan and Chris De Burgh were anxious to secure a quick return on their money, and were unwilling to wait to see would the stations fortunes turn around. Oddly, its major competitor, RTE broadcast Century over their trasmitter masts without claiming their fee, which they repeatedly reduced in the hope of actually receiving the cash. The failure of Century to insist on a performance clause in the transmission contract meant RTE didn't have to transmit Century at full power -hence the coverage problems A £400,000 advertising campaign for the station was doomed to failure, due to the confusion over its frequencies – those living outside of Dublin would not find the station even close to 100–102, if they could even find it at all, thanks to the poor coverage. The station may be remembered for its variety of main stream hits from the 70s and 80s along with slick production and its punchy jingles from JAM Creative in Dallas. A daily 10 minute show Captain Kremmen from Kenny Everett is still fondly remembered. Unsuccessful attempts to acquire "big names" also made problems for the station. After their IR£1 million offer for Gay Byrne to move to them was turned down they tried unsuccesfully to poach several other RTE personalities. Their eventual recruitment of Marty Whelan was seen by many as an act of desperation. The State did a number of things to assist Century, including Ray Burke's imposition of a cap on the maximum amount of advertising RTE could carry. However, this just made it harder for Century to exist, as it reduced the rates RTE charged to carry advertising, which had the knock-on affect of reducing how much Century could charge. The Cap was not abolished until the Labour / Fine Gael Government came to power in the mid-1990's When Century finally closed, its franchise was left idle for 6 years, and then re-issued to Radio Ireland , who actually received bandwidth in the 100–102 MHz band. (105.5 in the North East of Ireland) Century Radio is not to be confused with the still operating 100-102 Century FM station of North East England . SEE ALSO ''Century Radio'' was also the original name for Century FM , a group of three regional radio stations in England . |
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