Atlantic 252 Continues Youth Focus With Appointment Of MTV’s Programme Director

Atlantic 252 continues to shift its focus towards a younger, trendier audience by hiring MTV’s head of music, David Dunne, as its new programming director. Dunne already work’s on the station’s successful weekend evening dance show, bpm, but will join full time next month.

Atlantic decided to shift the station’s feel to a ‘cooler, hipper’ approach earlier this year following market research studies (see Atlantic 252 To Pull A More Trendy Audience).

Dunne says: “The challenge facing anyone in youth media is to come to terms with the fact that young people are astute about marketing, they’re quite happy to form their own strong opinions. That means that youth-orientated media has to reinvent itself constantly. 15-24 year olds currently like and demand an eclectic mix of music, which is reflected by the playlist changes Atlantic 252 implemented earlier this year. Together with Atlantic 252’s head of music, Sarah Henderson, I hope to continue to redefine Atlantic 252’s music output.”

According to RAJAR listening figures, Atlantic’s weekly reach has fallen from 3.8 million in Q2 1996 to 2.9 million for the second quarter of this year.

It is understood that CLT-ufa, Atlantic 252’s owner, has effectively put its plans to sell the station on hold. Luxembourg-based media group, CLT, put all its UK radio stations on the market at the beginning of the year. Talk Radio is currently the subject of protracted negotiations between CLT and a consortium headed by Kelvin MacKenzie in which there is understood to be a price dispute (see MacKenzie Enters Talk Talks).

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