The Turning Off Long Wave Edition
On Radio 4, comforting crackles, and farewell transmissions.
Russell Davies (RD) is a writer and strategist. He’s worked on communications and digital strategies for organizations like Nike, Microsoft and Apple, and is the author of multiple books, including Everything I Know About Life I Learned From Powerpoint.
Russell here. At 0000 GMT on 27 June 2026, the BBC stopped broadcasting its Radio 4 service via a longwave radio signal. This after over a hundred years of longwave transmission. The broadcast ended with God Save The King and, of course, the shipping forecast.
Radio 4 is still available via a variety of other wavelengths and platforms. (It will stay that way, given that the station’s ongoing transmission is one of the official methods nuclear submarines use to determine whether Britain still has a functioning goverment.)
The great advantage of longwave radio is that, well, the waves are long. The signal can bounce over obstacles like mountain ranges and travel beyond the horizon, mostly hugging the surface of the earth, and occasionally reaching even further by reflecting from the ionosphere. That means it can carry a signal huge distances, and that a single transmitter can serve a whole country, or even beyond. Many Britons over a certain age will remember listening for the warm crackle of longwave as they tried to catchup with the cricket or the football while on trips abroad.
But there are also a few disadvantages to longwave. For one, modern radios aren’t built to receive it, which means the UK audience for it has dwindled to 90,000. It takes a lot of energy to transmit, and that’s expensive at the moment. And the 90-year old gear being used requires thermionic valves which are no longer being manufactured. In fact, only 11 spares remain.
So now the only countries still broadcasting on longwave are Romania, Poland, Algeria, Morocco and Mongolia.
Why is this interesting?
The boom in analogue audio nostalgia seems, thus far, to have bypassed radio. Vinyl and cassettes are back, of course. CDs and reel-to-reel are happening now. And Minidiscs, the best personal audio technology ever, will inevitably soon return. But old-school, non-digital radio is still the province of hams and enthusiasts, not yet hipsters or retro-manufacturers.
Presumably that’s because you need a massive transmitter, as well as your Grandad’s old Roberts or Philco, but can it be long before old transmitters are revived like denim looms, vinyl plants and letterpresses were?
Grimeton Radio Station in southern Sweden is an early longwave transatlantic telegraphy station. It’s been preserved as a world heritage historical site, and is still functional. Once a year, it fires up and transmits brief test transmissions, which can be received all over Europe. A campaign to similarly preserve the huge masts of the Droitwich Transmitting Station, used to broadcast the BBC, has already begun. (RD)
So beautiful! A fascinating read.