Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

https://www.economist.com/britain/2026/06/25/the-bbc-switches-off-its-oldest-service

by edward • 27 days ago

182 165 27 days ago

economist.com

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74yn7v7k4qo

ChrisArchitect• 27 days ago

https://archive.ph/pNwm9

_whiteCaps_• 26 days ago

Seems like everyone's shutting down radio services. CHU and Weather radio in Canada too :(

mschuster913• 26 days ago

These transmitters consume insane amounts of power. Per Wikipedia, that's 500 kW of rated transmission power for this one [1], so probably a solid megawatt of grid power input.

At 30 ct/kWh, that's 300€ per hour, 7200€ per day and about 2.6 million € a year - for a customer base that is only decreasing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droitwich_Transmitting_Station

reaperducer2• 26 days ago

Is that emitted power, consumed power, or effective radiated power? Without knowing that, your power calculations have no meaning.

Radio stations are usually measured by the last of those: Effective radiated power.

You can have a radio station with a 50,000 watt ERP, but running only a 2,500 watt transmitter.

For FM radio stations, it's all about the height of the transmitter above average terrain. For AM, it's about the ground conductivity and frequency.

I once worked at a 1,000-watt AM station that had a signal much larger and clearer signal than the 5,000-watt AM station a few miles away.

I'm not a radio engineer, but I'm sure there are plenty on HN who can correct and clarify what I've written.

yakkers5• 26 days ago

Doesn't excuse CHU: two 3kW, one 5kW ERP.

And by the virtue of shortwave propagation, it could be heard across the world. For the past month and a half (from when the news of its impending shutdown was revealed) I was regularly picking it up in Australia right up until the bitter end.

PunchyHamster• 25 days ago

You'd have to calculate it by watt per area covered; FM ones are of lower power but you just need more of them coz they have lower range.

Marsymars2• 24 days ago

The parent comment was partially about Canada's VHF Weatheradio service - that was comparatively much lower power - the average station power was somewhere around 200 watts ERP.

jmclnx• 26 days ago

That is too bad, you would think these could be kept active for historical purposes. But seems these services are all being turned off even though I heard a few were very useful in this day and age.

cjs_ac• 26 days ago

IIRC, their operation relies on enormous vacuum tubes that the BBC can’t get replacements for any more.

RachelF• 26 days ago

In some way it is short-sited, as radio is a good backup medium for global communications in case the entire Internet ever goes down.

Vacuum tubes also aren't vulnerable to nuclear weapon electro-magnetic pulses.

However, other than ham radio enthusiasts I guess no one listens to analogue radio anymore.

gerdesj• 26 days ago

We do spend out quite a lot here in the UK for the BBC. They could easily dump a couple of expensive presenters and use the savings for vacuum tubes, if that is what is needed.

No idea where vacuum tubes were invented but I'm sure the BBC could find someone to make them.

jstanley3• 26 days ago

It's hard to believe that civilisation has lost the ability to build longwave radio transmitters.

rgblambda2• 25 days ago

It's actually a private company that operates the transmitters. The BBC have been paying for access until now.

nickcw• 26 days ago

The Droitwich transmitter used to transmit on exactly 200 kHz which I always thought was very cool, but it moved to 198 kHz in 1988 to better harmonize with European stations.

The program was mostly the same as BBC Radio 4 but it used to diverge at certain times of day. I used to be woken up at 5am every day by my parents clock radio with the farming news which was very dull, but easy to sleep through.

reaperducer2• 26 days ago

It was my father's morning alarm, too. But he was a couple of thousand miles away in New York state.

That, and Atlantic 252 (I believe now long gone) were what he woke up to every morning.

gavinward• 26 days ago

Despite the name I would not have guessed you could pick up Atlantic 252 in the US. The quality of it wasn't great for listening to music.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_252

"Although the transmitter was in Ireland, the signal's reach meant that it was often looked upon as a "UK national station". Reception reports were received from such locations as Berlin, Finland, Ibiza and Moscow."

mark-r• 26 days ago

Thanks for mentioning the actual frequency. The article says "long wave" many times without specifying what it actually means.

LeoPanthera2• 26 days ago

"Longwave", usually written without a space, is an informal and not well-defined term for radio frequencies lower than the AM broadcast band, which in Europe is known as "medium wave".

In the USA there have never been commercial longwave stations, though various WWV time signals are broadcast in that band.

davidferguson• 26 days ago

Online stream for those without a LW AM receiver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugd8G5w-Sfo

binaryturtle• 26 days ago

As long we still have DCF77…

goodthenandnow• 26 days ago

That station is said to be one of the signals used by the UK’s nuclear subs to assess the state of the country in a war scenario.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort#:~:text...

2b3a51• 26 days ago

Suspect it is the Anthorn station these days.

jon-wood• 26 days ago

Imagine if the end of humanity is caused by everybody assuming somebody else told the captains about this.

MonkZ• 26 days ago

I hope they update their protocols

dotwaffle8• 25 days ago

I hope you mean updated... Otherwise we're about to find out what's in the letter of last resort they have onboard! ;)

leoc• 26 days ago

Radio Society of Great Britain reaction: https://rsgb.org/main/radio-sport/rsgb-contest-club/bbc-long...

Rather defensive press release thing from the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/articles/2026/radio-4-broadc...

downrightmike• 26 days ago

I wonder how many of the Van Allen radiation belts is held up by this

UncleOxidant• 26 days ago

List of longwave radio broadcasters - including those that have shut down. The shutdown list is much longer than those remaining (only 7 remaining).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longwave_radio_broadca...

bilegeek2• 26 days ago

IMO, when the last LW transmitter shuts down, the whole band needs to be reallocated to hams. Realistic small-ish antennas are shockingly doable with a capacitance hat, loading coil, and counterpoise.

yakkers5• 26 days ago

There’s still a lot of utility stations in the LF/longwave band. Particularly time signals (WWVB in the US, ALS162 in France, DCF77 in Germany, JJY in Japan, etc.) and NDB beacons.

At least in VK/Australia, there’s the 2200 meter band, but it’s quite limited (1W power limit, CW/digital only, 135.7–137.8 kHz).

At the same time, as much as I don’t want the AM broadcast band to die, I’d love an amateur band in the lower/middle part of MF/MW.

bilegeek2• 26 days ago

There’s still a lot of utility stations in the LF/longwave band. Particularly time signals (WWVB in the US, ALS162 in France, DCF77 in Germany, JJY in Japan, etc.)

I meant just the broadcast band 148.5-283.5 kHz. (Though I'd love if 2200m and 630m were just a bit wider.)

and NDB beacons.

Good point[1]. So 148.5-200 kHz in ITU Region 2 (and keep LowFER allowances on 160-190kHz as a consolation prize.)

[1]https://www.dxinfocentre.com/ndb.htm

ErroneousBosh6• 26 days ago

In the UK we have 2200m but it's 1W *ERP*, so you're probably running a good couple of kW to get there with any practicable aerial.

We've also got a chunk just off the bottom of MW around 475kHz, which ought to be good for long-range night-time communications. It's licenced for CW, QRSS, and narrow-band digital modes.

pfdietz• 25 days ago

Particularly time signals

Doesn't GPS utterly replace this?

toxik• 26 days ago

I hate to rain on your parade, but a lot of interests want the low-frequency spectrum. It will absolutely never be allocated to amateur radio.

K0balt4• 25 days ago

What are they wanting to build? It’s hard to put much information on lower frequencies, afaik?

ErroneousBosh6• 25 days ago

It's not really much use for anything. What "interests" would you think are interested in it?

7402• 25 days ago

Already has been, although just small bits at present:

US 2200m band 135.7 - 137.8 kHz US 630m band 472 - 479 kHz

These became available in 2017 in US, following the agreement of the International Telecommunication Union's 2007 and 2012 conferences.

LeoPanthera2• 26 days ago

"Longwave" has no universally agreed defintion, but good news, amateur radio already has usage of 135.7 kHz to 137.8 kHz.

Building equipment that works on frequencies this low, and avoiding natural interference, can be extremely difficult.

ErroneousBosh6• 25 days ago

Building aerials that work efficiently at 136kHz is difficult (although I have a croft that's approximately long enough for a half-wave dipole in NW Scotland, close to the sea for a good groundplane).

Actually generating the signal you could do with a moderately expensive USB soundcard, directly synthesizing it with simple VST-like plugin. Mad to think about, really.

microgpt14• 26 days ago

I thought hams already had plenty of bands. Is there not one in this range?

aeonik4• 25 days ago

There is a very small slice that amateur radio gets in this band, in theory it would be nice to have a bigger slice, but honestly, building antennas for this band to transmit anything worthwhile would be pretty hard.

My 7 Mhz antenna (HF, 40m band) is 67 feet long, and goes across by whole house.

The smallest antenna you could get away with for LF would be hundreds to thousands of feet long.

You might be able to go smaller if you enjoy suffering. Though, there are some pretty creative antenna designs that defy logic.

RobotToaster• 25 days ago

Best we can do is privatisation and selling it to a party donor.

xattt• 25 days ago

LW-HFT all the wayyyyy!

- some cryptobro

wartywhoa233• 25 days ago

The witness of the conspiracy practice in me says that the opposite is more likely to happen in the world whose govenments strive to limit its ineterconnectedness and turn it into a set of isolated anclaves not unlike Orwell's Eurasia, Eastasia and Oceania.

The next logical step in that direction would be cracking down on HAM, not liberalization of it.

We'll see.

jimnotgym• 26 days ago

I'm very sad to see this go.

I was listening to DAB in the car, not so far from here last weekend, and it kept cutting out. Whereas you could get LW everywhere!

I developed a love of cricket on Test Match Special from a very young age. A tiny inexpensive radio could get it anywhere. I actually never minded the interruptions from the Shipping Forecast, the real reason they kept this service up for so long. I know there are many ways to get a forecast now, none of which is as reliable as radio 4.

Scoundreller• 26 days ago

A/The real reason was that electricity meters were built around a part of the signal being used to switch between price tiers but recently phased out.

Peanuts99• 26 days ago

Digital radio was always going to be crap, it doesn't degrade gradually as signal gets worse They should have just put all the money into a better 4G network and ran radio through that.

fredoralive3• 26 days ago

Bit of hindsight bias there, DAB was first developed in the mid 1990s, ubiquitous fast wireless IP in everyone’s pockets is at least a decade, perhaps nearer to 20 years in the future. There are quite a few transitionary technologies that we needn’t have developed had we just waited for something better to come along (but without the R&D into some of them…).

(Also doesn’t analogue FM also kinda cut off fairly abruptly?)

microgpt14• 26 days ago

One-to-one communications and broadcast communications are different. Perhaps every 4G tower could broadcast the news on a special data channel, but it would be a separate system from the main 4G data channel.

cogman103• 25 days ago

it doesn't degrade gradually as signal gets worse

That has a lot more to do with the dated implementation and less to do with digital radio. There are a number of digital broadcasting techniques which can minimize and compensate for noise, including a slight delay with a signal correction and fault tolerant codecs.

DAB was implemented using the old MPEG2 audio codec. DAB+ uses the now 15 year old codec HE-AAC which isn't really designed to handle corruption. Opus handles loss a lot better (see their examples https://opus-codec.org/examples/ )

jhoechtl2• 25 days ago

They do its called 5G broadcast. No, this doesn't require point to point connections.

yakkers5• 25 days ago

At the very least, I wish Digital Radio Mondiale won out over DAB. It’s designed to use the existing long, medium and short-wave bands and can even co-exist with an AM broadcast. I imagine digital radio would work quite well with the propagation characteristics of the mediumwave (and longwave) broadcast band.

There’s also DRM+ for the VHF band, including the FM broadcast band.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Radio_Mondiale

Marsymars2• 24 days ago

I guess depends on your definition of "crap". In practice, my city has some hills, and none of the half-dozen FM stations I listen to in my car come in without static in some places in the city. Whereas the single HD Radio station has perfect reception, all the time. Plus the sound quality is noticeably better.

gorgoiler2• 26 days ago

Some things in life happen for the very last time and we never realize it. Where were you when Jim Maxwell interrupted the test match coverage, for the final time, to declare that “listeners on long wave will now hear the shipp-ing four-cairst”? :)

With apologies to Affabeck Lauder

WarOnPrivacy4• 25 days ago

when Jim Maxwell interrupted the test match coverage for the final time...

     Jim Maxwell has thrown to the shipping forecast for the last time
     -- July 31, 2023

ref: https://xcancel.com/abcsport/status/1685999353712848896

arprocter• 25 days ago

Funny you mention the cricket

In the HBO miniseries Generation Kill the marines are tuned into the beeb long wave to get news updates, and there's a cricket score read out in the first episode

https://www.reddit.com/r/generationkill/comments/6o2w2s/epis...

asdefghyk• 26 days ago

Side Note - VLF ( Very Low Frequency ) signals (3-30 kHz) propagate via surface wave or skywave, offering stable communication for submarines through saltwater.

alentred• 26 days ago

That's such a pity. Building a simple AM radio receiver was a simplest and coolest electronics project to do with kids.

You need two transistors, a ferrite coil and a small set of simpler elements. And it is so simple you can actually explain what every part of the circuit does.

And then the reward... Once built you could listen to BBC regardless of where you are in Europe. My kids just LOVED IT, no Netflix K-Drama replaces this experience. My daughter was listening to BBC on her radio every night going to sleep.

raverbashing• 26 days ago

Look at this fancy pants needing a transistor for that /s

(but yes I do miss those simpler days - but I guess the basics now is making an Arduino flash an LED)

mpweiher• 25 days ago

We did that in my physics high school class.

Then we took away components until we had virtually nothing left, a diode I think(?), and still we had some signal.

Turns out there was a transmitter on the top of the hill the school was also on.

Fun times.

HPsquared• 25 days ago

With enough power anything is possible... If you put random vegetation directly on the radio mast (NOT recommended!), it makes sound directly-

https://youtu.be/b9UO9tn4MpI

8bitsrule• 25 days ago

Hmmm, fancy indeed. With 150kW feeding a dipole at 700 feet, I imagine that a cat's-whisker [0] would have done well-enough in London...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_detector

Symbiote5• 25 days ago

Yes, I did exactly this in England 30 or so years ago. It was one of the suggestions in an electronics kit for children, the one with springs to connect the components together.

jcsager• 24 days ago

My dad helped me build a crystal set when I was about 7. I still remember listening to a serialisation of Lorna Doone on the (MW) Home Service on headphones under the bedclothes.

Sad that the LW sevice had to close but the BBC is short of cash and it won't get better either.

Symbiote5• 26 days ago

BBC Radio 4 can be streamed here, including internationally: https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/live/bbc_radio_fourfm

    mplayer 'https://a.files.bbci.co.uk/ms6/live/3441A116-B12E-4D2F-ACA8-C1984642FA4B/audio/simulcast/dash/nonuk/pc_hd_abr_v2/aks/bbc_radio_fourfm.mpd'

    vlc 'https://lsn.lv/bbcradio.m3u8?station=bbc_radio_fourfm%22&bitrate=320000%22'

(Links from https://garfnet.org.uk/cms/tables/radio-frequencies/internet... )

karambahh• 25 days ago

For other readers, please be aware that only BBC World & BBC Radio 4 can be streamed outside of the UK.

For about a year now, BBC has been aggressively geoblocking other radios.

danielabinav160• 26 days ago

LW is still a fallback when internet and mobile go down simultaneously. Quietly important.

mybrowsercache2• 26 days ago

Listened to this in Denmark in the car just yesterday. It usually sounded awful but was the only English language news source in the car, so I’m going to miss it. Since the BBC sold the transmitters and rented them back, let’s hope we don’t get US-style right wing talk radio as a replacement.

At the moment they are running a goodbye loop, so you can still hear something.

At least there’s Radio Caroline still on 648kHz AM, so there will be a British voice still on the air.

ransom1538• 26 days ago

Why would humans need to communicate on channels bots cannot control?

microgpt14• 26 days ago

Why do you think bots don't control the mass media, of which longwave is just one outlet? Go to the website of any outlet that has longwave, read the AI nonsense there, realize they're transmitting the same on longwave.

plantain• 26 days ago

No more foxhole radios for the PoW https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxhole_radio

nenadg• 25 days ago

They can pry long wave radio from my cold dead hands

sidderl2• 25 days ago

http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901

One can listen to the live closure broadcast via this WebSDR website, by tuning it to AM 198 kHz.

"You are listening to 198 kHz longwave. BBC Radio 4 is no longer available on this frequency. However, you can find Radio 4 many other ways. You can find BBC Radio 4 online, via BBC Sounds. Radio 4 is available on DAB digital radio and through your digital television, including freely. Radio 4 is also available via FM radio, on 92 to 95 MHz and 103 to 105 MHz. Plus, you can listen via your smart speaker: just say 'play Radio 4'. Information on how to listen can be found on the BBC website, at bbc.co.uk/reception."

KaiserPro2• 25 days ago

There is precisely one thing that keeps 198LW online: economy seven.

I think the reason why its been left on so long is that it took so long to migrate to digital meters https://tradehelp.gdhv.co.uk/support/solutions/articles/7900...

I am also annoyed that I missed the last signal.

sidderl2• 25 days ago

Not quite the same as hearing it live, but the final programme transmission has been recorded here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlflWWZpb30

icosian• 25 days ago

I'm sad to hear the service has gone off the air. I was a constant listener to BBC Radio 4 on 198 kHz growing up in Dublin. It was a valuable window onto the world.

Listening to the last transmission there, I note that the continuity announcer, (the Irish) Al Ryan, signed off with 'oíche mhaith', i.e. 'goodnight' in Irish. A nice nod, I think, to all the former LW listeners in Ireland.

Symbiote5• 25 days ago

The last signal will be on 30 June. It's (apparently) broadcasting a loop listing alternative ways to listen to Radio 4 now.

jonplackett• 25 days ago

It’s funny that at just the phrase ‘Long Wave’ my mind jumps back the “long wave radio Atlantic 252”.

I miss the days of jingles.

FerretFred• 25 days ago

That's a real shame given the distance LW could travel: I wonder what they're going to use the frequency band for? I've tried using DAB on so many occasions and thrown it out in disgust.

Given these factors, investing in upgrading the LW equipment is not considered a cost-effective solution for licence fee-funded services

And that's another problem - maybe the Government should step in and set up a proper Civil Defence-style warning/information system - we may well need it in a few years - it's a shame our official National Broadcaster can't fulfill the role.

petilon• 25 days ago

Terrestrial television will surely follow

I hope not. I am saving $80 per month by recording over-the-air TV using Tivo. I only want the major networks, and recording them over the air is free. Tivo DVR is great for OTA and their service is still active but sadly they have stopped selling their DVR.

amiga386• 25 days ago

That's the end of the world, then. The British nuclear deterrent will launch when Radio 4 on long wave stops.

https://www.forcesnews.com/services/navy/nuclear-promise-let...

The process by which a Trident submarine commander would determine if the British government continues to function includes, among other checks, establishing whether BBC Radio 4 continues broadcasting [on long wave]
Submarines on patrol were reported to have briefly gone on nuclear alert in 2004 when Radio 4 went off the air for 15 minutes due to a power cut.

WarOnPrivacy4• 25 days ago

     Droitwich uses two metre-high ceramic and metal valves, 
     which are no longer made.

said valves: https://www.radiorewind.co.uk/images/1983027.jpg https://www.radiorewind.co.uk/images/1983023.jpg

from: https://www.radiorewind.co.uk/radio1/droitwich.htm

https://i0.wp.com/www.richardmudhar.com/blog/wp-content/uplo...

eichin• 25 days ago

"valves" being british for vacuum tubes (though there's an entire generation of scifi where future computers are built around miniaturized valves even among american authors for some reason, Asimov in particular)

WarOnPrivacy4• 25 days ago

BBC Radio 4 is moved to the inactive chart of the Longwave Broadcaster List (153kHz-279kHz)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longwave_radio_broadca...

Seven stations remain; they're in Algeria, Mongolia (x3), Morocco, Poland, Romania.

Apparently, public longwave radio broadcasters were never a thing in the Western Hemisphere. Too bad.

Saydin• 25 days ago

There's something beautifully democratic about Long Wave that we're losing. No subscription, no data plan, no app updates—just a piece of wire and a germanium diode, and you're connected to the world.

The Droitwich transmitter has been a quiet workhorse for nearly a century. Those valves in the photos are practically artifacts now, but they've been doing their job reliably, day in and day out. There's a certain poetry in that—technology that just works without needing a firmware update.

I grew up listening to the Shipping Forecast on Long Wave, and there's still something magical about that litany of sea areas—"Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire..."—broadcasting to fishermen, sailors, and insomniacs alike. It's the kind of public service broadcasting that feels almost alien in our targeted, algorithm-driven media landscape.

And yes, the irony that we're shutting down the same technology that would be our last link to civilization in a nuclear scenario isn't lost on me. Progress, I suppose.

But I'll miss the hum.

librasteve• 25 days ago

goodbye old friend

Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

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