This week, Wavescan continued their feature on longwave - thank you to the staff for sharing
Part 2 - 1500 Meters Longwave Part 2 – After World War II
Jeff: Today we continue with part 2 of our feature on the history of AM longwave broadcasting in the UK, picking up the 1500 meters story just as World War II has come to a close. Here’s Ray Robinson again in Los Angeles.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. As we stated last week, the new BBC Light Programme, as it was called, was inaugurated on July 29, 1945. The other BBC channel, the ‘Home Service’ continued on medium wave, and was primarily a ‘spoken word’ network with news, commentary, discussion programmes, documentaries, drama and comedy. Short regional opt-outs for more local news were programmed in some areas. The Home Service very much continued the tradition and vision set by Lord Reith before the war of providing serious, thoughtful and non-frivolous content intended to educate and inspire listeners to a higher level of culture. One of the comedies that ran on the Home Service, though, was ‘It’s That Man Again’, commonly referred to by its initials as ITMA. In the late 1930’s, one of the London daily newspapers, the Daily Express, had used the expression ‘It’s That Man Again’ anytime Adolph Hitler had been in the news, so the show decided to use the phrase to try to make light of the situation. The first pilot episodes were in 1939 and it continued weekly until its star Tommy Handley’s untimely death in 1949. Interestingly, the initial setting for the show was on board a pirate commercial radio ship from which Tommy broadcast, and one of the regular features was Radio Fakenburg, a send up of Radio Luxembourg. But I digress.
The ‘Light Programme’ was given a different ethos to the ‘Home Service’. The Light was a truly national station broadcasting primarily on 1500 metres, 200 kHz with the 150 kW 5XX transmitter, and also on a few medium wave transmitters on 247 metres, 1214 kHz. The Copenhagen Plan of 1948 permitted an increase of power, so a previous wartime 400 kW medium wave transmitter at Droitwich was converted to longwave, and this went into service on March 15, 1950 when the Copenhagen Plan came into effect.
Here’s a clip of the station opening up for the day at 6:30am in 1950:
< Audio Clip - 1950 00 00 - BBC Light Pgm 0630 Start of Day (29 secs) >
The Light Programme’s content was primarily music-oriented, although it also carried most of the BBC’s early comedy shows, such as:
• Much Binding in the Marsh, which ran from 1947-1950,
• Take it from Here, from 1948-1960
• Up the Pole, also in 1948,
• ‘Ray’s a Laugh’ in 1949,
• Variety Bandbox in 1950,
• Educating Archie (with Archie Andrews and Tony Hancock), which ran from 1950-1957,
• Life with the Lyons from 1950-1961
• the much-loved Goon Show from 1952 to 1960
• Hancock’s Half-Hour from 1954-1959, and
• The Floggits in 1956, with Doris and Elsie Waters
These shows were designed to appeal to ‘the common man’, and in the climate of post-war austerity (remember food rationing with coupons continued in the UK until July 1954!), it was designed to lift morale in the sense of ‘we’re all in this together’. The comedy shows often poked fun at the British themselves.
Interestingly, ‘Much Binding in the Marsh’ was actually picked up by Radio Luxembourg in 1951 for a fifth series after it had been cancelled by the BBC, although it did return to the BBC for series seven, two years later.
But, the main diet on the Light was music, and this presented a special challenge for the BBC. As far back as the 1920’s, the British musicians' union had negotiated an agreement with the BBC which restricted the amount of commercially recorded music that could be transmitted during any 24 hour period. This was known as ‘needletime’, and in the 1950’s amounted to only about 4 hours per day, or less than 30 hours per week. This was increased to 5 hours per day in the 1960’s, but it continued to affect both BBC and independent stations in the UK right up until 1988.
To get around this, the BBC formed a number of in-house orchestras such as the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Northern Dance Orchestra which they could record themselves playing instrumental versions of the hits of the day. Also in the BBC studios, they recorded cover versions of popular songs by groups such as Shane Fenton and the Fentones.
Some of the iconic weekday programmes were Housewives’ Choice at 9am
To hear the audio clips, go to the Wavescan podcast page
Audio Clip – Housewives’ Choice theme
Music While You Work at 10:30am
Audio Clip – Music While You Work theme
Audio Clip – Listen with Mother
Listen with Mother, at 1:45pm, which was a 15-minute programme where a story would be read. It would always begin with a xylophone tune followed by “Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin.”
Yes! Just like that. I remember in the mid-50’s before I first went to school, settling down with my mother in front of the wireless after lunch, turning it on a few minutes early to allow time for the valves to warm up, and hearing the sound slowly fade in. We rarely missed it. And then there was the magazine programme ‘Womens’ Hour’ from 2-3pm, and more ‘Music While You Work’ at 3:45pm.
Pop stars of the day were invited to come to the BBC studios on Saturday mornings for ‘Saturday Club’, where they were interviewed and then played live performances of their songs. A few programmes were allowed to play the original hits of the day, such as ‘Two-Way Family Favourites’ on Sunday mornings, Jack Jackson’s Record Roundabout, and ‘Pick of the Pops’ which started in 1955 on Friday nights and later moved to Sunday afternoons.
But by the early 1960’s, the vibrancy of the pop music scene and the fact that there was very little of it on the Light Programme was one of the direct causes of the explosion in British offshore broadcasting that began in 1964.
In September 1967, the BBC restructured its
services, and the Light Programme on 1500 metres became BBC Radio 2, which
really was just a change in name only.
And so it continued on 200 kilohertz, 1,500 metres, until November 23,
1978 when a new frequency plan for Europe (the ‘Geneva Plan’) came into
effect. At that time, the former ‘Home
Service, now BBC Radio 4, took over the longwave frequency, and Radio 2 moved
to medium wave instead.
As previously, the Droitwich longwave
transmitter continued to give good national coverage for Radio 4, except it was
found that in Scotland there were some significant coverage gaps due to the
topology, and the fact that Radio 2 had previously had some medium wave
transmitters for fill-in purposes. If
you’re not familiar with Scottish geography, there are basically three main
areas – the Highlands in the north, the Southern Uplands, and a central valley
between the two which runs from Glasgow in the west to Edinburgh in the
east. And it’s in the central valley
where most of the population lives.
Because the Radio 4 longwave signal from Droitwich was effectively being
blocked by the Southern Uplands, it was decided to add a second longwave
transmitter at a place called Westerglen, midway between Glasgow and Edinburgh,
and a third on the northeast coast at Burghead for coverage of the
Highlands. Both of these operated on the
same 200 kHz frequency with a power of 50 kW each, and went into service in
1982.
In 1985, two new 250 kW longwave transmitters
manufactured by the Marconi Company were installed at Droitwich, and these were
used in parallel to generate 500 kW output power. And these are the same transmitters that are
still in use today. On February 1, 1988,
the operating frequency was adjusted from 200 kHz to 198 kHz (1515 metres) –
the last remaining requirement of the Geneva Plan.
In 2011, as a result of budget cuts, the BBC
announced that there would be no re-investment in longwave transmissions. The same year, The Guardian newspaper
reported that the Droitwich longwave transmitters each rely upon a pair of
glass valves (or tubes) for their final power amplification stage, of which at
that stage they reported there were less than 10 left in the world. The BBC stated it was unsafe to manufacture
more, because "slightly faulty" replacements could cause catastrophic
failure. And so, it was finally
announced that BBC Radio 4 will end its longwave broadcasts from Droitwich,
Westerglen and Burghead on September 26 this year, 2026, and then remaining on FM
and digital only. 1515 meters, 198 kHz
will then be silent forever.
Back to you, Jeff.
For schedule information of BBC Radio 4, covering news/talk format of BBC Radio 4
on 198 LW, FM, DAB and streaming, go to: https://www.bbc.com/audio/schedules/bbc_radio_fourfm
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