The future of RTE Radio 1 LW

Mickey Mike

From 1990 to the present day a total of 80ish long wave radio stations have closed, from what I counted there is about 13 radio stations still on.

Tork

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120510330#Comment_120510330

I saw a thread on Twitter a while ago that sort of touched on this. Someone (in England) went to visit a relative in their 70s who was in a nursing home and noticed that they were playing Vera Lynn and really old music like that. When in fact the people who are now going into nursing homes were young in the 1960s and were bopping along to The Beatles and the Rolling Stones and all those other acts who were around at the time.

Back in 2014 when RTE first announced the closure of 252, some people posting on the story on the likes of journal.ie would post "Bring back Medium wave" this time around, you had such people posting "Bring back DAB"

letovo3275

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120528673#Comment_120528673

there's a huge nostalgia for obsolete radio technologies.

rathfarnhamlad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120530148#Comment_120530148

And radio technologies which never got off the ground in the first place. I'm looking in your direction, DRM fans (or one person?)

Hotblack Desiato

The cost should be attributed equally per fan.

If some had had their way 405 would still be a thing.

Antenna

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120668680#Comment_120668680

What was on 405 ?

Was it the original (pirate) 1980s Radio Nova?

I don't remember but its well documented online they had a spell on 738kHz on MW/AM, which translates to approximately 405 metres on vintage radio dials

The Cush

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120669815#Comment_120669815

405 line TV I assume 😲

TAFKAlawhec

And another LW TX is about to be switched off for good by the end of this year. This one being the part-time 243 kHz Danish outlet.

Another good old LW transmitter bites the dust.

It is with a heavy heart I breake the news that Kalundborg 243 kHz will be closing down at the end of 2023, on December 31st.

It has been in use since August 29th, 1927.

These days the transmitter is on air four times a day with navigational warnings, weather forecasts, news and a few other things.

https://mediumwave.info/2023/06/02/denmark-52/

rathfarnhamlad

I too heard that the Danish Tx is going off the air. To be honest I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did.

I don't know about yourselves but I for one wouldn't even think or travelling with, or arranging for goods to be transported via, any shipping company who relied on LW for maritime weather reports...

dxhound2005

A massive amount of maritime communications is via radio, including on low frequencies. Tried and tested technology. Navtex on 490 and 518 kHz, and the German weather service on 147.3. Also aeronautical communications, including morse code airport beacons between the LW and MW bands.

If you want to see Navtex e.g. from Malin or Valentia, use the Navtex/DSC extension on the drop down menu on one of the online receivers. You will be able to read the navigational and weather information being sent out at the scheduled times. Use the FSK extension for 147.3, sometimes in English. And you can tune to the beacons using the USB or CW modes. I hope that makes you feel safe.

http://rx.linkfanel.net/snr.html

https://www.dxinfocentre.com/navtex.htm

https://www.dxinfocentre.com/maritimesafetyinfo.htm

https://ourairports.com/navaids/OE/Dublin_NDB_IE/closest.html

rathfarnhamlad

Thanks @dxhound2003 I'm well aware of those technologies. What I meant to say in my previous post was that I wouldn't go near any shipping company that relied on LW broadcast stations to receive weather reports (not that I'd imagine there are any, at least I hope not!), as opposed to using the other methods you have outlined. Maybe I should have clarified that a bit further. Apologies!

On the NDB side of things, I used to (many years ago) have an old USSR-era transistor radio where the LW band went up to just below the start of the MW band. I could hear plenty of NDBs on it, although there were stations marked on the dial well above where the meters equivalent of 279 kHz was (can't remember what they were called, it was so long ago).

rathfarnhamlad

Is Channel 3 from Algeria on 252 off the air again? I'm not picking it up on my Philips receiver. None of the SDRs I have tried so far seem to be showing up anything...

rathfarnhamlad

Okay, it seems to be back on now. This of course has happened before...

RetroEncabulator

I just googled them and seems they're banned / suspended on Twitter for some reason. I was looking at the line up and it seems like quite a sensible station.

rathfarnhamlad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120688625#Comment_120688625

That is both interesting and surprising. Do you have a link to an article or anything like that? I don't understand much of what's said on the station as my French is pretty limited but I find their music programming to be quite good.

RetroEncabulator

Twitter can be a bit weird at the moment (to put it mildly).

I speak fluent French, but I don't know much about Radio Algerie / ENRS (Entreprise nationale de radiodiffusion sonore).

I can't say I've ever listened to it, but looking at the French speaking line up, it doesn't look much different to many PSB style radio broadcasters https://my.radioalgerie.dz/fr/chaine3

They're obviously using LW to reach the large Algerian population in France, but I would suspect streaming technologies have probably rendered it increasingly redundant too.

I'd say finding a new LW/GO (Grandes Ondes) radio in France would be a bit of a trawl of Amazon these days. Their range of consumer electronics would be identical to what we have and LW is extremely niche.

DAB+ deployment in France was quite late. They picked the BetaMax of digital radio, T-DMB and the rollout was a mishmash of tests and pilots and FM has remained very dominant. Only 13% of households apparently listen to digital radio.

Even though due to the sheer scale of France they've a lot of DAB+ services, I strongly suspect, much like in Ireland, they've missed the boat. It's all gone streaming now and there's a huge inertia around FM.

dxhound2005

France is a small place compared to Algeria. The Long Wave service could be completely domestic, but I don't know. Listeners in France could probably get more reliable reception during the day on Short Wave. They use some Medium Wave frequencies for their international service. But it is only short segments in English and Spanish.

https://fmscan.org/net.php?r=m&m=s&itu=ALG&pxf=Radio+Alg%E9rie+Internationale

http://bdxc.org.uk/africa.pdf

"France is approximately 551,500 sq km, while Algeria is approximately 2,381,740 sq km, making Algeria 332% larger than France."

RetroEncabulator

True, but there’s also an audience of potentially 2 million+ Algerians in France, and the channel broadcasts primarily in French.

Before ubiquitous broadband, it was likely a very simple way of reaching that community.

I realise it has a big reach domestically too but it serves a huge community in parts of Europe and the Mediterranean

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alger_Cha%C3%AEne_3

it’s got national FM coverage in Algeria and is also on 1422 kHz MW.

TAFKAlawhec

Algeria's population density is hugely skewed towards the northern quarter of the country on the Mediterranean sea (it's well over 90% IIRC), with the closer you get to the shore the higher this density becomes with very few living in the other three quarters, being mostly desert - this being compared to France whose population density is more spread out & even it's more "remote" regions being more densely populated than the southern 3/4 of Algeria.

The Tipaz LW TX site is located just outside the town of its namesake, approx. 3km from the Mediterranean, roughly central to Algeria's northern coastline and not far away either from the capital Algers, certainly it could be considered an ideal site for covering most of Algeria's population quite well with the bonus of the sea conductivity of a comparably saline Mediterranean helping groundwave coverage gain northwards - I'd assume coverage along the southern French coast is excellent & gradually weakening but still usable as you go northwards, it would depend how the signal goes over the Pyrenees, western Alps & other rugged terrain in southern central France by the time it reaches the likes of Paris, Strasbourg, Nates etc.

The question I guess in 2023, like with all other LW TX sites, is just how many active listeners are there now listening to Chaine 3 on 252 kHz and wherever it is affordable to keep them going? I'd imagine the majority of Algerian immigrants to France are listening to their homeland stations via internet or satellite (via Hot Bird on 13E) in preference to a LW signal that in many urban areas is subject to QRM even with RTÉ vacating 252 themselves. Not to mention, as @RetroEncabulator mentions, new analogue radios with LW on them these days are hard to find (and those that are available, mostly from Chinese manufacturers, are quite deaf on the band).

rathfarnhamlad

That was the norm in France at one point. I bought a cassette boombox in a hypermarche (Super U, I think) while visiting France in the late 1990s. The tuner had FM & LW but not medium wave. Of course this was at a time when France Inter, Europe 1, RMC Info & RTL were still using LW to fill gaps in their FM networks which at the time was less than ten years in operation & still had a fair number of gaps in coverage.

The only French-language broadcasts receivable on LW now are Medi 1 from Morocco on 171 (frequency no longer listed on their website so could be going sooner rather than later) & Channel 3 from Algeria on 252 (has a habit of going off the air for extended periods).

RetroEncabulator

The BIG driver in the past in France as probably Europe 1, which originally broadcast from Saarland in Germany basically to get around French monopoly broadcasting licences in the 1955.

Saarland has a very complicated post WWII history and was 'The Saar Protectorate' (Protectorat de la Sarre) which was effectively controlled as a quasi dependency of France until 1957, when it voted to join federal West Germany rather than the offer of becoming an independent state under the auspices of the then Western European Union.

So, a bit like the reasons for Radio Luxembourg (RTL) and Radio Monaco broadcasting in French into France, Europe No. 1 (Europe 1) did similar. It was a setup much like Atlantic 252 in the modern era, skirting a larger country's restrictive licensing laws.

Europe 1 played a pretty important role in the 1960s when it was considered a trusted source of news, unlike Radio France's output at the time which was considered to be way too close to the government.

They, along with other 'peripheral broadcasters' got allocated FM frequencies in France in a big liberalisation of broadcasting in the mid 80s. Non-public owned radio only started in France in 1981.

TAFKAlawhec

The irony concerning Europe 1, as well as Radio Monte Carlo & Sud Radio, was that the French state had significant stakes in these "Radio périphériques" stations via Sofirad (a public company owned by the French state) whom all transmitted from just outside of France, but broadcast for a French audience - the old Europe 1 transmission masts were literally just metres away from the Franco-German border. RTL & Radio Andorra were two other Radio périphériques but were never at least part owned by Sofirad (the latter was challenged instead by Sud Radio in Andorra, and Sud eventiually won out with R. Andorra closing in 1981). Europe 1, RMC & RTL broadcast on LW, giving good coverage across the majority of France, while Radio Andorra & Sud Radio were limited to MW only (701/702 kHz & 818/819 kHz respectively IIRC).

I did have a small Philips FM/LW handheld portable once, which was a bit of a novelty but I was aware that FM/LW radios with no MW radio did exist for generally French consumption for quite a few years, with France Inter on LW alongside RMC, Europe 1 & RTL and with the France Bleu network on MW (can't remember if France Culture/France III was even on MW, I'll need to dig out an old WRTH book to find out!). Also from memory I recall either Lloytron or Steppletone in the 00's selling a portable FM/LW radio aimed at cricket fans wanting to listen to TMS on 198 kHz, with an equivalent FM/MW radio aimed at soccer supporters to tune into BBC R5L or Talksport. Presumably the former was a rebadge from a radio aimed at the French market.

RetroEncabulator

French politics around media policy has always been very complex and it was more so in the mid 20th century. On the one hand you'd an extremely narrow view of wanting everything in ORTF's control, something which wasn't that unusual in that era - look at the UK, many continental countries or even here, where there was just an acceptance of pirates rather than any proper licensing regime until 1988.

It was really only in the 1980s that many European countries snapped out of that exclusively PSB model, and some of those broadcasters were a lot more independent than others. From anything I've ever read of that era, the ORTF's reputation became quite tarnished by the way it covered (or didn't cover) the 1960s student uprising and so on.

There were elements of politics and elements of the state bureaucracy that were keen to open up the French media landscape, while there were others who would have been happy to stick with a highly state owned system - so policies shifted left, centre, right and all over the place, hence I think you ended up with French semi-states investing in media companies, purely as commercial investors, seeing that there was likely a future of these 'périphériques' morphing into big domestic media outlets, which many of them ultimately did.

I think though Long Wave commercial stations were very much a European solution to a European problem - domestic monopolies and trans-frontier commercial radio (and TV)

Hotblack Desiato

The thing that really surprises me is that it took ~20 years after the acceptance of the concept of independent (semi-)local TV in the UK to get independent local radio started.

Really it should have happened in the mid-60s if not sooner, the pirates had proven the existence of the market by then and even the very staid BBC introduced Radio 1/2/3/4 in 1967.

Radio 1 was an attempt to tackle the pirates head on and of course (just like RTE Radio 2 years later) all of their best DJs had worked on pirates.

RetroEncabulator

While I agree there needs to be minimum standards and obviously you have to manage spectrum allocations, it never made a whole lot of sense that European countries have that history of EXTREMELY restrictive / non existent licensing of commercial broadcasters.

There should always have been some commercial MW / LW licences and absolutely should have been the case for FM, as it's so local and relatively easy to spectrum manage.

Certainly shouldn't have been any issue after WWII.

TAFKAlawhec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120697803#Comment_120697803

There simply wasn't the allocated bandwidth available on the MW band for a lot more services than there already was in much of Europe from the end of WWII until shortly after the end of the Cold War when MW & LW listening started to significantly decline, without causing significant night time interference (and in some cases daytime too). The 1948 Copenhagen agreement was hardly deemed satisfactory among the signatories, and the subsequent 1975 Geneva agreement basically ended in a lot of European countries wanting more frequencies for expanding services (including those that weren't in place back in 1948) that in the end it was mostly decided to let several countries fire out tens/hundreds of kilowatts on "shared" frequencies and let them sort it out amongst themselves concerning interference. Interestingly, at the 1975 conference several European countries wanted to move to an 8kHz spacing plan whereas most of Asia & Australasia (ITU Region 3) wanted to stick to a 10 kHz plan that they largely followed in lieu of similar agreements that their European counterparts had, in the end it was decided to settle on a common 9 kHz spacing on frequencies divisible by 9 on MW (and later LW),

It easy to make comparisons to the likes of the US, Canada & Australia that had plenty of mature commercial networks on the MW band themselves, but they themselves are vast countries with population centres well spaced from each other, less issues with accommodating neighbours on frequency use and thus can much more easily manage their own MW spectrum.

Of course FM was a slightly different story with less issues concerning interference beyond adjacent areas, and in some countries where MW allocations were at a premium they were quickly adopted (e.g. West Germany), but FM radios of the era were still expensive, prone to drifting, less sensitive (especially for stereo reception) and many networks were horizontally polarised and thus not designed for portable/car reception in mind. Also the Stockholm 1952 & 1961 agreements that governed FM broadcast radio only went up to 100 MHz at the time - some countries started using spectrum in the 100-108 MHz regions later on but it wasn't formally adopted in ITU regs until the 1984 agreement.

In the end, during that era from the late 40's up until around the 80's the trailing broadcasting concern in Europe on both sides of the Iron curtain was to mainly hold it at arms length, but still attached to governments as commercial or "private" broadcasting was culturally seen with suspicion either on ideological grounds or as being too down-market or low brow and something that should be avoided. A few small states took advantage of their locations to allow de-facto commercial broadcasting on MW/LW at high powers to reach audiences in neighbouring states e.g. Luxembourg, Andorra, Monaco (the Isle of Man government originally wanted to go down a similar road, but because their broadcast frequency allocations were responsibility of the UK government as a signatory to the ITU, Westminster quickly put the kibosh on any idea of such a station intentionally serving a viable audience beyond the isle itself), while the Dutch implemented a rather unique system of allocating airtime to various broadcasting groups that still exists in the Netherlands today for PSB broadcasting.

Final thing to add - when the proposal was put for commercial radio station in the UK in the wake of the offshore pirates being forced off the air, an assumption was being made by a lot of people that it would be a national network(s) that would be cheap to run - in the end it was essentially "outsourced" to the BBC for what became Radio 1, and originally had to use a restricted MW frequency network on 1214 "borrowed" from BBC Radio 2 / Light service that was essentially unusable at night for most listeners.

RetroEncabulator

I think tbh there was a lot of government owned PSB lobbying involved, particularly on the slow, slow move towards opening FM to licensed commercial broadcasting in many countries. The same applied to TV too. It's was just slow moving.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120697803#Comment_120697803

In Ireland the politicians, under the Roman Catholic Church's thumb, were determined to control access to information and minimise "outside influences".

So the only radio (and, much later, TV) was state controlled - and even then regarded with much suspicion (e.g. de Valera's Telefis Eireann opening night speech was more about the 'dangers' of TV than the benefits or opportunities.) Films, books, magazines, even at times certain British newspapers were banned if they contained anything a bishop might find objectionable. Libraries were closely policed and in one famous case the very notion of having a Protestant librarian lending books to Catholic citizens was deemed beyond the pale.

The doomed attempts at replacing English with Irish as the spoken language of the people were as much about enforcing cultural isolation on us as anything else.

If it hadn't been for overspill of UK TV/radio (and, of course, our common language) there would have been almost no sources of information or outside influence on the population at all apart from those approved by the state.

The overwhelming demand to watch BBC and ITV in Ireland, before but even after TE started, told its own story - to the extent that RTE once owned a cable TV company!

In ~1987 when Cablelink in Dublin first tentatively started to relay satellite channels, there was much talk in the papers about "filth being beamed into our homes". As if.

In 1990 teenage me finally persuaded my mam to get a VCR. She was literally convinced by the Family Sodality crowd I'd be watching pornos on it 24/7. I wanted to tape the World Cup. I never did watch any pornos on it, well, does Channel 4 red triangle count? 😉

RetroEncabulator

Yeah, there was certainly a major issues with censorship and control of broadcasting was seen as a way of achieving a lot of it.

When you look back at Ireland before the 1980s it was pretty extreme. Although, that being said, a large % of the population did have access to British programming, via overspill and through cable networks quite early on and RTE itself even invested in RTE Relays in Dublin at least and I'm not sure where else.

I wonder sometimes though if the areas that had access to non-RTE television tended to be more open minded sooner. The areas that couldn't get access to anything except RTE 1 / 2 tended to be very rural and in the West, Southwest and midlands, away from the border and the east coast or cable relay systems.

RTE also clearly saw the cash flows it could make from LW Radio Atlantic 252 in the 80s and lashed money into that project with RTL, effectively doing exactly the same thing as RTL/Radio Luxembourg.

We also had a blind eye turned to pirate radio here for a long time, but I think most of that was probably music driven and not all that controversial.