Astro Hacker News - Closure of Radio 4 on Long Wave (LW)

azalemeth |next [-]

I really have an odd nostalgia for longwave. I grew up listening to radio 4 lw in the middle of nowhere and it was the only station that had consistently good signal. The fact that it carried somewhere out into the Atlantic blew my mind!

I understand it's closing because some insanely high powered, insanely expensive valve or thyristor or triac or generic high power "niche" component is reaching the end of its life, but I will be sad nevertheless when this goes.

DAB doesn't work reliably with my phone charging in the same room...

fy20 |root |parent [-]

For BBC World Service the shift to digital led to a 11% drop in audience. Maybe not quite the same, as the target market is often developing countries (I live in a EU country and they are only just introducing DAB this year).

https://www.theregister.com/off-prem/2026/03/17/bbc-digital-...

froonly |next |previous [-]

If the UK was still relevant in the world, the BBC would continue to fund this.

ceuk |root |parent [-]

Utterly vapid comment. I'm not even going to bother "defending"the UK but if you like you can ask an LLM: "What do you think is the most important/relevant international city in the world?"

Anyway, on the actual material of your comment, It's got nothing to do with the BBC choosing to abandon longwave, it's because the technology is completely out of date and obsolete.

There just aren't people making the equipment/infrastructure anymore. The BBC already bought up literally the entire global supply of the valves they need back in 2011, and that was only 10 valves[1]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/oct/09/bbc-radio4-lon...

pjsg |previous [-]

How will the shipping forecast be distributed?

iberator |root |parent [-]

rtty from germany... 18khz if i recall properly. but this is ssb modulation so expensive radio is needed