The BBC switches off its oldest service
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Britain | The long-wave goodbye
The BBC switches off its oldest service
Long-wave radio’s time is up. Terrestrial television will surely follow
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!Image 12: Broadcasting Christmas radio at the BBC, circa 1932
Which one is the off knob?Photograph: Getty Images
Jun 25th 2026|3 min read
B ERLIN, LONDON, Paris, Droitwich. In the 1930s a Midlands town of barely 5,000 people stood out on the dials of British wireless sets, which used the places from which stations were transmitted to denote their frequencies. In 1934 the BBC switched on the corporation’s most powerful radio transmitter, near Droitwich. Two 700ft-high (213-metre) steel masts, at the time the tallest structures in the country, still send “long wave” broadcasts across Britain and deep into Europe. During the second world war they transmitted nonsense messages (“The rabbit is going down his hole”) that were decoded by the French resistance. More recently they have carried baffling phrases understood only by cricket fans tuning into “Test Match Special”.
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