The long wave goodbye to Long Wave

The BBC operates an outlet of Radio 4 on 198kHz Long Wave.  In the recent cut-back announcements, mention was made of running the facility down.  No actual closure date was mentioned, just that it would run its life and then when alternatives were fully in place it would close.

I’m guessing the announcement that the outlet would be closed would have triggered the armchair moaning brigade to hop into their bath-chairs and to wave their angry sticks in the air. Not to mention the radio anorak fraternity for whom Long Wave is the ultimate radio spectrum waiting to save the world.

Indeed, in its extreme form there’s still a bunch of ‘LongWaveist’ Christians who last millennium managed to get a licence to operate a service from the Isle of Man over which they intended to show radio stations in the UK how real radio should be done.  Potential investors realising it was a bizarre pipe-dream were colder towards the project than the Dragon’s Den investors being asked for money to support a man who can produce wet farts on demand.  However, this didn’t stop the movement becoming a cult with its ageing membership constantly thinking ‘one day, one day’.

The bottom line is of course that broadcasting on Long Wave makes no sense any more in Europe.  People have access to so many other ways of receiving programming or propaganda or whatever it may be that is being broadcast at them.

Just as broadcasting on Short-wave has no purpose except in parts of Africa or Asia where a signal has to travel huge distances to get to remote areas without too much electricity, the same is true of Long Wave.   Why would any consumer in their right mind want to be tuned to this muffled band full of interference, pops and whistles? Well, mainly, of course, they aren’t.  Hence why the BBC broadcasting via Long Wave for a domestic audience has no purpose whatsoever.

So, in my view they should switch off this pointless over expensive energy guzzling transmitter right now.  The huge money saved could go into producing programming rather than cutting it.

They won’t switch it off just yet, of course.  Instead, the Long Wave transmitter will be patched and fixed and maintained and just about kept alive like an aged dying relative that nobody actually cares about.

Put it out of its misery.  Switch it off now!