The Long Wave Goodbye

It is now just over a month since BBC Radio 4 stopped broadcasting on long wave. In this post I’ll be picking up on one or two pieces about what happened at the end of June.

Firstly I want to thank all those folk that commented on my social media posts about this news, I don’t think I’ve had some an overwhelming response for some years. It amply demonstrated that there’s a sense of nostalgia not only about what we listen to but about how we listen. It was also clear that some people still listened on long wave, both at home and abroad. In the case of UK listeners it was usually because of the patchy FM or internet coverage and in some cases just because they preferred the rich sound of long wave.

As to the last Radio 4 long wave closedown, that fell to continuity announcer Al Ryan to give it a lovely send-off just before 0100 BST on Saturday 27 June 2026. Al marked “the end of an era”. He went on say “for almost a century the long wave transmitters have carried the BBC across the airwaves, from the iconic Droitwich transmitting station in Worcestershire to Westerglen and Burghead in Scotland. Although the long wave signal is fading into history this morning the memories and the connection it created will endure forever. We shall miss your warmth and crackle”.

I was away from home when all this happened so I’m grateful to Peter Cunningham for this recording. The looped announcement that followed, cutting off the end of the last long pip, was voiced by Ron Brown and continued until Tuesday 30 June when it was abruptly stopped mid sentence at 1203 BST. I’ve tagged that audio onto the end of this recording.       

There was some media coverage of the closure including television and radio reports by the BBC’s Media Correspondent David Sillito and features on BBC One’s Breakfast and Midlands Today which you can find online. On the Friday Malcolm Boyden was sitting in on the BBC Hereford and Worcester breakfast show and he talked about the ‘Wychbold Masts’, as the Droitwich transmitting station is also known. Here’s a report from Lindsay Alder who interview Alastair Moseley of the Bromsgrove Society. Malcolm then talks to Nick Todderhill of the Radio Society of Great Britain.

That day’s edition of PM also had a report about the end of long wave. I had been alerted to this some time before as I’d provided audio I’d recorded at the time Radio 4 switched over to long wave on 23 November 1978. In the final edit the clip of David Symonds welcoming listeners to Radio 4 UK was included. This is the extended version of Gabriel O’Regan’s report.

And finally a recording of a Jingle Time sequence from Jon Wolfert’s Rewound Radio show on 21 June 2026. Jon is the man behind JAM Creative Productions. I’d mentioned the long wave closure which gave rise to this part of the show. Jon continued to then talk about some of the international shortwave stations that are no longer on air, though I’ve not included that here.     

With thanks to Peter Cunningham