James Cridland

BBC Radio 4 long-wave closes down

Droitwich on a radio dial

Above: an old radio dial, photographed by me in Turin, Italy, in 2011, with “Droitwich” highlighted.

BBC Radio 4 Long Wave 198 closed down early in the morning on 27th June, from Droitwich, Westerglen and Burghead. Here’s a decent recording on YouTube. It’s been replaced with a repeating information loop (which, curiously, says it’s available “through your digital television, including Freely”, but neglecting to mention Freeview, Freesat or Sky). It was the last of the Western European broadcasters to leave, and almost all broadcasters using LW have now vacated the band. All that remains are state-owned radio stations from Mongolia, Poland, Algeria, Morocco and Romania.

You’ll see plenty of comments about the coverage of BBC Radio 4 LW; but fewer comments about how many people actually owned a radio set capable of picking it up; I’ve yet to discover any proper research about that, or data about the number of short-wave receivers either. Certainly in my last ten years in the UK, I didn’t own anything capable of picking LW up. An emergency broadcaster is only fulfilling that purpose if it’s broadcasting to people who own the equipment to receive it.

  • If the future is internet radio (it’s not really the present), the Choyong A8W internet radio looks interesting: incredibly well specced for apparently £29 according to this YouTube review. I can’t find it at anywhere near that price; the cheapest I can find is AUD $93 (£48); and, as someone comments on the YouTube review, if Choyong disappears tomorrow, so will your internet radio service. Still, it’s wifi but also accepts a SIM card (!), and has voice-activated searches. A written review is here. It looks to have been available for over a year.

RCS

Classifieds

  • Supercharge your radio show with world-class prep: the right show prep delivered to you on time, EVERY day, without fail. Grab a £1 week-long trial of Show Prep and stop chasing round looking for things to use on your show, running out of time before the show, and trying to sight-read the newspapers!

  • This is brilliant - a random YouTuber, Chris Spargo - better known for making videos about British litter bins, whether you need to pre-heat your oven, or the number of jokes on Penguin biscuits, was asked if he wanted to cover the G7 , alongside “proper” journalists. And so he did: and it’s a fascinating look behind the scenes at the media apparatus set up to cover an event like that. Really good, and worth - gosh - 40 minutes of your time. (He’s also the last person to interview Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer; and his last question was “what is your favourite flavour of crisps”).

  • Online radio station NTS has a shop - and the NTS Atonemo Radio Player is a beautiful looking piece of kit: offering both live radio stations, and access to the ambient audio streams from the station as well. It turns out that it also acts as a Spotify Connect receiver too. £129 (!) for you; less if you’re an NTS supporter.

And… I don’t much want to write about ARN again this week; but just to note that after getting rid of the toxic Kyle Sandilands completely (albeit taking a 20% share of his new online venture and giving him $1.5mn to promote it, so - huh - not that toxic after all), ARN is once more in the spotlight for poor talent decisions.

TV presenter Karl Stefanovic, who is - I think - most famous for interviewing me twice in recent months on the Today Show on Nine, as well as wearing the same suit on TV for a year (and nobody noticed), also has a podcast. On that podcast, he recently interviewed and praised Tommy Robinson, a far-right activist and convicted criminal from the UK, who’s real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. When this episode was released, Nine Entertainment were displeased, and promptly terminated his contract.

Stefanovic was signed by ARN in a “landmark, multi-platform deal” in May, for a weekly show on GOLD, which was also streaming on 9Now. After just two shows, Stefanovic wasn’t on that radio show this week, and ARN are “weighing up his future”, according to reports. Not sure what “weighing” needs to be done.

His co-host is Eddie McGuire, who has made racist statements on a previous radio show, threatened to drown a female journalist on another, and made jokes about a double amputee on TV. It was a curious choice of ARN to knowingly sign up this kind of guy - especially after attention from pressure-group MFW, the group that has already cost ARN $26.4mn in lost advertising.

But if McGuire’s new colleague Stefanovic is giving glowing, uncritical coverage to a racist and criminal, it seems to me that whoever is making talent deals at ARN should get their deal book confiscated before they do any more damage.

Where I am speaking next

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