“Effective 15th April, Radio 4 will no longer be available on medium-wave. Medium-wave listeners will need to retune their radio to alternative platforms.”
With these two terse sentences at the bottom of a related announcement, the BBC signaled the end of BBC Radio 4’s service on medium-wave, called AM in the United States and Canada. The service will still be available on FM, DAB, digital TV and online.
The frequencies were only being used to support its longwave service, which has been scheduled for closing this month since May of last year.
“MW transmission of Radio 4 is ending as there will no longer be a longwave variant of Radio 4’s schedule,” said BBC spokesperson Laura Zetterberg in an email to RW.
“There’s no Radio 4 service on MW, it has always been there to support LW. There are only nine transmitters in total providing very little coverage, and affected listeners will have access to Radio 4 on FM even if they don’t have a digital radio.”
(Radio World noticed that the online post had been pre-dated April 1 so we wondered at first if this might be a premature April Fool’s message like the famous 1957 Panorama TV broadcast that purportedly showed spaghetti being harvested off trees in southern Switzerland. “The last two weeks of March are an anxious time for the spaghetti farmer,” solemnly intoned Panorama announcer Richard Dimbleby. “There’s always the chance of a late frost, which while not entirely ruining the crop, generally impairs the flavor and makes it difficult for him to obtain top prices in world markets.”)
