British humourist NORMAN LONG satirises
RADIO LUXEMBOURG’s attempt to break the
BBC monopoly of broadcasting in
Britain – a record cut on
30th October 1935:
Until 1933, few serious attempts to compete against the BBC for the British radio listenership had occurred, so that the commercial content of
Radio Luxembourg, just across
The Channel, took Britain completely by surprise, and shocked many members of the British establishment. I quote the history of Radio Luxembourg and its
English service – from this source:
http://www.radioluxembourg.co.uk/?page_id=2#30
“After experimental programmes, Radio Luxembourg made its first regular long wave broadcast on 15
March 1933, in
French and
German, from the
Villa Louvigny’s studios, using the most modern and powerful (200kW) transmitter in
Europe, located in Junglinster,
Luxembourg.
With its
English language service, Radio Luxembourg was far more than just a radio station. From its long-wave outset in 1933 to its its final shutdown in
1992, Radio Luxembourg was not only the biggest commercial radio station in Europe, it had a formative influence on generations of listeners. ‘
The Station of the
Stars‘, the famous ‘Two-O-Eight‘, was the expression of freedom and liberty for a whole generation in
Western as well as
Eastern Europe, and therefore had a major impact on society, especially in the
1950s and
1960s.
On Sunday
3 December, 1933, English programmes were simultaneously broadcast from
Radio Paris and Radio Luxembourg, and finally transferred permanently to Luxembourg the following Sunday.
The international and multilingual programme of Radio Luxembourg was a huge success in
Germany,
Great Britain,
France and
Belgium, and astonished
CLR’s competitors.
Concerns were raised especially by the BBC and the
British Post Office concerning the power of the transmitter that enabled Radio Luxembourg to be broadcast throughout Britain, undermining the
BBC’s monopoly. The British authorities also protested vehemently against the wavelength (1250 metres) chosen by the Radio Luxembourg management and which had been denied to the
Grand Duchy at the
European Broadcasting Conference in
Lucerne, claiming it would interfere with British aircraft wireless services.
The BBC tried to persuade leading
British newspapers not to publish the Radio Luxembourg schedules.
In
February, 1934, Radio Luxembourg switched to a new wavelength of 1304 metres (230 kHz), which had been allocated to
Warsaw by the Lucerne
Wavelength Plan. This was regarded as illegal by the
International Broadcasting
Union who had however no coercive power. English programmes from Luxembourg enjoyed growing popularity among British listeners, especially as the Sunday broadcasts on the BBC were rather austere in accordance with the Sunday Observance restrictions, whereas Radio Luxembourg broadcast jazz and light music.
Christopher Stone joined the commercial station Radio Luxembourg in September. This sensational move was considered an act of lèse-majesté by the prim BBC, who consequently blacklisted him as well as other
British artists who worked with Radio Luxembourg.”
With this attempt to break the heavy-handed monopoly of BBC broadcasting in
Britain, Radio Luxembourg attracted the attention of the brilliant and equally irreverent humorist
Norman Long.
Long authored this extraordinary recorded satire of the station in
October 1935.
The station effectively introduced commercial broadcasting to Britain, by the expedient of placing a very high powered long-wave station in an adjacent country, blanketing Britain with a powerful signal and popular programming, as well as attracting prominent British broadcasters and personalities to join its ranks.
This remastering from a rare 86-year-old
Australian pressing in my own collection is another example of frequency response equalisation by audio waterfall graph analysis. The musical extracts are so short as to be within the definitions of "fair dealing" within the copyright act, and the record is beyond the statutory limit of duration of mechanical copyrights (75 years).
- published: 31 Jan 2016
- views: 37