RTL (Radio Luxembourg) Ends Longwave Service (234 kHz)

RTL Ends Longwave Service
On Jan. 1, the French broadcaster's 234 kHz channel went dark after 90 years (1933) on long-wave.
https://www.radioworld.com/global/rtl-ends-longwave-service

Groupe M6, which owns the station, noted that maintaining longwave broadcasts from the Beidweiler, Luxembourg, transmission site consumed about 6,000 megawatt-hours of electricity each year, roughly equal to the average annual energy consumption of 3,000 French people.

In October, Broadcasting Center Europe Marketing Manager Laurent Seve told Radio World that the 7.1-acre Beiweiler site will be full decommissioned, its towers dismantled.

 

Shut down exclusively because of its 'carbon-footprint'.

https://www.radioworld.com/global/rtl-plans-234-khz-exit-for-year-end

“Faced with the energy crisis, energy sobriety actions were necessary,” according to the station. “Energy sobriety,” or sobriété énergétique in French, is one of the four pillars France’s new energy strategy designed to reduce French energy use by 10% of 2019 levels over the next two years. Specifically, “energy sobriety” is a call to reduce energy consumption."

[comment]
That's not a good thing. And what happens if there's another World-War in Europe?
Should they all be called to rely on the internet? How long before the enemy takes that out?
Russia has promised to build its own isolated internet; non-integrable with western systems.

[...]

"RTL urged listeners to tune to the channel’s FM broadcasts or its digital streams via the Internet, apps, or smart speakers. The company also noted it has been “gradually rolling out” DAB+ service since 2020."

I'm against this tech-headed short-sightedness, across the board. Smart speakers? Haha.
Don't make me laugh. A firm & first principle of survival is; what is rock-solid, you keep.
The smart-home is for energy usage monitoring (smart-metering), and is vulnerable to exploitation. Hell, perhaps a cyber attacker could even disrupt electrical supply to cities.

Real sustainability, the one I've tried to practice all my days, suggests keeping the useful stuff.
Never listen to me though, don't break the habit of a lifetime, it might be all over soon enough. Who was it that last said: "We don't deserve to keep what we have"? Those are dangerous voices.

I'm waxing melancholy through my rosy-tint spectacles now, aren't I?
No!

 

Sad. 6,000 megawatt-hours of electricity annually sounds like a lot, but I wonder how much total power is being consumed by the alternatives that are replacing the longwave broadcasts. At one time, this transmitter radiated 2MW (yes, 2 million watts) and after several reductions in power output, last transmitted with 750KW daytime and 375KW at night. Even at the reduced power levels, it still covered all of Europe and the British Isles, as well as adjoining areas. I wonder if the 6,000 megawatt-hour figure was determined when the station ran 2MW, or when it operated with the reduced power levels.

 

They should have kept the equipment in place and broadcasted on very low power, but keep the ability to use high power if necessary.

 

Time to move on. Most of the under-40 generation doesn't listen to broadcast radio anyway. Manufacturers of car radios would be happy to delete LW (and MW, too). Europe has the same problems with a rising noise floor that we do. Maintaining old LW and MW transmitters is getting increasingly difficult and expensive; parts are drying up, and fewer station engineers each year have skills and experience to work on these things. It's a lot easier to pull and replace modules in a modern FM transmitter. Real estate developers love former LW and MW station sites.

Remember, the origin of the Internet was a network that would remain up, to the extent possible, during nuclear war. The conventional broadcast and telecom networks were considered too weak.

 

I always enjoyed the LW band. Every time we have been in Europe we would listen to it in our rental cars. There was always fun programming on it.

 

So once all the broadcasters move off this band can we get 20 Khz-400 Khz allocated to hams worldwide? No more power restrictions either, there is no one left to interfere with

 

This makes real, good sense.
Slowing / dropping reliance of the ecology damaging wind farms and farmland stealing solar plants is a good start.
Next, will the lights on the Eiffel Tower be turned off?

 

They have already reduced the time the Eiffel Tower lights are on to reduce the power usage.
All those strobe light use a lot I guess. Wonder if they will turn it back on during the up coming Olympics?

 

Bummer. I have EnJoyed getting into LW - was in MN and Now AZ I have 85 LW logged, when I could hear beacons.
Seems the LW lately is really poor - not sure how Conditions affect LW? Put up a 250 foot half square Ant. 10 to 15ft off the GND. Quiet!
My TS890 works very well when LW is good.

 

So...

After 90 years, its about time! And 90 years goes WAY back before THE BOMB. Remind me again why having to transmit at 2 MILLION WATTS or even the later 750,000 KILOWATTS at 234 KHz to cover a modest range with poor fidelity and minimal audiences is a GOOD idea? With three monumental and fragile towers that are tough enough to keep up even without the threat of missiles taking them out (you have to admit, they look like wonderful targets and GREAT homing beacons)? You don't think they'd go down in wartime? They would. In a flash. Literally.

Maybe RTL was really used to broadcast power to invisible spy balloons trailing long wires (in a Tesla-like sort of way) , until decent solar cells took its place? I know if I lived near the antenna farm I'd be wearing a tinfoil hat and putting putting up long wire antennas to collect power for my station batteries and run my home. Before my brain fried.

Heck! ("Big") direct broadcast spacecraft in GEO orbit run about 15-25 KW from (free) solar power and cover a broader range with higher bandwidth and fidelity - plus they're a bit harder to knock out. And that's just ONE of the many alternative we have today.

Getting "power sober" is RIGHT! Whoever left that facility in place, gulping down 6 GIGAWATT-HOURS per year, has been drinking a bit too much Chablis or just forgot to turn it off after closing the door, one day, back in 1960 or so.

Somehow I think there's a story behind this story that we're somehow missing - or we haven't heard it all. Hmmmm.

Brian - K6BRN

 

Nope. Faced with cutoff of low cost Russian natural gas.

 

I'm sure that you didn't mean "750,000 KILOWATTS" - that would be 750 million watts! Yikes.

I don't call all of Europe, Scandinavia, the UK, northern Africa, and surrounding areas "modest range", I call that tremendous bang for the buck, so to speak. Longwave has fantastic groundwave coverage even during the daytime. Poor fidelity? Not really, it sounds better than some of the digital broadcasts that I've heard, but it's not as good as analog FM, I agree. The lack of the LW band being included in many receivers probably has a lot to do with the declining audience.

The transmitting towers could have been destroyed during WW2, but they weren't. Nothing is a guarantee in war.

 

I worked and traveled all over Germany, Belgium & England '73 - '75. When I was out of range of AFRTN Frankfort, I was always listening to Radio Luxemburg, wherever I was. Longwave served a good purpose then. I wonder if the Russians still have their several 2 MW LW stations in service? I'm guessing probably because of the amount of territory they need to cover. And they aren't likely to get suckered with all this "green" mess.

 

Longwave radio gives great coverage for the amount of radiated power, it provides service to remote areas that don't have the population base to support their own broadcast stations or other types of local communication.