Sunday, October 16, 2011
We’ll eventually be longing for long-wave
It started with a loud bang at about 1am.
The calendar read July 1991 and I was in a heavily-overloaded coach on what passed for a main road in rural Romania with 59 volunteers and a photographer heading for an orphanage two hours drive away.
But we weren’t going anywhere. The weight of the luggage and supplies had caused a blowout of both offside rear tyres. And we only had one spare tyre and wheel…and no jack!
So we were stuck. At least until our overflow minibus could summon help.
Exhausted from a journey from Glasgow which had already taken 24 hours non-stop (one coach to Heathrow, followed by a Tarom flight to Bucharest), we resigned ourselves to the fact that we wouldn’t see beds any time soon and that the best thing to do was button up our coats and get some sleep in our seats.
Four hours later I woke as dawn came up to reveal a rural scene from Victorian England. Peasants passed our stricken bus sat atop hay carts piled 12-foot high with straw or wheat. Fields stretched off towards the horizons on all sides and a few farmhouses could be glimpsed dotted here and there. And aside from the thunder of the occasional truck rushing past us there was silence liked I hadn’t heard for years.
A 27-year-old confirmed news junkie, I had to know what was going on in the rest of the world and I knew just how I could find out. I got my portable Sony world radio out of my backpack and tuned it to the BBC World Service on short-wave.
Through the familiar ebb and flow of hiss, cracks, squeals and pops, the reassuring tones of a BBC newsreader came forth with the latest about what was happening in the rest of the world.
It felt like we weren’t so far from home after all. We might not have been able to hear the BBC on FM, but the old-fashioned, old faithful short-wave signal did the job just fine.
In fact, the interference actually added something to it. It made what you heard somehow more valuable – it had made more effort to get to you over vast distances and into otherwise inaccessible valleys, so you appreciated it more.
Much the same is true of Radio 4’s well-loved long-wave transmissions. When do we use them? When we can’t tune in to it any other way – on DAB, FM or online. So it’s so much more precious for that – quenching our thirst for the reassuring familiarity of the chimes of Big Ben at 6pm and the voice of the RP-toned newsreader when all else has failed us.
Which is why the announcement that Radio 4 long-wave transmission will end when the current transmission kit wears out is so sad.
Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not by any means a Luddite or digital refusenik. Far from it – I’ve embraced DAB with pleasure and appreciation and wouldn’t ever want to go back to the world of patchy radio coverage before it. But I know there will be occasions – perhaps when walking in a distant Highland glen or Cumbrian fell – when all the modern technology will fail and I will know that if good old long-wave had been there it wouldn’t have let me down in my search for The Archers or The World At One over my sandwiches and flask of hot tea.
The situation is made worse by the fact that Feedback pointed out that it is technically possible to keep long-wave going via the new transmission kit used in other countries. So clearly the BBC has taken the opportunity of the scarcity of replacement parts for the existing valve gear and the cost of the vast amounts of power to run it to call an end to supporting a service no longer used by mass audiences. Which you can understand given the cuts going on throughout the corporation.
But nevertheless it well be a sad day when good old long-wave isn’t there to lend a hand when all the new frequencies have failed.
That day I won’t have my Radio 4, but I will always have my long-wave memories.
Labels: radio Radio 4 long-wave
