Radio Luxembourg: Encyclopedia II - Radio Luxembourg - History

Radio Luxembourg - History

Luxembourg was special, because while radio stations all over Europe were exclusively government-owned and operated well into the 1980s, Radio Luxembourg was right from the beginning privately owned. A radio amateur (Ham) managed to get a licence in 1924 and used the license to broadcast military music, too. French businessmen bought the license from the radio amateur in May 1929 and managed to get a broadcasting monopoly in Luxembourg in November 1929. In May 1931 the Compagnie Luxembourgeoise de Radiodiffusion was founded, which started to build the transmitters. Transmissions in French and English started in 1933.

The station was closed three weeks after the beginning of World War II, because the grand duchy of Luxembourg wanted to keep neutral. However, Luxembourg was occupied by Nazi-Germany, and the station became part of the Großdeutscher Rundfunk. The usual propaganda was broadcast, e.g. fabricated news stories delivered by William Joyce ('Lord Haw-Haw').

Luxembourg was occupied by American troops in September 1944. It was then used as Radio 1212, a black propaganda station aimed at undermining German morale. Between April to November 1945 the station transmitted the programming of the Voice of America. Radio Luxembourg produced and transmitted its own programming during this time, too. But not under the name "Radio Luxembourg", but as a "United Nations Station".

The station reached its peak in the 1950s after it switched its wavelength to 208 metres (1439 kHz, later 1440) the number with which it became synonymous, in 1951 (""2-0-8 Power Play"). Propagation conditions meant that this frequency could be well received in Germany during daytime and could only be heard at night in the UK, so the English service began broadcasting at 7:00 PM. The German service was launched in 1957 with a one hour experimental program at 2:00PM, later expanded to a full daytime program. The UK commercials aimed at Ovaltineys and Horace Batchelor's 'Infra-Draw Method' for winning money on football pools (little more than a scam) were particularly popular and successful. Radio Luxembourg also launched the careers of many UK presenters including Jimmy Savile, Hughie Greene and Pete Murray, Luxembourgish presenters like Desirée Nosbusch and German presenters like Thomas Gottschalk, Frank Elstner, Anke Engelke. Its cultural influence in the UK was immense and it is rightly regarded as one of the main forces for the popularisation of rock'n'roll in Britain; those who equate popular culture with politics argue that this is ironic for a station based in mainland Europe.

In the 1960s the station had to compete against the pirate radio stations located closer to the UK on ships or abandoned World War II sea forts, and was disadvantaged by its inability to broadcast by day. The tendency of its signal to keep fading in and out also put many listeners off. In the 1970s its audience continued to decline as BBC Radio 1, Capital Radio and other local radio stations competed for its audiences. At one point it became an all disco station. The station's 50th anniversary in 1983 was a rather low-key affair in the UK.

In 1989 the station began broadcasting in stereo via the Astra satellite which could be received throughout Europe, and expanded its satellite service to 24 hours with daytime programmes in English but aimed at Scandinavian audiences. But the station's owners had lost interest in the English service, as well as the German service. The 208 m wavelength was unceremoniously reassigned to German language programmes of a successor station RTL RADIO, and a programming with no resemblance to the original German program. The satellite service was closed down on December 30, 1992 (one day before New Year's Eve to avoid clashing with listeners' New Year celebrations).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki