Radio Luxembourg
Radio Luxembourg's parent company, RTL Group, continued its involvement in broadcasts to a UK audience with the British TV channel then known as Five until it was sold in July 2010.
Although in theory the BBC could have sold sponsored airtime, its income instead came from selling its own brand of licensed radio receivers manufactured by its owners.
[citation needed] With no possibility of commercial broadcasting available from inside the UK, Leonard F. Plugge – a former British Royal Air Force captain and entrepreneur (and from 1935 Conservative Party member of parliament) – set up his own International Broadcasting Company, which leased time on transmitters in continental Europe and resold it as sponsored English-language programming aimed at audiences in Britain and Ireland.
[citation needed] Because Plugge successfully demonstrated that state monopolies such as that of the BBC could be broken, other parties became attracted to the idea of creating a new commercial radio station specifically for this purpose.
[citation needed] Within two years, the government of Luxembourg had reached an agreement to subsidize the station to broadcast military music concerts and plays performed in the Luxembourgish language.
[2][3] On 19 December 1930, the government of Luxembourg passed a law awarding a monopoly licence to operate a commercial radio broadcasting franchise from the Grand Duchy.
[citation needed] In February, Radio Luxembourg began broadcasting in both French and English on a new 200 kW transmitter on 230 kHz (1304 metres) in the long-wave band.
In the years from 1933 to 1939, the English-language service of Radio Luxembourg gained a large audience in the UK and other European countries, with sponsored programming aired from noon until midnight on Sundays and at various times during the rest of the week.
As the station could not use General Post Office telephone lines to broadcast from London, many English-language programmes were recorded there and flown to Luxembourg.
Because of the dearth of advertising available in English, the early morning shows on long wave quickly disappeared and made way for French-language programmes.
Thus, when in 1951 the BBC wanted Vera Lynn, one of its biggest singing stars, to perform more upbeat material than her traditional repertoire, she refused, and signed up to record 42 shows for Luxembourg instead – which, she said, also paid better.
The station sign-on time at dusk varied between summer and winter to allow maximum benefit to be gained from a skywave propagation at night that covered the British Isles, although reception was strongest in northern England.
One spot commercial that became burned into the minds of every Radio Luxembourg listener was for Horace Batchelor's "Infra-Draw Method" of winning money on football pools, turning the previously obscure Somerset town of "Keynsham, spelt K-E-Y-N-S-H-A-M" into a household name throughout the country.
This was never made clear to listeners, who were allowed to form the incorrect impression that all the presenters were broadcasting from the Grand Duchy or, alternatively, assume that all the programmes were recorded in London.
A conspiracy of silence operated throughout this period between sworn enemies Radio Luxembourg and the BBC, each of which never mentioned the existence of the other, although many famous names appeared on both, often almost simultaneously.
By about 1963, almost all the station's output was based around the playing of music on discs; the mainstream evening audience for middle-aged "family entertainment" had by this time largely migrated from radio to television.
These were some of the shows heard in December 1956, as listed in the 208 programme schedule for that month: Resident announcers in Luxembourg during this period included: The following disc-jockeys recorded shows in the London studios at 38 Hertford Street: Peter Aldersley, Sam Costa, Alan Dell, Keith Fordyce, Alan Freeman, David Gell, Tony Hall,[12] Jack Jackson, David Jacobs, Brian Matthew, Don Moss, Pete Murray, Ray Orchard, Jimmy Savile, Shaw Taylor, Jimmy Young, and Muriel Young.
[citation needed] In Caroline's primary reception areas, her ground wave signal was strong and unaffected during daylight hours by fading or interference.
Its new format featured mainly spot advertising within record programmes presented live by resident disc jockeys in Luxembourg, some of them recruited from the offshore stations.
In August 1967, the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act 1967 passed into British law, and forced all but the two Caroline stations off the air by eliminating their means of selling commercial advertising in the UK.
Presenters in the 1990s: In 1989, Radio Luxembourg's parent company RTL Group teamed up with Raidió Teilifís Éireann to create Atlantic 252, an English-language pop music station on longwave, based in Ireland and with advertising content aimed at a UK audience.
Initially this only broadcast until 7 pm and ended with an announcement specifically encouraging listeners to switch to Radio Luxembourg on 1440 kHz medium wave.
It was briefly available in the UK using DRM (digital broadcasts over shortwave) but the transmitter power was reduced, and by 2008 was not receivable outside Luxembourg itself (essentially, a test transmission).
Under good weather conditions, and especially at night, people as far as eastern Czechoslovakia, Poland,[16] Estonia, Lithuania, Belarus and Leningrad could listen to the station.
