100 Years of the Shipping Forecast

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You may have heard Joe Duffy's segment earlier in the year on Liveline about the BBC Shipping Forecast. It's broadcast at 00:48 on BBC Radio 4, preceded by a short piece of light music, "Sailing By", before the station closes down at 1 am. On LW, the frequency then carries the BBC World Service. For some, the forecast is like a soothing mantra, the repetitive structure and intonation or melody of the words easing them off to sleep. The forecast is also broadcast later in the day at 05:20, 12:00 and 17:55, and provides detailed weather reports and forecasts  for the seas around the British Isles. In this documentary, from last January,  Kilcullen man Al Ryan who is a BBC presenter, amongst others, spoke about the shipping forecast. It celebrated its centenary in the early hours of this morning, 4th July, expertly read by Al, who always signs off with "oiche mhaith", before the national anthem is played and Radio 4 closes down.

The BBC World Service originally broadcast on shortwave in Europe, but transmissions on the SW bands ceased in 2008. It also broadcast to Britain on MW, but transmissions ceased in 2011 on 648 kHz due to budgetary constraints. It still broadcasts on 198 kHz LW when BBC Radio 4 closes down at 1:00 am. This was useful for anyone with a bedside radio having an LW band. I've been listening to it and Radio 4 on and off since the 80s. However with the amount of electronic gadgets in a house nowadays generating EMI, including chargers, burglar alarms and broadband modems, that has becoming increasingly difficult because of the interference. Radio 4 transmissions on the LW band were scheduled to end  because of increasing costs of maintaining the network, although the BBC didn't specify a date in this article from  2023. Transmission is energy intensive and parts for transmitters are becoming harder to come by. According to this article in The Guardian from 2011, only a small number of parts are still available for the transmitter. Also there's a shift from listening on radio to online and many radios no longer have an LW band. A transmitter in Worcestershire and two additional transmitters in Scotland are operated by a private company, Arqiva. According to a more recent article on the website Keep Longwave: 

"In personal correspondence seen by the Campaign to Keep Longwave, a BBC representative stated, ‘we have not made a firm decision as to when we will close the Radio 4 LW service’".

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