© MARTIN BUREAU AFP
An important page in the history book of radio in Luxembourg has been turned: the giant transmitters of Beidweiler were disconnected on 1 January 2023.
RTL France was the last of the big radio stations in our neighbouring country to still broadcast on long waves. Since the beginning of 2023, this is however no longer the case, as RTL France has stopped broadcasting its signal from the transmitter centre in Beidweiler, Luxembourg.
In the 1980s, FM gradually made long-wave transmission obsolete with its improved sound quality. Over time, all stations decided to cut their long-wave signal: France Inter in 2017, Europe 1 in 2019, and RMC in 2020.
RTL France, which used the 234 kHz frequency, was the last major French station to use this historic low-frequency broadcasting mode, set up in the 1930s and capable of transmitting over very long distances (up to several hundred kilometres).
The decision, which was primarily taken to save money, should enable the group to reduce its electricity consumption by some 6,000 megawatt hours (MWh) per year, the equivalent of 3,000 people in France.
The station has launched a communication campaign to incentivise its listeners to switch to the other means of transmission, in particular FM (frequency modulation), DAB+, TV boxes, and its mobile application.
Radio Luxembourg, out of which RTL France eventually grew in 1966, originally started broadcasting in 1933 from its transmitter in Luxembourg in order to escape French regulations, which at the time established a state monopoly on broadcasting.
