For more than five decades, the 290-metre-high RTL masts have been a defining feature of the Junglinster municipality. Operated by Broadcasting Center Europe, a subsidiary of RTL Group, the masts played a central role in transmitting French-language longwave radio towards France.
Their demolition on Friday will mark the symbolic end of a major chapter in Luxembourg’s broadcasting history.
Eugène Muller, who dedicated 36 years of his career to the transmitter, explains that the dismantling will be carried out using a special controlled explosion. Rather than demolishing the masts themselves, the process involves severing the steel cables that have kept the structures upright. Since each cable has two fittings, once those are released, the weight of the remaining cables causes the mast to fall in the opposite direction.
A specialised German company has been brought in to handle the demolition. In preparation, large sand-filled bags have been stacked around the site to prevent metal debris from being scattered by the blast and to protect the adjacent solar installation.
The explosives are due to arrive on Friday morning, and the area, including the masts, will be cordoned off to ensure safety.
The Beidweiler facility began operating in 1972, taking over from the earlier Junglinster transmitter, which could no longer compete in terms of coverage and signal quality with other French radio stations.
Beidweiler enabled RTL’s French-language broadcasts to reach across France, ushering in what many remember as the golden age of longwave radio. Muller recalls that, at the time, television was far less prominent, and the ability to provide strong, clear radio coverage meant stations could attract lucrative advertising revenue.
On 2 January 2023, the longwave transmitter was switched off, not simply because listeners had moved to FM or digital frequencies, but because the economics had changed dramatically. Muller explains that the death knell came when energy prices soared rapidly, especially with the war in Ukraine. It only took about a year after that for longwave to become economically unsustainable.
The Beidweiler transmitter has since been sold and is currently being dismantled. In the future, the site will no longer be a major electricity consumer, but rather a producer, thanks to the solar installation already in place.
