[nickcw]

The Droitwich transmitter used to transmit on exactly 200 kHz which I always thought was very cool, but it moved to 198 kHz in 1988 to better harmonize with European stations.

The program was mostly the same as BBC Radio 4 but it used to diverge at certain times of day. I used to be woken up at 5am every day by my parents clock radio with the farming news which was very dull, but easy to sleep through.

[mark-r]

Thanks for mentioning the actual frequency. The article says "long wave" many times without specifying what it actually means.

[LeoPanthera]

"Longwave", usually written without a space, is an informal and not well-defined term for radio frequencies lower than the AM broadcast band, which in Europe is known as "medium wave".

In the USA there have never been commercial longwave stations, though various WWV time signals are broadcast in that band.

[reaperducer]

It was my father's morning alarm, too. But he was a couple of thousand miles away in New York state.

That, and Atlantic 252 (I believe now long gone) were what he woke up to every morning.

[gavinward]

Despite the name I would not have guessed you could pick up Atlantic 252 in the US. The quality of it wasn't great for listening to music.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_252

"Although the transmitter was in Ireland, the signal's reach meant that it was often looked upon as a "UK national station". Reception reports were received from such locations as Berlin, Finland, Ibiza and Moscow."