Back in the early 1980s, The Netherlands had four national radio stations and three of these were on mediumwave. They could be heard far outside our national borders. On the other hand, two Dutch language stations from Belgium could be heard throughout The Netherlands, as well as two French language stations from that country. That was not all you could hear though: there were a bunch of German stations and some English stations to be heard as well. BBC World Service was booming in on 648 kHz. During some years, we had some good pirate stations too.
Much radio listening still happened on mediumwave, as not all radios had the FM band back then and one of the national radio stations in The Netherlands was on mediumwave only. Starting in 1985, we got an additional national station (Hilversum 5) and it was on mediumwave only, but it took the frequency of Hilversum 1, which became FM-only.
If your radio had longwave too, you got a bunch of foreign stations: from France, Luxembourg, the UK, Germany and some other countries. After sunset, the mediumwave band came to life and if you took the trouble, you could hear radio stations from all over Europe. These were some of the main national programmes of those countries, hence it was quality stuff. BBC Radio 1 played the latest British pop songs, weeks or sometimes months before they were allowed to enter our country. Radio Moscow once had a Dutch language service on mediumwave, one of the few international broadcasters to have one, along with South Africa (that and an even more objectionable regime and that was on the 16 meter band on shortwave). But at night the mediumwave band was indeed used as another shortwave band, on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
If you had a good radio and you were skilled with the rotating ferrite bar antenna, you could often pick up two different stations on the same channel. Hearing stations outside Europe was a challenge though, as there were many more European stations occupying those frequencies. Today it’s relatively easy to pick up North Africa for example.
And of course many, many countries had a presence on shortwave. Back in the day, the 49 meter band was chock full of stations, whatever time of the day you listened. Most European countries were all there, all the time. Higher shortwave bands, like 25m, 19m and 16m gave you the more distant stations. Shortwave was not listened to by everybody though. But everybody got exposed to mediumwave during day-to-day listening. And everybody occasionally heard foreign stations, if only unintentionally.
We are less exposed to radio stations from other European countries than we were a few decades ago. Since 2003, the FM band in The Netherlands was reorganised and it became very overpopulated, reducing the opportunities to hear foreign stations on that band. DAB has a far shorter reach across the border than FM used to have. We have internet radio now, but some countries (in particular the UK) reduce their internet radio streams to within their own country. With true broadcast radio, there’s nothing between you and the station you want to hear, that can be controlled by governments. You can add jamming stations, but you can’t take radio propagation away. Compare that to the many links that exist between an internet radio station and you.
Exposure to radio stations from other European countries was a good thing, even if you were not intentionally listening to them. It created an awareness of a being part of a larger Europe. In most places in The Netherlands we have access to over 50 stations on DAB+, but many of these are non-stop computer generated playlist stations without a soul. BBC World Service is actually available on DAB+ in The Netherlands, which is a good thing. But this will only last as long as somebody pays to have it there. And we should have German and French voices as well, plus something from Belgium. Some of those more-of-the-same popular music stations can really be missed and be exchanged for existing foreign radio stations. I know,this is not how commercial radio works. But why should everything work according to the rules of commercial radio?
The UK is the last country with a significant presence on mediumwave in our part of Europe and it will likely stop by the end of this year. Nobody will bring mediumwave back. But maybe the EU should facilitate airing public radio broadcasts outside national borders, to replace what mediumwave used to do for us naturally. There’s spare capacity on some DAB+ multiplexes, like that of our national public broadcaster NPO. It carries 10 programmes, 2 of which will likely be axed by the end of this year. You can easily have 12 programmes with good audio. Why not get some Belgian, French or German stations there?
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