Radio Luxembourg (French)
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Radio Luxembourg - 1933-1939 and 1951- is the name of a Long Wave commercial radio station that began broadcasting from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg in 1933 as a daytime and evening service in the French language from Monday to Saturday and until 12 Noon on Sundays.
The station closed down at the outbreak of World War II in 1939, but it resumed service after the War. This article is about the French language service. For other languages see disambiguation links at Radio Luxembourg.
The French service has called itself RTL for many years. It still broadcasts on 234 KHz long wave, but nowadays also on a network of FM transmitters throughout France, as well as on the internet, cable and satellite. [1]
Unlike the British government's treatment of the Luxembourg English service, which was never allowed to have a landline from London, the French service has long had its main studios in Paris, with a landline from there to the transmitter. Consequently it appears to the listener to be simply a big French national radio station, and the Luxembourg connection is played down.
Whereas Luxembourg's English service was always centred on light entertainment and popular music, RTL in French is a mixed station: about 50% of its output is speech-based, with a strong focus on news and current affairs and a large team of respected journalists.
Radio Luxembourg's two main national competitors are Europe 1 (another out-of-country commercial station, broadcasting from Saarland, again with Paris studios) and the state-owned France Inter. All three stations have very high-powered transmitters occupying long-wave frequencies that date back many decades.
Since 1991 there has also been a completely separate RTL service in French, called Bel-RTL, intended for the French-speaking part of Belgium and with studios in Brussels. This is not an out-of-country station but is licensed (along with many competing commercial stations) by the Belgian Government, with a network of FM transmitters covering Brussels and Wallonia, and no particular connection with the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg other than its ownership by the RTL parent company. [2]
