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UK and BBC World Service listeners will know the dulcet tones and soporific nature of The Shipping Forecast. (If you don’t know it, go a couple of minutes in, here.) But new technology is threatening its reception on long-wave radio. However, the advent of digitisation means no one is making transmitters for long-wave any more. The BBC apparently bought up the entire last stock – but there are no more. Why does this matter? Because on FM, broadcasts don’t reach the same distance. Anyone further than 12 miles from the coastline will no longer be able to hear it after long-wave ends. It will still be there for the land-based sleepless, but gone for the sailors who actually need it.

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