Introducing the newly minted Mike Raub Collection! The first of many additions is this scratchy, but authentic recording of what was known as the world’s most powerful commercial radio station. Running 1300 KW at 1440 (actually 1439) KHZ on the AM band, this was easily the largest commercial AM station in the world!
The station was located at a place known as the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. A great place to have a commercial radio station if you wanted to reach all of the free, captialist part of Western Europe and the British Isles. In fact, Radio Luxembourg was aimed, specifically, at Great Britain since the British government prohibited commercial broadcasting until 1973. There, with its broadcast day beginning at dusk and going all night, Radio Luxembourg enjoyed an almost complete monopoly on British advertising, and a signal that covered Europe, the British Isles and much of the Atlantic Ocean like a blanket.
This starts out with a German program ending, then a fantastic Top of the hour from “The Station of the 80s”! Toni Basil’s “Mickey” is Number One in the States for the second week in a row on this date, which we know by its ranking on Billboard as June 14, 1982. Otherwise, we’d never have dated this aircheck.
You can read more about the history of Radio Luxembourg HERE (Wikipedia).
Radio Luxembourg is primarily an internet-only station running a myriad of different formats today. You can listen to it HERE.
It appears to be two different time periods. The Fleetwood Mac song at the end of the aircheck is from 1987.