I'll miss that when they shut it down, I'm too young to have actual nostalgia for longwave as a primary way of listening to the radio but but I enjoy having Tes

I'll miss that when they shut it down, I'm too young to have actual nostalgia for longwave as a primary way of listening to the radio but but I enjoy having Test Match Special on crackly old longwave as background noise when I'm working. I always liked how you can hear the lightning from miles away if it's stormy. I've also got a friend who still sometimes uses the Shipping Forecast on longwave when he's on smaller boats in the North Sea! My understanding is that the longwave service is very expensive to run (on the order of hundreds of kW) and the only thing keeping it alive is the fact its carrier wave is used to switch over old electricity meters to night rates. AFAIK the energy companies subsidise it rather than the BBC and when everyone's on a smart meter it'll probably go off air. Having said that, I suspect the Venn diagram of 'people who'd be miffed about 198 kHz going quiet' and 'people who regularly write to their MPs' is basically a circle so maybe it'll last years after its execution date like the Irish longwave service has.