We want to get to know you more to help improve our service. Please take 2 minutes to fill out our survey here. Thank you! test2

Discover content and watch films on our latest and improved iOS app. Download it here!

This film is part of Free

Rugby Radio Station

With a stream of telex and time signals Rugby keeps Britain connected during the analogue era.

Magazine and Review show 1963 10 mins

From the collection of:

Logo for Media Archive for Central England

Overview

Rugby was not a conventional radio station but a communications hub transmitting radio telephony, including the now obsolete telex service that later gave way to fax. The 800 ft high masts had been a landmark since the 1920s and, as reporter David Rees finds out, maintaining them is tough, particulalry during the coldest winter of the twentieth century. As one rigger says, "The wind doesn't have time to go round you, it goes straight through you."

Eighty years of broadcasting history came to an end when Rugby Radio Station was closed in 2007.