
The Shipping Forecast - tolien
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-shipping-forecast/
======
pit2
I used the Shipping Forecast as a "self-assessment" when I move to London.
When moved there, my English was not the best. I was staying up late at
nights, listening BBC4 to improve my listening and I will listen to the
shipping forecast every night and don't understand ANYTHING.

That was for the first year, life moves on, and there I was, listening to the
Shipping Forecast 3-4 years later. "Ey, I can get now some words and the
overall meaning!". I have to say it felt good.

A few more years later, and it was my last night living in the UK (Brexit
means Brexit), and I went to listen to it again. Seven years later, since the
first time I hear it, I was able to catch everything on the forecast.

For me, the Shipping Forecast will always be something special.

~~~
bookofjoe
Related in theme but off-topic: When I started med school in 1970, I was all
full of myself as a doctor-to-be so I took advantage of the very cheap student
rate and subscribed to the New England Journal of Medicine. The first issue
arrived: Yikes! I didn't understand a word of it. Fast forward to 1974 when I
graduated: reading and understanding the NEJM was effortless, as easy as
Sports Illustrated.

~~~
thomasfedb
I'm a medical student, and I had my wowsers moment when I attended a
conference a bit over a year ago and realised that, unlike the previous
conference I had attended, I suddenly knew what everybody was on about! The
acronyms, shorthands, etc - it really is another language!

~~~
bookofjoe
In the same vein (no pun intended): when I began my anesthesiology residency,
I received a free subscription to the journal Anesthesiology as part of my
resident membership in the American Society of Anesthesiologists. The first
issue came: frightening! As had been the case years earlier with the NEJM when
I started med school, I couldn't understand anything. The table of contents
might just as well have been written in Urdu. Flash forward a year: my first
scientific publication (a Letter to the Editor) appeared in Anesthesia and
Analgesia. Nothing like a little fear to accelerate the learning curve!

------
genericpseudo
The Shipping Forecast is a very significant cultural reference in the UK. It
crops up all over the place. Britain is _fundamentally_ an island and a
seafaring nation, and that's something Americans miss; you're never more than
seventy miles from the sea. It's as iconic as, I don't know, Thanksgiving
football in the US; it's a thing everyone knows about without explanation.

This is from an album which sold over 1.2m copies in the UK; one of the
biggest records of the 90s:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SD8gO8TAr4s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SD8gO8TAr4s)

~~~
PaulRobinson
And the music that runs up against it at night, Sailing Away, equally
important reference. The nights I lay there, imagining the storms out there,
particularly when depressed and alone, listening to the post-midnight
"ceremonies" including the national anthem and lulled off to sleep before the
World Service crept onto the airwaves... so many nights. It really is a part
of me in some ways.

It's interesting to me just how important BBC Radio 4 (formerly the Home
Service), on which it is broadcast, is and has been to our collective culture.

It's now seen in a more middle-class "sniffy" light - Radio 4 listeners are a
certain "type", but think what it's given us:

\- It's where The Goons became famous: Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Harry
Seacombe defined a certain age of comedy and inspired Monty Python and others.

\- Mornington Crescent is ironically one of the most iconic stations on the
London Underground thanks to the game from the R4 show

\- All of Churchill's war-time speeches were broadcast there first

\- In the event of the death of the Queen, it will be announced first on the
8am Radio 4 news broadcast the following day (I'm not sure that can work in
the modern era, but there we are)

\- Royal Navy Nuclear (weapon) submarines are to open a safe with hand-written
letters of instruction from the Prime Minister if they can't pick up Radio 4
long-wave

That's just off the top of my head.

~~~
Theodores
Sailing By, not 'away'...

It is there to pad out the schedule and help people to find Radio 4 on a
crowded night-time dial. Same with the National Anthem that follows. Even the
'pips' are there for this type of calibration, a tuning in to a British
person's 'Britishness'.

The way that the BBC is deeply woven into the British establishment and armed
forces is obvious yet not so obvious. The BBC is a spin-off of British Forces
Broadcasting Service, as per 'Better Call Saul'/'Breaking Bad' some content
overlaps but the 'producers' are one and the same.

You should never believe that the BBC is independently funded and free from
some capitalist proprietor controlling what you think, it really is an organ
of the British military industrial complex. Anyone 'socialist' gets weeded out
by the very real 'Room 101'.

Radio 4 is the true voice of establishment, and this differs slightly from the
clowns of the day that happen to be in parliament. If you listen carefully
then you can glean facts on BBC Radio 4 that are not presented on the TV news
or written to paper, an off-hand comment here or there on an odd-hour Radio 4
program sneaks through when the rest of the world are self-censoring
themselves during a crisis.

When BBC Radio 4 rolls over and defaults to Number 10 propaganda without being
honest, e.g. asserting that Russians are poisoning people in the UK without
any 'alleged' or 'suspected' style words to distance fiction from fact, then
that is when the folks in the submarine should go for the envelope...

~~~
isostatic
> The BBC is a spin-off of British Forces Broadcasting Service

BFBS was established in 1943

The BBC was founded in 1922

Which BBC Room 101 are you asserting is "very real"?

~~~
arethuza
I believe the original Room 101 was just a meeting room in where Blair had to
sit through boring meetings.

~~~
isostatic
Blair?

Allegedly Orwell named Room 101 after a meeting room in BBC Broadcasting House
that no longer exists.

~~~
arethuza
George Orwell was Eric Blair's pen name.

------
DoubleGlazing
When I was a student, doing lots of late nights, the shipping forecast helped
lull me off to sleep. It's rhythmic, without being too repetitive.

It's an aural duvet that makes you feel safe and conformable. Not just because
of the way it sounds, but also the fact that you know there are lots of people
doing all the work needed to bring us the forecast and help keep mariners
safe.

Even though I now live in Ireland, I still tune in to BBC Radio 4 on long wave
every now and again to hear it. It's a unique and wonderful thing which I fear
won't be around in a decade or two.

~~~
stevesimmons
FYI, BBC Radio 4 is available on the BBC IPlayer Radio app. That might be more
convenient than longwave.

The BBC doesn't geoblock its radio shows, unlike the TV programmes, which can
only be viewed from a UK IP address.

~~~
DoubleGlazing
There is something nice about listening to it over long wave though. The
crackling and the fading adds a certain charm. I kind of want to enjoy while
it lasts, the BBC has said that when the LW transmitter valves fail they won't
be replaced signalling the end of Radio 4 long wave.

As for the iPlayer the BBC has started to mess around with geoblocks on radio
shows. For example I can listen to the News Quiz and I'm Sorry I Haven't a
Clue, but Dead Ringers is geoblocked. Also, the shows I can listen to now
contain adverts along with a voice at the start telling me that BBC radio
shows and podcasts are ad-supported outside the UK. This mildly disappoints
me.

~~~
adwww
> the BBC has said that when the LW transmitter valves fail they won't be
> replaced

They better tell the Royal Navy - the broadcast of the Today Show on Radio 4
LW is one of the tests submarine captains supposedly use to detect if the UK
has been annihilated in a nuclear strike.

~~~
DoubleGlazing
I think the BBC would probably run cap in hand to the MOD to pay for a new
transmitter in that case. The BBC transmitter is getting on for 70 years old,
once it fails repairing it will require custom made equipment or complete
replacement - both of which will be very expensive.

One other curious issue with radio 4 LW is that it carries a data sub-carrier
for the National Radio Teleswitch. Basically the signal that controls the
Economy 7 and Economy 10 heating systems. If Radio 4 LW goes off-air any
renaming E7 and E10 systems will just stop working.

One crazy proposal that went nowhere was for the BBC to move Radio 4 LW to
RTÉs Clrakstown transmitter in Ireland. That used to be the Atlantic 252
transmitter (remember them?) but has been carrying RTÉ Radio 1 since that
venture failed and RTÉ really wants to shut it down. The transmitter at that
site was built in 1998 which makes it a very young in radio transmitter terms.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Not the BBC any more. They were required to privatise tranmission in 97. Not
sure who owns them now.

The Beeb still has a couple of world service transmitters I think, but the
rest are gone.

~~~
DoubleGlazing
Arqiva. Owned by an Australian investment bank. They also own the old IBA
transmission network that broadcasts ITV/C4 and co-owns the Freeview service.
I.E. They hold a monopoly on TV and radio transmission in the UK. Plus with
the roll-out of 4/5G mobile all those hilltop sites are making them a fortune
for providing microwave relay feeds for data services.

RTÉ still owns their network as 2rn Ltd (the callsign of Irelands first radio
station - phonetically 'To Erin') and they are making decent money from
providing the same mobile services. Making the BBC sell off their transmission
network was shortsighted.

I'm a radio and love all this. The head engineer of 2rn is a member of my
radio club - he really knows his stuff.

------
stevesimmons
The Shipping Forecast and other BBC radio shows can be listened to on BBC
Radio 4 using the BBC IPlayer Radio app, for Android and iPhone.

The BBC's radio shows are not geoblocked (at least not the news programmes I
listen to when travelling), unlike the TV shows which are only available from
UK IP addresses.

(I originally posted this in the middle of a discussion. Reposting as a
standalone comment in the hope it makes BBC R4 more accessible to people
outside the UK).

~~~
wodenokoto
Works on the web for me:
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bbn714](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bbn714)

------
rwmj
From the last time this subject was discussed on HN, here's a copy of a
shipping forecast:
[http://oirase.annexia.org/tmp/Shipping_Forecast_-_2017-12-27...](http://oirase.annexia.org/tmp/Shipping_Forecast_-_2017-12-27_b09jqt9n_original.m4a)

To get the "full effect" you have to use a small transistor radio, wait until
after midnight and listen to Sailing By first ...

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Oh, I dunno. I think to get the _full_ effect, you need to be 13 years old,
listening to it on a crystal radio you built from a diode scavenged from an
old transistor radio and an earpiece from a broken telephone.

But that's just me and I get nostalgic at times :-)

------
CaliforniaKarl
Just as important (at least to me) is the song “Sailing By”, which is used to
fill any extra time before the 00:48 broadcast. I wish the article would’ve
given it a mention.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Everyone keeps mentioning "Sailing By", but no one seems to want to provide a
link to it...

I guess this is it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFdas-
kMF74](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFdas-kMF74)?

~~~
JdeBP
It's possibly because there are _umpteen_ versions available, from
performances by various orchestras (BBC Concert Orchestra to Philomusica of
Edinburgh), through versions with added lyrics (one by Bernard Loughrey,
others including a male voice choir and one by Binge himself and the Wimbledon
Girl Singers), to people who captured it from broadcasts; as well as Wikipedia
articles that are easily discoverable.

The _UK Theme_ also has several broadcast versions, alone, of differing
lengths.

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_By](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_By)

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr-T3vXbj8c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr-T3vXbj8c)

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6vDtPOhDqA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6vDtPOhDqA)

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSvf_wMfzLE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSvf_wMfzLE)

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFfftvIVVyo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFfftvIVVyo)

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP_4w6GOQS0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP_4w6GOQS0)

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlPSuqXlS4I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlPSuqXlS4I)

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_4_UK_Theme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_4_UK_Theme)

------
arethuza
The Scottish fishing village I grew up in had an area above the harbour called
the "flagstaff" that conspicuously doesn't have any flags on it - reading this
made me realise that this is where the forecast flags must have been flown.

The spot currently has a memorial for those lost at sea:

[http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/684627](http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/684627)

~~~
nbgb
I visit PK all the time, lovely place!

~~~
arethuza
I always think of it as PTK - which I think is the old prefix used for fishing
boat registrations. :-)

[http://www.portknockiewebsite.co.uk/about-
portknockie.php](http://www.portknockiewebsite.co.uk/about-portknockie.php)

------
LeoPanthera
This is only vaguely related, but I moved from the UK to the US, and missed
the shipping forecast. Listening to it online isn't quite the same thing.

Eventually I stumbled across WWV[1], a shortwave station broadcast by NIST
which has satisfied the need in my life.

Ostensibly it is for broadcasting the time, but it also includes storm
warmings (especially from WWVH - the Hawaii transmitter), and _space_ weather
forecasts. So cool.

You can find it at 2.5, 5, 10, 15, and 20 MHz on your Shortwave radio.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWV_(radio_station)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWV_\(radio_station\))

------
andyjohnson0
This captures the late-night, meditative feel of it to me:

    
    
        Prayer
        by Carol Ann Duffy
    
        Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
        utters itself. So, a woman will lift
        her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
        at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.
    
        Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
        enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
        then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
        in the distant Latin chanting of a train.
    
        Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
        console the lodger looking out across
        a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
        a child's name as though they named their loss.
    
        Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
        Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

~~~
OJFord
Are you sure that's not by E.J. Thribb?

~~~
andyjohnson0
Definitely Carol Ann Duffy. It's the final poem from her 1993 collection _Mean
Time_.

~~~
OJFord
I was just kidding, E.J. Thribb is the house-poet of _Private Eye_, a half-
satire/half-investigative-journalism magazine in the UK.

This poem shares some of the traits of his works, in particular the line
breaks.

------
singingfish
The shipping forecast is awesome[1]. If you're a surfer in Britain, grab a map
[2] and learn how to visualise what's going to happen with the waves over the
next couple of days while listening to the broadcast. Especially useful for
North East coast surfers where the waves are short lived but can be
surprisingly ok.

[1] As is 99pi [2] [https://imgur.com/a/pb7nPr4](https://imgur.com/a/pb7nPr4)

------
jillesvangurp
Does it actually still serve a purpo (other than putting people to sleep)? As
in are sailors tuning in to figure out the weather in the middle of the night.
Surely there are better solutions for this now. I know most airports have
automated weather reports that broadcast continuously on dedicated frequencies
(ATIS) at least. The same information is available digitally. Many pilots have
tools providing them with near real time updates on weather. There are even
dedicated ipad apps for this.

~~~
scooble
I could be wrong, but I believe that long wave radio was a greater range than
vhf, which would be the main alternative source of weather info as internet is
very expensive offshore. So for some recreational sailors it would be useful.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
FM/VHF is barely better than line of sight and doesn't even go around hills
too well. Range is about 25 miles or so. LW will manage over 1,000 miles on a
good day.

------
Neil44
Radio 4 still broadcasts on long wave as well as FM, which I assume is helpful
for ships far out at sea.

------
mongol
Interesting. The forecast overlaps with the Swedish one, which starts in the
west with South Utsire, Fisher and German Bight and then continues into the
Baltic Sea counter-clockwise. I recall Dogger is mentioned sometimes but could
not hear it today. Example:
[https://sverigesradio.se/topsy/ljudfil/srse/6575657.mp3](https://sverigesradio.se/topsy/ljudfil/srse/6575657.mp3)

------
Animats
Current San Francisco aviation weather report:

    
    
        KSFO 261856Z 30018KT 10SM FEW008 16/12 A3002 RMK AO2 SLP165 T01610117 
    

Very nice day.

------
gnufx
Les Barker may have made the best forecast, either properly
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9QumF93PpY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9QumF93PpY)
or by the professional idiot himself
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ywku0lQYNc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ywku0lQYNc)

------
helipad
The Shipping Forecast always reminds me of the scene in Ken Loach's 'Kes':
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LCod-
iVNHM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LCod-iVNHM)

"Fisher, German Bight, Cromarty. I like to hear it every night Sir, I like
names"

------
maxehmookau
The shipping forecast is the one thing that could help me get to sleep as a
child.

To this day, I have no idea what it all meant, but I loved the repetitive,
rhythmic nature of the words in my ears.

------
dvcrn
The shipping forecast was a topic in the meditation app I am using (Calm) and
I loved it. Definitely qualifies as great rhythmic sleep aid without being
distracting :)

~~~
spiralx
That's read by the guy they're interviewing in the podcast :)

------
tomkinson
Loved this show and have listened to this forecast for years.

------
ericpauley
_He had been around for a long time and they wanted to get some fresh faces in
the building_

How is this not an age discrimination lawsuit?

~~~
exegete
They said they wanted someone "new" not someone "younger".

He actually "retired" in 2001, eight years before this incident. He was only
doing freelance spots on the BBC until the 2009 slip up, so he didn't actually
work for the BBC as an employee at that point.

[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/sep/15/radio-4-contin...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/sep/15/radio-4-continuity-
announcer)

------
stakhanov
Expected to rock all!

