Radio Luxembourg is a commercial broadcaster in many languages from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. It is nowadays known in most non-English languages as RTL (for Radio Television Luxembourg).
The English-language service of Radio Luxembourg began in 1933 as one of the earliest commercial radio stations broadcasting to Britain. It was an important forerunner of pirate radio and modern commercial radio in the United Kingdom. It was an effective way to advertise products by circumventing British legislation which until 1973 gave the BBC a monopoly of radio broadcasting on UK territory and prohibited all forms of advertising over the domestic airwaves. It boasted one of the most powerful transmitters in the world; in the late 1930s, and again in the 1950s and 1960s, it captured very large audiences in the British Isles with its programmes of popular entertainment.
