Saffron Screen

Saffron Green transmitting station was a facility for medium wave broadcasting near Saffron Green Meadows in Hertfordshire, 19km north-west of London. It was built by the Independent Broadcasting Authority in March 1975 to transmit two Independent Local Radio stations - Capital Radio and LBC. An earlier medium wave transmitting station is Brookmans Park, also in Hertfordshire and built by the BBC in the 1920s. The last station broadcasting from this site stopped in October 2024 and the future of the site is unknown. Until the 1970s the BBC had a monopoly on radio broadcasting in the UK, with the exception of pirate stations and Radio Luxembourg. This changed in 1972 with the Sound Broadcasting Act and the IBA let two contracts for commercial radio in London, one for "news and information" and one for "general and entertainment". The news and information contract went to London Broadcasting Company (LBC) which started broadcasting on 8 October 1973; the general and entertainment contract was won by Capital Radio which started broadcasting on 16 October 1973.