Editing BBC Radio (section)

===Competition from overseas stations===

Although no other broadcasting organisation was licensed in the UK until 1973, commercial competition soon opened up from overseas. The English language service of [[Radio Luxembourg]] began in 1933 as one of the earliest commercial radio stations broadcasting to Britain and Ireland. With no possibility of domestic commercial broadcasting in the UK, a former British [[Royal Air Force]] captain and entrepreneur (and from 1935 [[Conservative Party UK|Conservative Party]] [[Member of Parliament (UK)|MP]]) named [[Leonard Plugge]] set up his own [[International Broadcasting Company]] in 1931.<ref>AND THE WORLD LISTENED The Biography of Captain Leonard F. Plugge – A Pioneer of Commercial Radio. Kelly Publications 2007. Author: Keith Wallis</ref> The IBC began leasing time on transmitters in continental Europe and then reselling it as sponsored English-language programming aimed at audiences in Britain and Ireland. Because Plugge successfully demonstrated that state monopolies such as that of the BBC could be broken, other parties became attracted to the idea of creating a new commercial radio station specifically for this purpose. It was an important forerunner of [[pirate radio]] and modern commercial radio in the United Kingdom. The onset of World War II silenced all but one of the original IBC stations, with only Radio Luxembourg continuing its nightly transmissions to Britain.