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Leonard Plugge
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===Silenced=== Plugge broadcast from Fécamp and later from a new transmitter and studio at [[Caudebec-en-Caux]], France. [[World War II]] began soon after the studio opened and, according to some histories, German troops overran the transmitters in 1940, using them to broadcast propaganda to Britain until the [[RAF]] bombed the Louvetot transmitter out of action. The French website ''L'Histoire de Radio Normandie'' remembers it differently: "After the Louvetot transmitter closed in 1939 because of the war, IBC went on broadcasting under the name ''Radio International Fécamp'' from ''Radio Normandie'''s first transmitter at Fécamp for "several weeks". On 10 June 1940 French troops sabotaged the transmitter on the eve of the German invasion.'<ref>[http://radionormandie.free.fr/david_newman.htm Announcer David Newman's letters]{{dead link|date=December 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} Accessed 17 August 2007.</ref> A 22 October 1939 British War Cabinet memo marked 'SECRET: To Be Kept Under Lock And Key' notes that: :It was learnt that an obsolete station at Fécamp, controlled by the International Broadcasting Company (of which Captain L. F. Plugge, MP, is the chairman), has been modernised, and had started to work with programmes in English, Czech and Austrian [sic]. The danger of allowing a station so near the Channel to work on its own...was felt by the Air Ministry to be grave...The French Service(s)...are in complete agreement with the British point of view...[and] have confessed that the private interests concerned have got the ear of the civil powers [in France] without reference to factors of national security. It is hoped that the French Service view will shortly prevail.<ref>[http://www.psywar.org/psywar/reproductions/WarCabinetMemos.pdf ''Publicity In Enemy Countries'']. Accessed 17 August 2007.</ref> It appears the British government was not interested in Plugge's invitation to broadcast Allied propaganda from Radio Normandy transmitters, even if they had not been destroyed. Plugge hoped to restart transmissions from France after the war but changes in broadcasting regulations and a different attitude to radio listening meant that this never happened. The post-war president, [[Charles de Gaulle]], also had a different attitude to the station. Radio Normandy had a bigger audience in southern England on Sundays than the BBC. Under [[John Reith, 1st Baron Reith|Lord Reith]], the BBC was off the air until late on Sundays to give people time to go to church, and offered little but serious music and discussions. Broadcasting historians have said that Reith reluctantly agreed to lighten the BBC's programmes on Sundays after his audience deserted him for Radio Normandy's light music. That, some have said, was a reason that Reith left the BBC, feeling his mission to educate, inform and entertain with what he judged to be programmes of high moral tone had been cut away by rank commercial entertainment driven by money. The IBC's original London offices were in Hallam Street, near the BBC's Broadcasting House, then moved to nearby 35–36 Portland Place. This was taken over by a British weapons development unit [[MD1|MRI(c)]] at the start of the war but later bombed. The BBC's [[BBC Radio 1|Radio 1]], inheritor of the audiences that Plugge's offshore successors had built until the 1967 [[Marine Broadcasting Offences Act]] made them illegal, later moved into the Hallam Street building. After the war IBC became a recording studio and stars including [[The Who]], [[The Kinks]], [[The Rolling Stones]] and [[Jimi Hendrix]] recorded there.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.ibcstudio.co.uk/ |title=IBC Studio/Homegrown Music, undated |access-date=12 January 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060617021304/http://www.ibcstudio.co.uk/ |archive-date=17 June 2006 |url-status=dead }}</ref> It has been suggested that Leonard Plugge was the inventor of the two-way [[car]] [[radiotelephone]].<ref>[http://www.ibcstudio.co.uk/earlydaysindex.html ''The Early Days of Radio Normandy'', Brian Carroll, ''IBC Studio/Homegrown Music'', undated] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061208090812/http://www.ibcstudio.co.uk/earlydaysindex.html |date=8 December 2006 }}.Accessed 17 August 2007.</ref> It is also claimed that the term of "plugging" something by advertising was derived from the name of Leonard Plugge. Plugge pronounced his name "Plooje", claiming Flemish origins. It was only when he stood for the parliamentary seat of Chatham that he agreed to the slogan "Plugge in for Chatham" and accepted the way everybody else pronounced his name.
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