The Light Programme was a BBC radio station which broadcast chiefly mainstream light entertainment and music from 1945 until 1967, when it was rebranded as BBC Radio 2. It opened on 29 July 1945, taking over the longwave frequency which had earlier been used – prior to the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 – by the BBC National Programme. The service was intended as a domestic replacement for the wartime BBC Forces Programme (later, the General Forces Programme) which had proved popular with civilian audiences in Britain as well as members of the armed forces.