You don't need much to receive AM radio. The simplest method is a so-called crystal radio, which doesn't even need batteries. The next most sophisticated class of AM radio is known as a tuned radio frequency (TRF) radio. When the Droitwich transmitter was built, most radios would have been TRF. I designed and built this TRF radio when I was teenager living in the South-East, and took care to make it capable of receiving BBC Radio 4 on long-wave (from Droitwich), in addition to the stations on medium-wave. It still works. The receive antenna is in the top-left corner; there's no need for a telescopic antenna like on a DAB or VHF/FM radio.
