Radio to fall silent for a few hours

Just when you thought you could lie on the beach and listen to your radio to escape the World Cup fever, the Broadcasting Authority said yesterday it would be suspending analogue transmissions for works on the Għargħur transmitter tower this weekend.

The authority said "the nature of the work is such that it can only take place during daylight and cannot be conducted during the night", so stations will be off air from 2 to 9 p.m. today and tomorrow. Programmes will still be broadcast on digital radio.

Authority head of research and communication Mario Axiak said works consisted of cleaning and strengthening the transmission tower.

Works on the tower have been going on for the past 18 months, mainly at night. All that remains to be done is to remove the panels at the top to work on the structure and put them back again. The authority has also decided to take the opportunity to remove any panels which are not being used.

The works were originally planned for last Thursday and Friday but were postponed after radio stations asked the dates to be moved to a weekend when they had a smaller audience and less advertising.

"It's obviously still going to affect us adversely," said XFM programme manager Jason Zammit.

"They first told us they were going to stop transmitting on Thursday and Friday last week, when we air our best programmes - two shows which have the most sponsorship," he said.

"It's better over the weekend but tomorrow happens to be the first Saturday of the World Cup and we air our only sports programme on Saturdays. However, everyone's in the same suit," he conceded.

Still, XFM has had to promise sponsors compensation, re-juggling its advertising schedule to squeeze in those spots it could not air into other days.

Meanwhile, 89.7 Bay station manager Victor Formosa said the station understood it was necessary to carry out the repairs, adding it was "very nice" of the authority to postpone them to a weekend.

He felt the station had been given enough time to prepare for the works and pointed out it has been notifying its listeners since Wednesday.

But even though programmes will still go out on digital radio, 89.7 Bay has had to re-schedule its commercial commitments.

Similarly, Vibe FM station manager Terry Farrugia said they were always happy to cooperate with the authority.

He conceded the suspension was a "logistics problem, especially since the works were postponed before", but it had now all been dealt with.

As with the other stations, clients were contacted and their advertising re-scheduled for other days.