BBC 103 FM returns to airwaves

After disruption of nearly 12 hours, BBC 103 FM—that relays BBC’s World Service programmes round the clock for the audience of Kathmandu, returned to airwaves on Monday.

The F. M. transmission had been discontinued simultaneously as police raided Radio Sagarmatha FM in Lalitpur Sunday night and force the radio station to close down. No reasons were given.

Reports quoted Radio Nepal officials as saying that the transmission had to be discontinued due to “technical reasons” and that it had nothing to do with the governmetn’s action against Radio Sagarmatha.

Reports, however, say the state-run Radio Nepal resumed transmission of BBC 103 FM only after officials at the British embassy in Kathmandu inquired them about the reason for blocking the BBC transmission.

BBC had launched 103 FM after entering into a contract with the state-run Radio Nepal early November last year.

But in what seemed an outright breach of the ontract, the state-run Radio Nepal started blocking news transmissions of BBC World Service for 15 minutes immediately after the royal takeover of February this year.

The state-run Radio continues to block the news transmission though the time has been slashed to around seven minutes.

Kathmandu became the 140th capital where the BBC World Service could be heard over the local FM stations. BBC reportedly pays a hefty sum to Radio Nepal for hiring its FM frequency.

Launching FM relay in Kathmandu last year, Business Development Manager of the BBC for Asia and Pacific region, Michel Lobelle, said there were more than 300,000 listeners of the BBC World Service programmes in English in Nepal. He hoped that the number would go up after the World Service programmes were launched over a local FM station.

BBC World Service broadcasts its programmes in 43 languages and has a global audience of around 146 million listeners worldwide. nepalnews.com by Nov 29 05

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