Thursday, August 20, 2009

Radio Pakistan Lahore goes silent

LAHORE - Instead of upgrading the equipment and replacing the old transmitter of Lahore Station, one of the major medium wave (MW) stations of the Radio Pakistan, has been shutdown completely on the directions of Director General Murtaza Solangi on the other day.
This medium wave station had been working since 1937 and was widely listened throughout the world, including the main cities of India on 630 kilo watts (KW). It played a key role in the wars of 1965 and 1971 by broadcasting patriotic national songs.
Interestingly, besides closing the chapter of Lahore Station, Solangi also sealed another major news and current affairs channel of Lahore Station that was being listened on 1332 kilo watts for the last 4 years. It is pertinent to mention that 1332 KH was established by investing almost five hundred million rupees.
An official of Radio Pakistan disclosed that the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting was keeping mum over the solo initiative, as the DG has close relations with higher authorities. That is the reason why he is making such decisions from the time he took the charge of this key post.
The source further says the federal ministry is authorised to establish or close Radio Pakistan' s any station but it has remained silent over this solo step owing to various reasons.
The DG Radio Pakistan is of he view that the closed station was in loss costing expenditure; moreover, old infrastructure was not fulfilling the modern requirements of broadcasting. For meeting modern needs, on the further directions of DG, a new short wave channel FM 93 has been established by replacing Lahore Radio Station, which is listened on short range covering the area of 30 or 40 km.

(Source: http://www.nation.com.pk/)


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