The American Forces Network (AFN) will go off the air in Naples beginning tomorrow unless there’s a “miracle” this weekend, the senior commander of AFN operations in Italy said.
Radio broadcasts heard on 106.0 and 107.0 FM frequencies in Naples will stop unless Italian environmental officials provide written permission for use of a new transmitter site to replace the current one, which must be dismantled, Major Tom Bryant said Friday in an interview in his Vicenza office.
Bryant said the lease on a transmitter that AFN has been using for decades expired last year. Military broadcasters were allowed to continue to use the transmitter — located inside the walls of a monastery atop Mount Camaldoli — for an additional nine months. That deal ends on Thursday, and the transmitter needs to be disassembled and taken away by then, a process that will take a couple of days.
AFN has negotiated a deal with RAI to use one of its existing towers — also on the mountain but outside the monastery — but needs to receive a series of approvals before it starts to broadcast.
