Members of the Media & Entertainment union BECTU at the Rampisham shortwave transmitter site in Dorset run by Babcock Engineering were shocked to learn of plans to close the facility by Christmas with the loss of 19 jobs. Staff across the UK had been expecting bad news after the decision by BBC World Service in January this year to sharply reduce the number of hours of shortwave broadcasting and to end it altogether by 2014.
Despite this advance warning, the announcement still came as a shock to staff. The company also plans to close three posts at the Woofferton site in Shropshire with four at Orfordness in Suffolk also at risk of closure.
An initial meeting between BECTU representatives and management took place on Wednesday; the consultation period is due to end on 19 September.
BECTU Assistant general secretary Luke Crawley said: “The loss of 19 jobs at Rampisham and seven elsewhere in the network will come as a terrible blow to our members. We have already pressed the management to do everything they can to minimise the impact including offering redeployment and retraining where appropriate. Transmission members will note with regret that this announcement will also end seventy years of shortwave broadcasting from Rampisham.”
BECTU has strongly criticised the coalition government for pushing through a 16 per cent cut in the grant provided to the World Service from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). This was considerably higher than the 10 per cent cut in the FCO budget for other areas. It was this disproportionate reduction which lead the BBC to decide to reduce shortwave broadcasts immediately and end them by 2014.
BECTU’s campaign against the unfair settlement included giving evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee in Parliament. The highly critical report which followed led to some funds being restored to the World Service. However the representations did not persuade the BBC to change its mind about ending shortwave transmission despite the fact that, according to BECTU, listeners to shortwave make up half of the World Service audience.
(Source: BECTU)
on Aug 19th, 2011 at 14:41
“Closing” presumably refers to its elimination as a work place. Thus I suspect that transmissions will cease already on 30 October, with the end of the current A11 season.
Not counting the current cover for Cyprus there are at present just a bit over 50 transmitter hours per day left at Rampisham, about a quarter of its capacity. And more than ten of these hours will go away completely on 29 October (that’s the exact date listed at present), when DW will eliminate German radio and a number of other shortwave services.
I’m a bit surprised that Babcock chooses Rampisham, since it appears to be the most capable and versatile of its shortwave facilities, with transmission equipment being installed not before 1985. In contrast some of the Skelton and Woofferton equipment dates back to the sixties and, as an illustrative detail, requires wheeling out and in complete components such as big coils to change from one metre band to another. Of course transmitters from Rampisham could be moved in, but done at larger scale it would still be a quite big modernization project.
on Aug 19th, 2011 at 18:58
Does anything foretell the sooner rather than later death knell for shortwave as a viable international broadcasting platform more than this and then the BBC abandoning the shortwave platform entirely by 2014? Stunning.
on Aug 19th, 2011 at 19:56
But indeed no surprise, beyond the circumstance that it’s this particular site.
Furthermore I think it misses the point a little bit to blame the BBC World Service (which, by the way, still planned to keep a few shortwave services after 2014 when the matter has been discussed). The death knell at this point is apparently the current withdrawal of Deutsche Welle which eliminates four fifths of its shortwave output this year and has already started doing so by closing down the Russian radio service (mind you: not just take it off shortwave but close linear radio altogether) at the end of June. This has already eliminated ten transmitter hours at Rampisham, almost as much as the current regular use by the BBC which is already down to just 15 transmitter hours per day.
And this adds some bitter irony to the matter: It was the death knell for the Jülich station when DW abandoned all shortwave transmitters in Germany in favour of the UK services, perhaps making it possible to keep all shortwave sites in England alive at all. Now Rampisham not only has equipment installed at almost exactly the same time than the last Jülich fittings, it will now join the fate of Jülich as well.