Dave Kernick writes: Government-run public broadcaster Gambia Radio and Television Services (GRTS) now offers live streams of its national radio and television services from the organization’s new website at www.grts.gm.
GRTS Radio is on the air in local languages and English at 0600-2400 local time/UTC daily, with news bulletins in English observed at 0700-0710, 1300-1310, 1800-1810, 2200-2230, and finally a brief news summary at the close of their broadcast day (on weekdays, all timings may vary at weekends). The service identifies on air variously as “GRTS Radio”, “Gambia Radio and Television Services” or “GRTS Digital FM”; notwithstanding the latter identification the station’s closedown announcements indicate that in addition to 96.0, 98.6 and 102.6 MHz FM they also transmit on 648 and 747 kHz mediumwave.
GRTS Television broadcasts terrestrially on VHF channel E11 in Banjul, and since 2009 has also been available on the Intelsat 901 satellite at 18 degrees West, 4140 MHz frequency, left-hand circular polarization, symbol rate 3500, FEC 3/4. Their live video stream appears to be having teething troubles and was only working intermittently at the time of writing, however the website does have a link to their YouTube channel, which is an on-demand archive of 10-minute clips identified by time and date. One of the current clips labelled GRTS-05-07-2011:2130 includes a 6-minute filmed news report about new GRTS radio and TV transmitter sites undergoing construction.
GRTS Radio is Gambia’s oldest radio station, going on air (as Radio Gambia) on 4820 kHz shortwave in 1962, initially only on weekdays for a couple of hours in the evening. The government commissioned a TV service in 1995, prompting a change of name for the organization to Gambia Radio and Television Services.
(Source: Dave Kernick, Interval Signals Online via Media Network Weblog)
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