Sound of silence on the airwaves in Weymouth

Analogue signals were lost to around 20,000 homes shortly after 4am yesterday following a power supply failure.

The cut knocked out the Wyke Regis transmitter as well as cutting off 1,800 homes during the morning.

Weymouth’s viewing and listening public have expressed their anger at the loss of the services.

Retired hotel manager Derek Model, 79, of Walpole Street, said: “I think it’s disgusting to have left the whole area without a signal for so long. I think it’s the responsibility of the transmitter operators to do something about it, seeing as they had since 4am to fix it.

“Isn’t that why we all pay enormous amounts of money in television licensing and electricity charges?”

Retired Weymouth College physics lecturer Richard Thompson, 61, of Brackendown Avenue, Preston added: “It would have been nice to have been informed earlier of the problem.

“Watching television and listening to the radio is quite a key form of communication for many people and not everybody has satellite or digital television yet - so the analogue signal is their only option.

“I think we’re fairly poorly looked after in terms of broadcasting in this county anyway. We don’t even have Channel Five yet.”

Homes served by the transmitter were unable to receive analogue broadcast signals until around 2pm yesterday when engineers restored power to the transmitter using a generator.

Pat Driver, of Rodwell, added: “I have just bought a new television set ready for the digital switchover.

“I wondered at first if it was on the blink because there had been no signal all morning.”

Arqiva spokesman Bruce Randall said: “The loss of television and FM BBC radio signals from the Weymouth transmitter was due to a mains power failure at around 4am yesterday.

“The regional electrical supplier provided a generator to link up to the transmitter while the mains supply was down.”

Mr Randall added that signals were restored in most of the Weymouth area by around 2pm yesterday.