The Bermuda Broadcasting Company Ltd. is a commercial, for-profit broadcasting company located in

Bermuda Bermuda is a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean. The closest land outside the territory is in the American state of North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. Bermuda is an ...

. Sometimes abbreviated locally as "BBC", the Bermuda Broadcasting Company is not related to the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

, the UK's public broadcasting company. The company was founded in the 1950s and grown to be the largest broadcasting company in Bermuda. It was chaired by Fernance B. Perry, a prominent entrepreneur in Bermuda, until his death.

Broadcast stations

The Bermuda Broadcasting Company's radio stations and TV stations use the call letters "ZFB" and "ZBM". The ZBM call sign has been in use since 1953 for an

AM radio AM broadcasting is radio broadcasting using amplitude modulation (AM) transmissions. It was the first method developed for making audio radio transmissions, and is still used worldwide, primarily for medium wave (also known as "AM band") transmi ...

station, since 1962 for an

FM radio FM broadcasting is a method of radio broadcasting that uses frequency modulation (FM) of the radio broadcast carrier wave. Invented in 1933 by American engineer Edwin Armstrong, wide-band FM is used worldwide to transmit high fidelity, high-f ...

station, making it one of the oldest in Bermuda. Beginning in 1958, the call sign was use for the first Bermudian television station. ZFB was originally the call sign for the radio and TV stations of the Capital Broadcasting Company from 1965 to 1984.

Labour unrest

In 2009, a strike by 40 unionized employees in April 2009, halted all programming at the company's radio and television stations for four days. Perry said that changes in work rules and staff pay were needed "to help a financially ailing company". The work stoppage was settled, and normal operations resumed on 21 April, after government mediation.

Radio

* Bermuda Spirit, formerly ZFB, on 1230 kHz ( transmitter power: 1 kW), It is a general mix of local, religious,

adult contemporary Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the 1980s to the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul ...

formats. * ZFB-FM (branded as "Power95 Stereo FM") on 94.9 MHz ( ERP: 1 kW) on air since 1971, broadcasting in the urban/reggae format. * ZBM on 1340 kHz (transmitter power: 1 kW). It started broadcasting in 1953, and the station's format is news and talk, with some music programming. * ZBM-FM (branded as "Ocean89") on 89.1 MHz (ERP: 15 kW), broadcasting since 1962. Its specific format is the adult contemporary format.

Television

ZFB-TV ZFB-TV (channel 7) is a television station in Hamilton, Bermuda, serving the British territory as an affiliate of ABC. It is owned by the Bermuda Broadcasting Company alongside CBS affiliate ZBM-TV (channel 9). The two stations share studio ...

virtual channel In most telecommunications organizations, a virtual channel is a method of remapping the ''program number'' as used in H.222 Program Association Tables and Program Mapping Tables to a channel number that can be entered as digits on a receiver's ...

20.2 (

UHF Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter ...

digital channel 20), is the affiliate station for

ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Broadcasting * Aliw Broadcasting Corporation, Philippine broadcast company * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial American ...

; however, when ZFB used to be part of the Capital Broadcasting Company, the TV station broadcast on VHF channel 8. *

ZBM-TV ZBM-TV (channel 9) is a television station in Hamilton, Bermuda, serving the British territory as an affiliate of CBS. It is owned by the Bermuda Broadcasting Company alongside ABC affiliate ZFB-TV (channel 7). The two stations share studios ...

, virtual channel 20.1 (UHF digital channel 20), is the affiliate station for

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS (an abbreviation of its original name, Columbia Broadcasting System), is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...

; however, when ZBM originally began broadcasting in 1958, it used to be on VHF channel 10. Both channels are currently carried on Bermuda's cable television system.

References

*Hardyman, Nicholas. '' World Radio Television Handbook''. Volume 59, 2005.

External links