Beromunster

This post was updated on 20 August 2011.

Old radios often featured a dial which showed you where the stations were on the band. Sometimes they were labelled by service name, like BBC Welsh Reg (region, not a bloke) and sometimes by city like Wien but often by the site of the transmitter, and one of the most often marked ones was Beromunster.

History Switzerland

Beromunster was one of the big hitters on the medium wave. It is Switzerland’s main AM analogue transmission and was first set up in 1931, which makes it a relative baby because the main decade in which countries set up their stations was the 20s; it was set up to counter the propaganda being beamed at Switzerland, which is 70% German, by the Nazi regime. The main mast was completed in 1937 and is still in use, although its feeder cable systems have been damaged by lightning in recent years and not repaired. The was also a second mast.

After the war Germany had lost all its AM services and Beromunster became a main source of news and information to the defeated population.

The ageing installation was turned off in 2008 when Switzerland went fully digital.

On 19 August 2011 the second mast was blown up.

Radio Netherlands reports that the east radio tower was not considered deserving of official monument protection and was therefore blown up. The tower stretched 126 metres into the sky. The associated clearance works will be completed by the end of the year.

In December 2010, the local Beromünster population voted in a referendum to reclassify the former national transmission site as a special area for art and culture. The former operations building has been transformed under the direction of the artist Wetz into a Centre for Art and Culture in the Beromünster National Transmission Centre (KKLB – Kunst und Kultur im Landessender Beromünster). The Centre will be progressively expanded and developed.”

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