Special thanks to Ray Robinson and Jeff White for sharing the interesting story on broadcasting from Goa.
Jeff: When our Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Adrian Peterson, was based at AWR Asia in Pune, India, he became quite familiar with the former Portuguese enclave of Goa on the west coast of India, about 200 miles to the south. He says it’s a fascinating place to visit, with miles of wide ocean beaches, varied coastal and inland scenery, and tropical and sub-tropical fruits. To this day, Goa still exudes a subtle evidence of its earlier European culture, with Latin style church architecture, European style of dress, Portuguese Konkani music, and the occasional usage of the Portuguese language. Adrian visited Goa on many occasions and has jogged its entire 65 mile coastline. Here’s Ray Robinson in Los Angeles with the interesting story of how radio broadcasting developed in that unusual territory.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. Goa is now the smallest Indian state, located about halfway down the west coast of the sub-continent. It has a total land area of just 1500 square miles – about one and half times the size of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. Portugal first colonized the area in 1498, when Vasco da Gama reached nearby Calicut on the Malabar coast, and over the ensuing years, more than 20 small Portuguese colonies were established, of which Goa was the largest and most important.
During the 2 nd World War, Portugal remained neutral, and thus Goa also was a neutral territory, surrounded by British India. (What could possibly go wrong, right?) Well, during the war, three German trading vessels took shelter in the harbor at Mormugao. Then in 1943, one of them was sunk by British forces because it was determined that a radio transmitter on board the vessel was alerting German submarines lurking nearby to the movement of British shipping.
India gained independence from the United Kingdom after the war in 1947, and after the new constitution was adopted in January 1950 establishing the Republic of India, representations were made to the Portuguese government about releasing their colonies on the subcontinent also, in order for them to be incorporated into the Indian Union. Several requests were made throughout the 1950’s, but all were rebuffed by Lisbon.
It was during the post-war period that the first radio broadcasting stations were set up in Goa. Cable communication had been established between Goa and Portugal as early as 1938, via Cable & Wireless in Bombay. Eight years later in 1946, the resident engineer for the cable company in Goa, Victor Carvalho, gave technical assistance to a newly formed Radio Clube, and a new private radio broadcasting service was instituted with the use of a small amateur transmitter donated by Jose Ferreira. Across the water in Lourenço Marques in Portuguese Mozambique, another Radio Clube had been established in 1935 – Radio Clube de Mozambique, with the primary purpose of broadcasting in English to South Africa. But this Radio Clube, in Goa, mostly broadcast in Portuguese and the local
Konkani language.
The date of the first radio transmission from this new station was May 28, 1946, and the territorial Governor-General issued a postage stamp on the same day to commemorate the event. It’s said that the first improvised microphone was encased in a coconut shell. (I wonder if that improved the acoustics?) Two years later, in 1948, a more substantial radio broadcasting station was erected with the studios and transmitter co-sited on the rise of a hill at Altinho overlooking the capital city, which under the Portuguese administration was called Panjim. The name for this new service was Emissora de Goa. The transmitter was a 500 watt shortwave unit manufactured by the American Federal Telephone & Radio Corporation of Clifton, New Jersey in the United States, and it was fed into a locally-
made power amplifier which raised the output power to the aerial to 1 kW.
The original channel was 7230 kHz in the 41 meter band, though soon afterwards, the operating frequency was moved to the more familiar 9610 kHz in the 31 meter band. This station was widely reported in several countries of Europe, as well as in the United States and the South Pacific, and numerous QSL letters and cards were issued in confirmation of listener reception reports. In 1950, a medium wave transmitter was installed at the studio location and this operated with 2.5 kW on 557 kHz. At that stage also, regular callsigns were introduced and assigned to this radio broadcasting service by the authorities in Lisbon. The call for the medium wave outlet was listed as CR8AA, and the shortwave outlet was identified as CR8AB. You may recall that Radio Clube de Moçambique had previously been assigned CR7AA, so these new call signs were presumably the next in the series.
In 1952, four years after the station was launched at Altinho, a second transmitter site was constructed three miles south at a more rural location known as Bambolim. The first transmitter installed there was a shortwave unit rated at 7.5 kW. Seven years later, a 10 kW shortwave transmitter was also installed at this location, as well as two medium wave transmitters rated at 5 and 10 kW. While programming on Emissora de Goa was mainly in Portuguese, there was at least one English program, because the Seventh Day Adventist church began a regular series of broadcasts on this station – their first in Asia. The program was the "Voice of Prophecy", recorded by the illustrious Dr. H. M. S. Richards in California.
Programs were supplied on large 18 inch discs, and they were on the air each
Sunday for half an hour. "Voice of Prophecy" was the first syndicated Christian religious broadcast from Emissora de Goa, and it was carried by CR8AA with 2.5 kW on 557 kHz, and CR8AB with 1 kW on 9610 kHz. The first broadcast of this program took place on Sunday, April 30, 1950, and it was on the air for coverage into India on and off throughout the period from 1950-1954. After that, the broadcasts were switched to the Commercial Service of Radio Ceylon in Colombo.
But, trouble was brewing for Portuguese Goa, and on Monday December 18, 1961, Emissora de Goa left the air abruptly at 8:00 am. Tired of being rebuffed by Portugal, the Indian government launched an air force bombing raid against Goa. The station at Bambolim was attacked, and an aerial photograph shows the whole facility burning furiously. Goa was taken over the next day, Tuesday December 19, 1961, and the process began to annex the territory and absorb it into the independent nation of India. At the time of the takeover, Emissora de Goa had been on the air with a total of six transmitters – 1 MW and 2 FM at the original Altinho site, and another MW plus 2 SW at Bambolim.
The small capital city of Panjim was then renamed Panaji in the local Konkani language. Work commenced immediately on the restoration of the radio broadcasting stations. No damage had been done to the studio facility at Altinho, though at least one of the transmitter buildings at Bambolim had suffered a massive fire.
Amazingly, just three weeks later, at 6:00 pm on Wednesday, January 10, 1962, Emissora de Goa was reactivated under All India Radio using a temporary low-power transmitter on 880 kHz. A speech was broadcast from the new military governor, Major General K. P. Candeth. Curiously, the station slogan, remained in use as the local identification announcement for more than another four years. Then, on October 12, 1966, the Portuguese "Emissora" identification was finally dropped, and the station announcement was changed to All India Radio, Panaji.
Eventually, the 50 kW shortwave transmitter at Bambolim was reactivated for the broadcast of the General Overseas Service of All India Radio in the Konkani language, beamed towards Africa. This service was on the air at 1815 UTC on 11780 kHz and the programming included news, folk dramas, request songs, and other feature programs. External Service programming in the Konkani language had been on the air previously from this transmitter under Emissora de Goa, and it would appear that the revived Konkani programming was indeed coming from Goa itself. On May 22, 1969, a new 10 kW medium wave transmitter tuned to 880 kHz was inaugurated at Bambolim; and since then, additional medium wave, FM and TV transmitters were installed in Goa, but not for any revived local shortwave service.
The studio building was renovated and enlarged, and then more recently, new studio buildings were erected. In 1992, All India Radio built a large high-powered shortwave station for General Overseas Service programming at Bambolim, adjacent to the old transmitter facilityof Emissora de Goa. Two 250 kW transmitters and a new antenna farm were installed, to facilitate broadcasts to foreign countries to the northwest, northeast and southeast.
The first test transmissions were heard in November 1994 on 4775 kHz, and by February 1995 the transmitters were on a regular schedule, which included the relay of programming from the local medium wave station in Panaji which by then was on 1287 kHz.
On Adrian Peterson’s last visit to Goa some years ago, he found that the studios and offices on the hill overlooking Panaji had been rebuilt twice and were in use by All India Radio, now Akashvani. The newer shortwave base at Bambolim with two 250 kW transmitters was at that time still being used for the AIR General Overseas Service. But all that was left of the old Emissora de Goa transmitter buildings was some wreckage, completely overgrown by grass and other vegetation.
The 2024 World Radio TV Handbook does still show two medium wave transmitters on the air in Goa, the Akashvani Vividh Bharati channel with 20 kW on 828 kHz, and Akashvani’s ‘Panaji A’ service with 100 kW on 1287 kHz, in both analog and DRM modes. The latter is also carried in parallel with 10 kW on 101.1 FM, along with a ‘Panaji B’ service with 6 kW on 105.4 FM. Private FM stations listed in Goa currently include:
Radio Indigo on 91.9, and
Big FM on 92.7.
There are no longer any shortwave transmitters in Goa, nor any External Service broadcasts in the Konkani language.
Back to you, Jeff.
(Wavescan 11/10/2024)
