Wild west radio

Radio Today reports that Total Star Radio has fallen foul of Ofcom - again - this time for pumping too much power through its transmitter at North Hill, near Minehead.  Way too much power: Ofcom says "This case is the most serious example of an unauthorised increase in transmitter power ever recorded by Ofcom.  The extent to which the unauthorised replacement transmitter exceeded the technical parameters is greater than in any other case Ofcom has dealt with".

Ofcom engineers found the music was being blasted out with nearly 30kw of juice, rather than the permitted 4kw. It's hard to imagine that Total Star didn't know what it was doing - they either spent too much on a bigger transmitter than was allowed, or ignored a large friendly knob which sets the power on a variable machine.

In July last year, Ofcom found that Total Star had failed to meet their commitment to hourly news bulletins in a sample monitoring; and in October, ruled that on-air promotion for the unlikely sounding car dealers, Fish Brothers Renault, had gone too far.

MD of the operation is one Brett Orchard.  Is it possible he's related to that scion of commercial broadcasting, Steve Orchard, of GWR, Classic FM and GCap Radio ?  Steve now runs Touch FM from an industrial estate in Stratford-upon-Avon. I hope he knows the correct settings for his transmitters.