Eumoritonian Broadcasting Corporation

The Eumoritonian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC) was the government-funded broadcaster for the Flarlandian insular overseas territory of Eumoritown, operating from 3 March 1956 to 23 September 2012.

History[edit | edit source]

Radio came slightly late to Eumoritown, with the Flarlandian government starting a "call for mass communication" in Eumoritown. Up until that point, Eumoritown was served mainly by shortwave broadcasts, with those being from the NBS and the Voice of Flarland. A transmitter was set up in 1955 and the license was given to the Eumoritonian Broadcasting Corporation in September 1955. Radio broadcasts started on 3 March 1956, initially for two hours a day.

EBC broadcast mainly local programming, though sometimes programming from Flarland was sent in by plane to the Henleys and would later be travelled over to Eumoritown by ferry. It also offered the island's first daily news service, nightly at 8pm. As the broadcasting hours increased, further news bulletins were added, airing at irregular times instead of airing at the top of every hour, as was the style at the time.

During the 1960s it started relaying some programming from FBC Radio's Home Service more regularly but geographical blocades were challenging to deliver programming live. Sometimes it had to relay programming from Radio Henleys, which was also responsible for relaying some programming to Yawnaro.

Television also arrived fashionably late. The first broadcast was on 9 May 1994. The Flarlandian government issued television licenses in 1992, and, similarly, the EBC won the license.

Cancellation of license and replacement[edit | edit source]

In 2009, the Eumoritonian government started reviewing the local media industry. EPBC was winning after only four years on air on television, also the growth of Flarlandian metropolitan services from IBC have contributed for the lack of popularity of the EBC. Having held a radio monopoly for forty years and a television monopoly for about a decade, the Eumoritonian government said that the EBC was "lacking vision" and "disguises itself as a commercial broadcaster thus neglecting the mission it adopted when it started broadcasting". The move of some of the channel's most popular imported programming to Eco-Paradise Television didn't help.

EBC refused to air the 2010 World Cup in Vera Cruz and was in negotiations with the government to help continue broadcasting, but this eventually failed. As a countermeasure, on January 11, 2011, the Eumoritonian government announced that the EBC would be dissolved "in due time" and would be replaced by a new provider, Eumorimedia. The launch of Eumorimedia was initially supposed to be in January of 2013, two years after the Public Services Act, however, in August of 2012, it was announced that the launch was pushed back to September 2012. The reason why was because the EBC, had it continued broadcasting through to the end of the year, would still operate on a loss.

On September 22, 2012, the EBC shut down all of its operations shortly before midnight. Eumorimedia has taken the operations ever since. The last words seen on the television channel were the words "It's over. Thank you for everything!" over color bars before the signal was cut off at 23:57.