ISLAMABAD: The BBC Urdu service on Saturday announced ending its radio news bulletins in Pakistan, after keeping the masses informed through these broadcasts for around two decades.
The BBC Urdu service presented its last radio news bulletin Saturday evening and with that announced an end to it.
Asif Farooqi, editor of the BBC Urdu service, said BBC transmissions would not be available now on radio, but it didn't mean the broadcaster was ending its "relationship with audio."
"The Urdu service is entering a new phase... this infrastructure you see will remain here and we will use this infrastructure to transmit audio to you in a digital way," Farooqi said in a video shared on BBC Urdu's website.
The video featured some other BBC staffers, who shared their thoughts about these bulletins and their discontinuation.
Mehwish Hussain, a BBC Urdu service employee, said the beginning of FM bulletins was also the beginning of her career with the Pakistan regional service.
"It was a very exciting thing when we launched these bulletins in 2004. It was such a novelty and such a successful product, which became popular very quickly," she said.
"I feel a real sense of pride that I was one of the people who launched the bulletins."
Saad Sohail, another BBC staffer, said they realized the responsibility whenever they sat in front of the mic for these bulletins.
"This journey was also more important because when people wrote letters from Balochistan and those far-flung areas, and said they recognize our voice, then one feels that joy that we were able to disseminate information that could not reach them through the mainstream media," Sohail said.
Farooqi said the broadcaster could launch podcasts and audio stories in the future, for which it was in the process of devising a strategy.
