VSB Radio will cease broadcasting at 5pm tomorrow.

The organisation, which has provided local news since 1981, pointed to its struggles in the face of competition for advertising from social media and fellow radio stations.

It said in a statement: “Sadly, despite the support of listeners and advertisers and the offering of the island’s best news programming, it has not been possible to achieve a viable commercial model with the ability to survive and expand. The excessive number of local radio stations has also made it difficult to attract sufficient advertising support.

“Consequently, VSB Radio will cease broadcasting at 5pm on Sunday, September 17. The community should take this news as another wake-up call to the increasing difficulty that the print and broadcast media are having in remaining afloat in the face of the turn to advertising on social media.”

Veteran journalist Bryan Darby, 78, who has worked in the Bermuda media for 57 years, said the loss of VSB will be a further blow to an island in which traditional news sources are under threat from “fake news” on social media and openly biased radio talk shows.

Mr Darby said he felt bitter that the retail industry had not been prepared to support the station by advertising.

“If ten local businesses had each put in $100 a week, we would still be going,” Mr Darby said.

“You would think the advertisers would have a little more guts, and realise this is an important part of Bermuda.

“We did an awful lot of things that we are proud of, and we kept thinking we will turn the

corner, but we never quite made it.”

DeFontes Radio and TV companies, which ran VSB, closed two years ago, but Mr Darby and a small group of management and staff undertook to keep it on the air and to provide broadcasting on MIX 106FM and the BBC channel.

In a press release yesterday, owner Kenneth DeFontes thanked those four people — Ted Pitman, Chris Lodge, Mr Darby and Peter Cattell — for their heroic efforts in creating “The Miracle on Reid Street”.