weekday on VSB's Channel 11, will stay on the air despite reports that the TV operation was to be put out of business in just over a week.

The news came from Monitor television's chairman Mr. John Hoagland, who said yesterday that there would be no changes in the foreseeable future and programming would remain on the air.

The Boston-based network, owned by the Christian Science Church, was put up for sale on March 9, the same day a shakeup in the church administration was announced. The moves followed reports the church had borrowed $41.5 million from its pension fund to underwrite The Christian Science Monitor newspaper and the Monitor Channel, along with $20 million from its endowment and $5 million left by founder Mary Baker Eddy in her will.

The controversy was exacerbated by the church's publication of a book comparing Eddy to Jesus Christ, contrary to official doctrine. Critics charged the book, which had been rejected by the church in 1947, was published so the board could get its hands on $97 million left it by the author. The bequest now is mired in the California courts.

Yesterday Mr. Kenneth DeFontes, president of DeFontes Broadcasting, which owns Channel 11, said there had been a lot of positive feedback about the channel's programming, adding that the aim was to provide more news and information rather than entertainment.

The Monitor Channel, which began broadcasting in May in the US and came on the air in January in Bermuda, cost $250 million to launch and is losing $4 million a month, church officials have said. It has about four million cable subscribers, plus two million viewers who receive the programmes on the church-owned WQTV-Channel 68 in Boston.

Monitor television's vice president Ms Florence Tambone could not say yesterday whether or not buyers for the network had been found.

The church has other media interests, including the Christian Science Monitor , World Monitor Magazine , public radio and shortwave radio.