Prime Minister Khaleda Zia will inaugurate the transmission from Rampura Television Centre at 7:00pm, BTV Director General Mustafizur Rahman said.

The inauguration will be followed by a cultural show BTV will broadcast live from 7:00pm to 8:30pm, Rahman told Star City.

BTV planned to go on satellite transmission on December 25, 2003 but put it off to April 11 as it missed several deadlines because of technical setbacks.

According to a contract, BTV will have to pay a yearly rent of Tk 1.75 crore to AsiaSat 3 for 24-hour satellite transmission. An earth uplink station and other equipment have been installed at a cost of Tk 3.75 crore.

BTV will use the Band C of AsiaSat 3 satellite that covers New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Asia, Middle East, Western Europe and CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) countries.

"People in those regions will be able to watch BTV World. We are going on air with our canned programmes to start with … but we will design a slot for new programmes in phases," Rahman said.

"We are understaffed and run short of technical facilities like camera and editing panels for satellite transmission … all are now engaged in terrestrial programmes," he said.

BTV will gain ground on Bangla-speaking viewers in other countries, but Bangalees overseas are not able to watch all Bangladeshi satellite channels because of government policy, cable operators' interest and technical problems. "We plan to produce programmes in English for the international audience," the DG said.

BTV continues terrestrial transmission 14:30 hours, with the first run from 7:00am to 9:30am and the second from 12:00 noon to 12 midnight. For satellite transmission, the programme department will have to fill a 9:30-hour slot to carry on 24 hours.

The programme department planned to fill the slot with 'canned programmes' from the BTV archive, new programmes and updates of English and Bangla bulletins.

BTV will transmit the programmes of terrestrial transmission from 7:00am to 9:00am, a mix of new and old canned programmes from 9:00am to 12:00 midnight, including band music, folk songs, drama and other entertainment programmes, and archived programmes from 12:00 midnight to 7:00am.

The schedule will be different on Friday when BTV will continue terrestrial and satellite transmissions from 7:00am to 12:00 noon, satellite transmission from 12:00 noon to 3:00pm, terrestrial programmes from 3:00pm to 12:00 midnight and satellite transmission from 12:00 midnight to 7:00am.