Thousands of homes in the Keighley, Shipley and Baildon areas suffered a television blackout due to cable work being carried out at the Keighley transmitter.

Many viewers were left fuming as up to 136,000 homes in the district were unable to receive transmissions between 8am and 5.30pm yesterday.

Further disruption was expected today.

The shut-down was due to the installation of a new antenna system at the transmitter for digital channels.

Kenneth Till, 74, of Nab Wood, said: "No one knew what was going on and people kept ringing each other up to see if anybody else knew.

"We had no warning that this was going to happen."

Maureen Pickering, 77, of Shipley, added: "I was flummoxed as to what was going on.

"When I switched on for the One O' Clock news, all I got was a black and white fuzzy picture on BBC1 and nothing on the other channels at all."

A spokesperson for transmission company NTL, which is installing the system, said: "The work has been scheduled to take place between May 18 and 21, depending on weather conditions.

"It means there will be 12 to 15 hours of shut down of all channels in the area while we install the new system.

"Around 136,000 homes will be affected by the work, which hopefully should be finished today."

The NTL spokesman said it was the responsibility of the broadcasting companies to let the public know if transmissions were going to be affected.

A Yorkshire Television spokesman said: "The regional news programs on Tuesday evening talked about the shut down for the following day.

"There were announcements during GMTV regional news bulletins on Wednesday morning and also it was run on Teletext.

"Last night during the Calendar news program there was a new story saying that the work would have to continue for a certain amount of time today."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.