But surely the ita could have created an ITV channel that was a nationwide franchise and used the frequencies that later became channel 4? That would obviously have meant that channel 4 itself would never have existed but at the same time a 4th channel would have come to being earlier perhaps?
''Only the existence of two directly competing companies in each service area could fully secure 'adequate competition'. However, the frequencies which the (ITA) was granted were sufficient only to enable it to cover the whole country with a single network of stations.The Authority might have introduced direct competition in certain areas by building two stations, but at the cost of leaving other areas without even one ITA service.''
A triple itv overlap? They were rare! Whereabouts ( obviously only very roughly) were you?
Not that rare.
In Cambridge we could pick up Anglia (from 2 different transmitters) VHF 6 from Sandy Heath & 11 from Mendlesham (We actually had a Band III aerial pointing at Mendlesham, but when Sandy Heath came on air found we could recieve it on the back end), London VHF 9 from Croydon & ATV Midlands (later became Central) and, in some parts of the city Yorkshire TV, didn't have aerials for the latter 2.
Even on UHF as well as VHF, in fact I used to pick up (very grainy pictures) on a very carefully placed set-top aerial from London and later Yorkshire (for overnight recording of Music Box).
I then installed loft mounted aerials and amplifiers for UHF London & Central to recieve grainy (but much less so) reception.
It needed an act of parliament to create Channel 4, just as it would to have been needed to create 'ITV 2'
That was definitely what ITV was pushing for in the 70's- but they couldn't legally go ahead and do it.
Ah I see so a TV channel literally needed to be agreed at that level rather than like today where the broadcasters just apply to Ofcom for a licence and then if they are good enough Ofcom just say yes or close enough to that.
Officially itv did not become channel 3 until the Broadcasting Act 1990, and the Channel 3 name was actually used by Tyne Tees and to a lesser extent by Yorkshire Television in the 1990's
This is the best answer to the question. It was usually on the third button on UHF sets, it just made sense to have BBC2 on button 2. It made no odds on how accessible any of the 3 channels were.
The 4th channel was in the pipeline for a long time, and the UHF band plan was always designed for 4 channels, hence the ITV2 button, it just took a long time to come to agreement on how it would be run.
Having that extra ITV2 button came in handy for a neighbouring region, even though the picture may have been grainy, it was still worth having it because of the number of regional variations. And with 8 buttons you can have a full alternative set of channels ready if there was a transmitter breakdown.
In the sixties most regions of ITV were not called ITV by the locals. We had a choice of "Southern" or "London" (problem with any other name because of weekend change of company). In Norfolk it would be BBC or Anglia.
Ah I see so a TV channel literally needed to be agreed at that level rather than like today where the broadcasters just apply to Ofcom for a licence and then if they are good enough Ofcom just say yes or close enough to that.
In the analogue days, a single national TV channel would consume a large amount
of VHF, and even more UHF spectrum. A whole network of transmitters had to be provided, hideously expensive. The UK was the only country in Europe to squeeze four channels into UHF. There were only 44 allocations available, and of course 1150 transmitters, so filling up that last slot took years of procrastination.
Today, to launch a national TV channel you just find a bit of bandwidth on a mux (normally at the expense of the others on the mux) !
In the sixties most regions of ITV were not called ITV by the locals. We had a choice of "Southern" or "London" (problem with any other name because of weekend change of company). In Norfolk it would be BBC or Anglia.
Not just in the sixties. Have noticed since moving to North East many folks still say Tyne Tees and not Itv,and not just old ones!
My dear old mum still calls ITV "Yorkshire".
We used to get YTV and Tyne Tees in Scarborough for many years.
When I moved to Lincoln I got Carlton-Central and YTV,
I moved to London and got Anglia and Carlton.
I'm back in Scarborough now and receive ITV Yorkshire! That's it!! At least we still get the old 'Calendar' local news anyway!
Also, I don't know why manufacturers had so many channel buttons. AFAIK UHF analogue was only designed for/capable of four channels (they had to retune video recorders and put up with reduced coverage to squeeze in a fifth).
When i moved into my first house we had the old Radio Rentals cable with a VHF/UHF converter box, so all of our channels were used and individually tuned to the main 4 channels (well 5 if you include TVS and Thames/LWT) as well as Sky Channel, Super Channel, Premier, TCC, Lifestyle, ScreenSport, Music Box and Bravo.
I *think* it was an attempt to try and stop interference from stations on adjacent channels from other transmitters - don't forget, a VHF signal can often go much further than a UHF one. That's why for BBC1 on 405, just the Holme Moss transmitter was necessary to cover from about mid-Lincolnshire to the North Wales coast with few relays necessary, whereas on UHF, to cover the same area you have to have two, maybe three, main transmitters (Winter Hill and Emley Moor and possibly Bilsdale as well) plus hundreds of relays. (Although ITV 405 had to use two transmitters - Winter Hill and Emley Moor, as it was almost impossible to find a site like Holme Moss that could cover both sides of the Pennines from just one transmitter, and Holme Moss couldn't support the weight of the new ITV aerials).
E.g. to try and stop cross-channel interference from both the Lichfield (ITV Midlands on VHF channel 8) and Winter Hill (ITV North West on channel 9), the "increments" on turret (and incremental) tuners were spaced 5MHz apart, apart from between Channels 1 and 2, where it was wider
Also, I don't know why manufacturers had so many channel buttons. AFAIK UHF analogue was only designed for/capable of four channels (they had to retune video recorders and put up with reduced coverage to squeeze in a fifth).
Possibly in casse the user could receive more than one BBC or ITV region.
Not much use around here (N. E. Derbyshire) at the time, though. Before the Belmont and Bilsdale transmitter reallocation in 1974, we could receive 4 ITV regions!
ATV (Lichfield and Waltham transmitters) - 405 and colour 625
Yorkshire TV (Emley Moor 405/625 and Bilsdale 625) - 405 and colour 625
Tyne Tees (Burnhope) - 405 only
and Anglia (Belmont) - 405 and 625 colour.
Obviously with the transmitter reallocation we lost Anglia as Belmont switched to Yorkshire, but we gained a colour Tyne Tees service as Bilsdale switched to Tyne Tees. Then of course, after 1981, we could get Central from the Midlands transmitters.
I *think* it was an attempt to try and stop interference from stations on adjacent channels from other transmitters - don't forget, a VHF signal can often go much further than a UHF one. That's why for BBC1 on 405, just the Holme Moss transmitter was necessary to cover from about mid-Lincolnshire to the North Wales coast with few relays necessary, whereas on UHF, to cover the same area you have to have two, maybe three, main transmitters (Winter Hill and Emley Moor and possibly Bilsdale as well) plus hundreds of relays. (Although ITV 405 had to use two transmitters - Winter Hill and Emley Moor, as it was almost impossible to find a site like Holme Moss that could cover both sides of the Pennines from just one transmitter, and Holme Moss couldn't support the weight of the new ITV aerials).
That was one reason, but the main reason was that Band III transmissions were a higher frequency (and therefore a shorter range) than Band I.
Therefore two sites had to be employed for ITV in Northern England (same situation
in SW England, Caradon and Stockland Hill for ITV, North Hessary Tor for BBC)
BBC were mainly in Band I, ITV were solely in Band III
E.g. to try and stop cross-channel interference from both the Lichfield (ITV Midlands on VHF channel 8) and Winter Hill (ITV North West on channel 9), the "increments" on turret (and incremental) tuners were spaced 5MHz apart, apart from between Channels 1 and 2, where it was wider
Channel spacing was exactly the same for Band I Chs 2-5 and all of Band III (System A UK) 5 MHz, it was only the spacing between Ch 1 and 2 in Band I that was wider (6.75MHz), as a legacy from the original Ally Pally Tx that had double sidebands. When that moved to Crystal Palace it switched to vestigial sideband, but the wider gap remained.
However, as far as adjacent channel interference was concerned, you'd have been worse off with a turret tuner, because there'd have been no fine adjustment possible ?
Why was it seen as such a bad thing to name ITV as channel 3? Even if the general public didn't care for the name at that time, if it had been pushed through all over the country, come today itv would have labeled the whole network as only channel 3 and would have created conformity with channels 4 and 5!
It wasn't so bad here in Yorkshire - Yorkshire TV still kept the Yorkshire Television logo and branding with a golden "3". However, for a while, Tyne Tees lost their distinctive "TTTV" logo and earned the name "Channel 3 North East", with "Tyne Tees Television" relegated to lettering at the bottom of the ident.
Possibly in casse the user could receive more than one BBC or ITV region.
Not much use around here (N. E. Derbyshire) at the time, though. Before the Belmont and Bilsdale transmitter reallocation in 1974, we could receive 4 ITV regions!
ATV (Lichfield and Waltham transmitters) - 405 and colour 625
Yorkshire TV (Emley Moor 405/625 and Bilsdale 625) - 405 and colour 625
Tyne Tees (Burnhope) - 405 only
and Anglia (Belmont) - 405 and 625 colour.
Obviously with the transmitter reallocation we lost Anglia as Belmont switched to Yorkshire, but we gained a colour Tyne Tees service as Bilsdale switched to Tyne Tees. Then of course, after 1981, we could get Central from the Midlands transmitters.
Where does this myth come from, Bilsdale never carried YTV, it was Tyne Tees from the outset (March 71)
And often the VHF turret tuner would be only fitted with the channels needed in that particularly area.
Sometimes they had the numbers in numerical order. The obvious problem with this is in all areas, to switch from BBC1 to ITV, you had to go through several other channels on the tuner.
So, to resolve this, another kind had a seemingly random order of numbers from 1-13. In actual fact, the channel numbers were "paired" - e.g. 1, 9, 2, 10, 4, 8 etc so you only had to change from one number to the other, which meant just one push of the tuning dial. In this instance, 1 and 9 were for the Crystal Palace and Croydon frequencies, 9 and 2 for the Winter Hill and Holme Moss ones, 2 and 10 for Holme Moss and Emley Moor, 4 and 8 for Sutton Coldfield and Lichfield etc.
The third kind, as used on some sets, merely had positions labelled "BBC" and "ITA/ITV", with no numbers, with the relevant tuning biscuits and coils fitted by the retailer of the TV set in the area in which the TV is sold.
However, as far as adjacent channel interference was concerned, you'd have been worse off with a turret tuner, because there'd have been no fine adjustment possible ?
All turret tuner and incremental tuner sets had fine tuning of some form - usually to make up for slight instabilities in the set, particularly the RF and IF stages. Nothing fancy, just an air dielectric tunable capacitor usually located on the RF mixer valve.
The third kind, as used on some sets, merely had positions labelled "BBC" and "ITA/ITV", with no numbers, with the relevant tuning biscuits and coils fitted by the retailer of the TV set in the area in which the TV is sold.
Which is what we had- a Murphy set with the controls in the roof- so 5 year old me couldn't get at them.
Unfortunately, as I grew older, it meant I was unable to investigate the joys of ATV (Midlands) and Southern, because it was left for BBC, and right for ITA.
In fact, the set could also receive radio as well.
As that's on Transdiffusion, I have no doubt but to believe it.
And another website with the history of each ITV company, that seems to have closed several years ago, mentioned Yorkshire TV initially having the Bilsdale transmitter to themselves.
Which is what we had- a Murphy set with the controls in the roof- so 5 year old me couldn't get at them.
Unfortunately, as I grew older, it meant I was unable to investigate the joys of ATV (Midlands) and Southern, because it was left for BBC, and right for ITA.
In fact, the set could also receive radio as well.
If it was a "barrel" set, it was either a Murphy V330, V430 or V530. Of those three, I have an example of the radio-less version, the V310, awaiting restoration.
As that's on Transdiffusion, I have no doubt but to believe it.
And another website with the history of each ITV company, that seems to have closed several years ago, mentioned Yorkshire TV initially having the Bilsdale transmitter to themselves.
I don't think it's correct (and yes, Transdiffusion is a reliable site I agree, but I'm pretty sure they're wrong on this occasion)
Comments
Southern from Chillerton Down might have been tricky, but ATV from Membury did
reach areas SE of Bristol
http://www.pembers.freeserve.co.uk/405-Lines/Midlands.gif
http://www.pembers.freeserve.co.uk/405-Lines/SSE.gif
''Only the existence of two directly competing companies in each service area could fully secure 'adequate competition'. However, the frequencies which the (ITA) was granted were sufficient only to enable it to cover the whole country with a single network of stations.The Authority might have introduced direct competition in certain areas by building two stations, but at the cost of leaving other areas without even one ITA service.''
ITA Handbook 1963
And often the VHF turret tuner would be only fitted with the channels needed in that particularly area.
Not that rare.
In Cambridge we could pick up Anglia (from 2 different transmitters) VHF 6 from Sandy Heath & 11 from Mendlesham (We actually had a Band III aerial pointing at Mendlesham, but when Sandy Heath came on air found we could recieve it on the back end), London VHF 9 from Croydon & ATV Midlands (later became Central) and, in some parts of the city Yorkshire TV, didn't have aerials for the latter 2.
Even on UHF as well as VHF, in fact I used to pick up (very grainy pictures) on a very carefully placed set-top aerial from London and later Yorkshire (for overnight recording of Music Box).
I then installed loft mounted aerials and amplifiers for UHF London & Central to recieve grainy (but much less so) reception.
Ah I see so a TV channel literally needed to be agreed at that level rather than like today where the broadcasters just apply to Ofcom for a licence and then if they are good enough Ofcom just say yes or close enough to that.
This is the best answer to the question. It was usually on the third button on UHF sets, it just made sense to have BBC2 on button 2. It made no odds on how accessible any of the 3 channels were.
The 4th channel was in the pipeline for a long time, and the UHF band plan was always designed for 4 channels, hence the ITV2 button, it just took a long time to come to agreement on how it would be run.
Having that extra ITV2 button came in handy for a neighbouring region, even though the picture may have been grainy, it was still worth having it because of the number of regional variations. And with 8 buttons you can have a full alternative set of channels ready if there was a transmitter breakdown.
Cool I didn't know Pembers was back up and running again!
In the analogue days, a single national TV channel would consume a large amount
of VHF, and even more UHF spectrum. A whole network of transmitters had to be provided, hideously expensive. The UK was the only country in Europe to squeeze four channels into UHF. There were only 44 allocations available, and of course 1150 transmitters, so filling up that last slot took years of procrastination.
Today, to launch a national TV channel you just find a bit of bandwidth on a mux (normally at the expense of the others on the mux) !
Not just in the sixties. Have noticed since moving to North East many folks still say Tyne Tees and not Itv,and not just old ones!
We used to get YTV and Tyne Tees in Scarborough for many years.
When I moved to Lincoln I got Carlton-Central and YTV,
I moved to London and got Anglia and Carlton.
I'm back in Scarborough now and receive ITV Yorkshire! That's it!! At least we still get the old 'Calendar' local news anyway!
When i moved into my first house we had the old Radio Rentals cable with a VHF/UHF converter box, so all of our channels were used and individually tuned to the main 4 channels (well 5 if you include TVS and Thames/LWT) as well as Sky Channel, Super Channel, Premier, TCC, Lifestyle, ScreenSport, Music Box and Bravo.
I *think* it was an attempt to try and stop interference from stations on adjacent channels from other transmitters - don't forget, a VHF signal can often go much further than a UHF one. That's why for BBC1 on 405, just the Holme Moss transmitter was necessary to cover from about mid-Lincolnshire to the North Wales coast with few relays necessary, whereas on UHF, to cover the same area you have to have two, maybe three, main transmitters (Winter Hill and Emley Moor and possibly Bilsdale as well) plus hundreds of relays. (Although ITV 405 had to use two transmitters - Winter Hill and Emley Moor, as it was almost impossible to find a site like Holme Moss that could cover both sides of the Pennines from just one transmitter, and Holme Moss couldn't support the weight of the new ITV aerials).
E.g. to try and stop cross-channel interference from both the Lichfield (ITV Midlands on VHF channel 8) and Winter Hill (ITV North West on channel 9), the "increments" on turret (and incremental) tuners were spaced 5MHz apart, apart from between Channels 1 and 2, where it was wider
Possibly in casse the user could receive more than one BBC or ITV region.
Not much use around here (N. E. Derbyshire) at the time, though. Before the Belmont and Bilsdale transmitter reallocation in 1974, we could receive 4 ITV regions!
ATV (Lichfield and Waltham transmitters) - 405 and colour 625
Yorkshire TV (Emley Moor 405/625 and Bilsdale 625) - 405 and colour 625
Tyne Tees (Burnhope) - 405 only
and Anglia (Belmont) - 405 and 625 colour.
Obviously with the transmitter reallocation we lost Anglia as Belmont switched to Yorkshire, but we gained a colour Tyne Tees service as Bilsdale switched to Tyne Tees. Then of course, after 1981, we could get Central from the Midlands transmitters.
That was one reason, but the main reason was that Band III transmissions were a higher frequency (and therefore a shorter range) than Band I.
Therefore two sites had to be employed for ITV in Northern England (same situation
in SW England, Caradon and Stockland Hill for ITV, North Hessary Tor for BBC)
BBC were mainly in Band I, ITV were solely in Band III
Channel spacing was exactly the same for Band I Chs 2-5 and all of Band III (System A UK) 5 MHz, it was only the spacing between Ch 1 and 2 in Band I that was wider (6.75MHz), as a legacy from the original Ally Pally Tx that had double sidebands. When that moved to Crystal Palace it switched to vestigial sideband, but the wider gap remained.
However, as far as adjacent channel interference was concerned, you'd have been worse off with a turret tuner, because there'd have been no fine adjustment possible ?
It wasn't so bad here in Yorkshire - Yorkshire TV still kept the Yorkshire Television logo and branding with a golden "3". However, for a while, Tyne Tees lost their distinctive "TTTV" logo and earned the name "Channel 3 North East", with "Tyne Tees Television" relegated to lettering at the bottom of the ident.
Where does this myth come from, Bilsdale never carried YTV, it was Tyne Tees from the outset (March 71)
What about us? As detailed above, we had a *quadruple* ITV overlap!
We were quite literally spoilt for choice!
ATV from Ridge Hill would have been easier. Possibly also Southern from Hannington.
Sometimes they had the numbers in numerical order. The obvious problem with this is in all areas, to switch from BBC1 to ITV, you had to go through several other channels on the tuner.
So, to resolve this, another kind had a seemingly random order of numbers from 1-13. In actual fact, the channel numbers were "paired" - e.g. 1, 9, 2, 10, 4, 8 etc so you only had to change from one number to the other, which meant just one push of the tuning dial. In this instance, 1 and 9 were for the Crystal Palace and Croydon frequencies, 9 and 2 for the Winter Hill and Holme Moss ones, 2 and 10 for Holme Moss and Emley Moor, 4 and 8 for Sutton Coldfield and Lichfield etc.
The third kind, as used on some sets, merely had positions labelled "BBC" and "ITA/ITV", with no numbers, with the relevant tuning biscuits and coils fitted by the retailer of the TV set in the area in which the TV is sold.
All turret tuner and incremental tuner sets had fine tuning of some form - usually to make up for slight instabilities in the set, particularly the RF and IF stages. Nothing fancy, just an air dielectric tunable capacitor usually located on the RF mixer valve.
Which is what we had- a Murphy set with the controls in the roof- so 5 year old me couldn't get at them.
Unfortunately, as I grew older, it meant I was unable to investigate the joys of ATV (Midlands) and Southern, because it was left for BBC, and right for ITA.
In fact, the set could also receive radio as well.
Paragraph 4 here:
http://www.transdiffusion.org/2004/02/02/trident
As that's on Transdiffusion, I have no doubt but to believe it.
And another website with the history of each ITV company, that seems to have closed several years ago, mentioned Yorkshire TV initially having the Bilsdale transmitter to themselves.
If it was a "barrel" set, it was either a Murphy V330, V430 or V530. Of those three, I have an example of the radio-less version, the V310, awaiting restoration.
I don't think it's correct (and yes, Transdiffusion is a reliable site I agree, but I'm pretty sure they're wrong on this occasion)