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)
By 1970/1 or whenever Bilsdale came on air, I was old enough to be taking an interest on things like this, and I, too, am of the opinion that I'm 95% certain Bilsdale was Tyne Tees from the outset. There were plenty of Engineering announcements just prior to Belmont being reassigned to Yorksire- but I don't ever remember any such announcements (either during Mondays Announcements- or in written form) of Bilsdale changing from Yorkshire to Tyne Tees. Fairly sure that is wrong (but not my region- so can't be 100%)
By 1970/1 or whenever Bilsdale came on air, I was old enough to be taking an interest on things like this, and I, too, am of the opinion that I'm 95% certain Bilsdale was Tyne Tees from the outset. There were plenty of Engineering announcements just prior to Belmont being reassigned to Yorksire- but I don't ever remember any such announcements (either during Mondays Announcements- or in written form) of Bilsdale changing from Yorkshire to Tyne Tees. Fairly sure that is wrong (but not my region- so can't be 100%)
It was TTTV from the outset, elsewhere on the Transduffusion website are these scans
from the 1971 ITA Yearbook
The Transdiffusion article referenced does not say that Yorkshire was actually transmitted from Bilsdale but that this was the intention of the ITA at some time in the late 1960s, prior to it entering service.
It was considered again for 1974, in the guise of using Bilsdale for Tyne-Tees northwards and YTV southwards. Frequencies were available but this in the end didn't happen.
The decision to switch Belmont in 1974 to YTV from Anglia was made as early as 1970.
The Transdiffusion article referenced does not say that Yorkshire was actually transmitted from Bilsdale but that this was the intention of the ITA at some time in the late 1960s, prior to it entering service.
It was considered again for 1974, in the guise of using Bilsdale for Tyne-Tees northwards and YTV southwards. Frequencies were available but this in the end didn't happen.
The decision to switch Belmont in 1974 to YTV from Anglia was made as early as 1970.
Now, Jez, it's come to light on mb21, that the lower half of Bilsdale's UHF cylinder was empty, the original aerial could only handle three UHF channels, and it's claimed the forth was originally allocated out of band. I find that odd, because Bilsdale had a standard 'Stockholm' 23,26,29,33 allocation. C4 was eventually allocated Ch 23 (as you'd expect) and a new four channel aerial was provided in the lower half. I do wonder if that space was for a separate north or south beam carrying BBC 1 and ITV ?
Yorkshire got Belmont in 1974 as compensation for Bilsdale penetrating much deeper than the IBA had anticipated into south Yorkshire, much to their embarrassment.It could be received clearly in the centre of Leeds.
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.
That was because, IIRC, the licence was still in the name of Tyne Tees Television so it had to be carried alongside the Channel 3 North East branding. Some announcements took the form of "You're watching Tyne Tees Television on Channel 3 in the North East" but often generic links were used.
I remember Andrew Wiseman musing about this on his site at the time and he noted that if the entire ITV network had adopted the branding, Central would have become Channel 3 Midlands while LWT would have been Channel 3 London (Weekends Only). I also remember a site at the time called the Channel 3 North East Hate Page written by a then Durham University student, who laid into YTV for introducing the branding and gained quite a number of followers, until YTV ordered the university hosting the site to take it down. This provoked an even bigger outrage, the university backed down and reinstated the student's internet access, with the site relaunching as the Tyne Tees Logo Page then becoming City Road, and its pages now form a sub-section of the Transdiffusion website.
Now, Jez, it's come to light on mb21, that the lower half of Bilsdale's UHF cylinder was empty, the original aerial could only handle three UHF channels, and it's claimed the forth was originally allocated out of band. I find that odd, because Bilsdale had a standard 'Stockholm' 23,26,29,33 allocation. C4 was eventually allocated Ch 23 (as you'd expect) and a new four channel aerial was provided in the lower half. I do wonder if that space was for a separate north or south beam carrying BBC 1 and ITV ?
There is an implied suggestion in Independent Television in Britain that 23 was possibly what was intended for the additional YTV service as it states that it was used instead for the Anglia fill in relays built after the Belmont switch. However, this history isn't always reliable at this level of technical detail.
Yorkshire got Belmont in 1974 as compensation for Bilsdale penetrating much deeper than the IBA had anticipated into south Yorkshire, much to their embarrassment.It could be received clearly in the centre of Leeds.
I believe the decision was made in 1970. I think the 1970 IBA year book published in at the end of 1969 had Bilsdale for Yorkshire but the 1971 edition had it for Tyne Tees before it opened in 1971. The decision for Belmont was made at the same time.
Yorkshire got Belmont in 1974 as compensation for Bilsdale penetrating much deeper than the IBA had anticipated into south Yorkshire, much to their embarrassment.It could be received clearly in the centre of Leeds.
The BBC/IBA wanted 'Bilsdale' to be much further north at Eston Nab. The proposed site (that later had a small relay station) was to be a much shorter mast, and only 250kW rather than 500kW. There were planning wrangles, and in the end Bilsdale was selected, with a 1000 ft mast, so the signal would actually make it to the primary target (Middlesbrough and Teeside). The rest is history.
Now, Jez, it's come to light on mb21, that the lower half of Bilsdale's UHF cylinder was empty, the original aerial could only handle three UHF channels, and it's claimed the forth was originally allocated out of band. I find that odd, because Bilsdale had a standard 'Stockholm' 23,26,29,33 allocation. C4 was eventually allocated Ch 23 (as you'd expect) and a new four channel aerial was provided in the lower half. I do wonder if that space was for a separate north or south beam carrying BBC 1 and ITV ?
I find this odd as Bilsdale was always a group A whereas other transmitters such as Bluebell Hill and Hanington were Group E from the start. Bilsdale should have been wideband if this was the case. Both the BBC and the IBA gave out Aerial groups taking into account the fourth channel.
I find this odd as Bilsdale was always a group A whereas other transmitters such as Bluebell Hill and Hanington were Group E from the start. Bilsdale should have been wideband if this was the case. Both the BBC and the IBA gave out Aerial groups taking into account the fourth channel.
Indeed they did, you're quite right. If 'C4' Bilsdale had been earmarked out of band
in the late 60s, it would have been specified as Wideband from that time. The BBC and IBA were most insistent of that for Hannington and Bluebell, Group E had to be used, to avoid storing up trouble for later.
I wonder if the original aerial was designed for omni directional use for three UHF channels, and the IBA were thinking of 'nicking' Ch 23 for a directional beam for YTV.
Of course, that would have made providing C4 years later a bit of a problem, and that would have had to have been out of band. Interesting stuff, I wonder what really was being planned !!!
I remember as a kid my parents had an old tv that had 8 buttons in 2 rows of 4 and they were labeled from left to right:
Row 1: BBC 1, ITV, BBC 2, *
Row 2: BBC 1, ITV, BBC 2, VCR
So that tv clearly was from before channel 4 launched and had ITV and BBC 2 in the order that they launched, but at the same time was also after home VCRs became available!
I seem to recall the first colour tv I saw in the window of Multibroadcast back in 1967 was a BRC 25 inch dual standard Starmaster made by Thorn. This set had a row of 8 buttons intended for use between UHF and VHF. I remember that there were two buttons for BBC1 and two marked ITV1. The first button was marked BBC2. This set unusually had a tint control on the front panel.
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.
Which was great...unless you lived in an area which didn't fit. We were on Wenvoe/St. Hilary (5 and 10 respectively) and the pairing was obviously designed for somewhere else. Took me many years before I realised why they'd put the numbers in the order they did!
Comments
By 1970/1 or whenever Bilsdale came on air, I was old enough to be taking an interest on things like this, and I, too, am of the opinion that I'm 95% certain Bilsdale was Tyne Tees from the outset. There were plenty of Engineering announcements just prior to Belmont being reassigned to Yorksire- but I don't ever remember any such announcements (either during Mondays Announcements- or in written form) of Bilsdale changing from Yorkshire to Tyne Tees. Fairly sure that is wrong (but not my region- so can't be 100%)
It was TTTV from the outset, elsewhere on the Transduffusion website are these scans
from the 1971 ITA Yearbook
https://www.flickr.com/photos/transdiffusion/13061056154/in/set-72157642149788185
https://www.flickr.com/photos/transdiffusion/13060735705/in/set-72157642149788185/
It was considered again for 1974, in the guise of using Bilsdale for Tyne-Tees northwards and YTV southwards. Frequencies were available but this in the end didn't happen.
The decision to switch Belmont in 1974 to YTV from Anglia was made as early as 1970.
Now, Jez, it's come to light on mb21, that the lower half of Bilsdale's UHF cylinder was empty, the original aerial could only handle three UHF channels, and it's claimed the forth was originally allocated out of band. I find that odd, because Bilsdale had a standard 'Stockholm' 23,26,29,33 allocation. C4 was eventually allocated Ch 23 (as you'd expect) and a new four channel aerial was provided in the lower half. I do wonder if that space was for a separate north or south beam carrying BBC 1 and ITV ?
http://tx.mb21.co.uk/gallery/gallerypage.php?txid=744&pageid=2145
That was because, IIRC, the licence was still in the name of Tyne Tees Television so it had to be carried alongside the Channel 3 North East branding. Some announcements took the form of "You're watching Tyne Tees Television on Channel 3 in the North East" but often generic links were used.
I remember Andrew Wiseman musing about this on his site at the time and he noted that if the entire ITV network had adopted the branding, Central would have become Channel 3 Midlands while LWT would have been Channel 3 London (Weekends Only). I also remember a site at the time called the Channel 3 North East Hate Page written by a then Durham University student, who laid into YTV for introducing the branding and gained quite a number of followers, until YTV ordered the university hosting the site to take it down. This provoked an even bigger outrage, the university backed down and reinstated the student's internet access, with the site relaunching as the Tyne Tees Logo Page then becoming City Road, and its pages now form a sub-section of the Transdiffusion website.
I believe the decision was made in 1970. I think the 1970 IBA year book published in at the end of 1969 had Bilsdale for Yorkshire but the 1971 edition had it for Tyne Tees before it opened in 1971. The decision for Belmont was made at the same time.
The BBC/IBA wanted 'Bilsdale' to be much further north at Eston Nab. The proposed site (that later had a small relay station) was to be a much shorter mast, and only 250kW rather than 500kW. There were planning wrangles, and in the end Bilsdale was selected, with a 1000 ft mast, so the signal would actually make it to the primary target (Middlesbrough and Teeside). The rest is history.
http://tx.mb21.co.uk/gallery/eston-nab.php
I find this odd as Bilsdale was always a group A whereas other transmitters such as Bluebell Hill and Hanington were Group E from the start. Bilsdale should have been wideband if this was the case. Both the BBC and the IBA gave out Aerial groups taking into account the fourth channel.
Indeed they did, you're quite right. If 'C4' Bilsdale had been earmarked out of band
in the late 60s, it would have been specified as Wideband from that time. The BBC and IBA were most insistent of that for Hannington and Bluebell, Group E had to be used, to avoid storing up trouble for later.
I wonder if the original aerial was designed for omni directional use for three UHF channels, and the IBA were thinking of 'nicking' Ch 23 for a directional beam for YTV.
Of course, that would have made providing C4 years later a bit of a problem, and that would have had to have been out of band. Interesting stuff, I wonder what really was being planned !!!
higher uhf frequencies approach microwave and need different circuitry in the receiver ........
I seem to recall the first colour tv I saw in the window of Multibroadcast back in 1967 was a BRC 25 inch dual standard Starmaster made by Thorn. This set had a row of 8 buttons intended for use between UHF and VHF. I remember that there were two buttons for BBC1 and two marked ITV1. The first button was marked BBC2. This set unusually had a tint control on the front panel.
Which was great...unless you lived in an area which didn't fit. We were on Wenvoe/St. Hilary (5 and 10 respectively) and the pairing was obviously designed for somewhere else. Took me many years before I realised why they'd put the numbers in the order they did!
A while according to that