Yes, the release does say "withdrawn". My objection to the word lost was that it suggests the previous award winners stand no chance of getting it back. As for Ofcom not being part of the civil service, they might not report to the Cabinet Secretary but a lot of the processes, procedures and culture are similar. Many of the staff will have been transitioned when it was set up. And they operate under many of the same rules. Depends how you define a civil servant. Either way it's another mess up.

Notts Tv & SLTV have kept their licences for their areas but interesting in Sheffield that Metro 8 were considered optimstic by ofcom for the area. Your Tv which also losted but got a good report is up against Metro 8 in Preston.

SO will the new local channels be available on Freeview?

They certainly will.

Yes - though the muxes will typically be transmitted at lower power, so coverage will be more limited than other services from the same transmitter.

The funding model (top-slice of the TV licence fee) is only paying for them to be on Freeview. The government have required other providers to reserve a low-numbered slot for them in the EPG, but are not funding satellite, cable, or IPTV distribution.

Someone complained to the European Commission that this funding could breach the rules on State Aid; their decision on this has been delayed until December. If the Commission do decide that this is illegal State Aid, it could put the whole project into question.

When you will get them depends on who wins the Local TV Multiplex licence, when Ofcom get around to awarding that licence, and on their negotiations with Arqiva on the sequence and costs of building the necessary changes to the masts (for the three applicants planning to use existing TV masts) or with other mast owners (for Avanti, who plan to use a much greater number of lower-power transmitters to better optimize coverage).

Ofcom have indicated that they plan to announce the winner by the end of November. The winner is then supposed to ensure that the first service is launched within a year, and all Phase 1 services launch within two years.

Planning permission is required for new broadcasting aerials to be erected, even on existing mast structures. The main antennas used for the existing services cannot be used, because the local TV services have been squeezed in and the coverage has to be limited to avoid interference to other services. People living near the transmitters frequently object to the addition of new aerials. (The rules for phone masts, and phone aerials on shared structures, are different.) Building work has to be done in the summer months, when the weather is suitable; if Ofcom delay much more, next year's building work season may be missed and services may not start until the second half of 2014.

Although generally at higher powers than the pre-DSO multiplexes - in generally if you got all Freeview channels pre-DSO and are within the target city using the transmitter you should be fine! That being said dispite getting pre-DSO Multiplex 1 (10kW) and 2,A&B (8kW) on a loop aerial from the Waltham transmitter I lie just outside Ofcom's predicted coverage from Waltham....

Looks like I might as well. If you can make sense of Ofcom's maps (and I'm not sure I can) - it looks like large parts of South Notts suburbs currently using Waltham may not be covered. On the other hand, it is just possible I might be in a borderline area. Or I could try to switch to the Nottingham transmitter. Looks like Ofcom or whoever might have made a mess with the Nottingham coverage from Waltham. As far as I can see, Lincolnshire gets better coverage for Notts TV from Waltham than some parts of Nottingham inside the ring-road!

Yeah it really is daft isn't it! Not a peep from Nottingham here (inside the ring road) on a loft aerial - after Nottingham DSO but before the rest I could get Belmont (Mux 1 and 2), Sutton Coldfield (except Mux D), and Waltham easy as pie, and just a smidging of signal from Nottingham. The city centre does a good job of shielding it from me!

They just need to knock the proposed aerial pattern round 1 degree and the southern suburbs would be inside it! (either than or an on channel SFN relay at Tollerton Airport! ).

Struggling to work out if the proposed coverage maps include Walthams north west beam as it does look like it's only covering Spalding with the rest left to Nottingham.

That's my interpretation, which could be wrong. I think I read somewhere that the excuse was that Channel 26 is in use somewhere else and so it has to be like this to reduce interference. Not much good though if the primary area for your local tv service isn't covered!

Not necessarily. Digital is not like analogue, where you needed the same signal-to-noise ratio to get the same picture quality, regardless. For digital, you can trade off capacity for coverage: you can use a lower modulation density - fewer bits per carrier - and you can include a greater or lesser amount of redundant information, for error correction.

The two PSB standard-definition multiplexes (carrying the BBC channels on one, and ITV1, C4 and C5 on the other, plus some of ITV and C4's 'portfolio' channels) use 64QAM, FEC 2/3. The three commercial multiplexes use 64QAM, FEC 3/4.

QAM means 'quadrature-amplitude modulation'. The relative amplitude (size) of the carrier can be modified, and so can the phase (time-shift). The available options are QPSK (2 bits per carrier), 16QAM (4 bits per carrier) and 64QAM (6 bits per carrier). QPSK = Quadrature Phase Shift Keying; only the phase changes, not the size of each carrier. The more different steps there are, the better the signal-to-noise ratio has to be to accurately determine which one was meant.

FEC is Forward Error Correction. This means that the signal carries redundant information to allow the receiver to infer what the correct data is. The basic code is rate 1/2 - that is, two output bits are transmitted for each input bit - but the code can be 'punctured' to reduce the overhead. Rate 2/3 means three output bits are transmitted for each two input bits, rate 3/4 means four for every three, etc. You can say that rate 2/3 means the capacity is 2/3 of the potential, while rate 3/4 means the capacity is 3/4 of the potential, and so on. The more redundant information is transmitted, the easier it is to determine which value is correct, and the lower the signal-to-noise ratio required.

The mode used by the local TV services will depend on the winning multiplex operator. Generally all have gone for the QPSK 3/4 mode. This requires 7.2 dB of signal-to-noise ratio, according to the DVB-T standard, if the receiver has mostly line-of-sight to the transmitter, with some echoes. The equivalent for the PSB 64QAM 2/3 mode is 17.3 dB. That means that the local TV multiplex can be as much as 10 dB less powerful - that is, one-tenth the power - compared to the BBC and ITV/C4 multiplexes.

Made in Tyne and Wear (Newcastle) awarded today.

Fortunately it has been OK'd.


That was delayed until December. To all intents and purposes, they have two weeks to decide/announce.

Rest of the channel licences have been delayed until next year.

Shame. The BBC could do a lot more of value with £25m than the vanity project of the last Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, who has now gone on to the Health portfolio.

A dozen or so new independent broadcasters around the country will give aspiring presenters an outlet when they would have to travel far or probably not even get looked at by big broadcasters. Likewise with camera and sound people etc. It will generate hundreds of new jobs in the industry, provide new programmes which wouldn't be commissioned by big broadcasters as they are less likely to try new things or take risks (some might say there is good reason for that; I would say compare Skyfall with Black Pond).

Yeah, ok, may as well just chuck it in a bin and burn it. IIRC it was the shortfall from DSO so it's not as if it was earmarked for anything else.

Sounds correct - aren't the BBC also commited to paying for some programming on these stations too? Hopfully that means the decent enough stuff will get a national outlet in time (although some of that chance will be burned if the programmes are too localised in content - the student aspect involved in some stations should hopefully give a wider variety of programmes though)

EU approves UK local TV funding

I can't believe that the BBC is funding this to the tune of £25 million. Once again some people will not be getting a service that they will be paying for.
Local TV is just going to be a waste of money and as soon as funding dries up most of it will fail as they will not get the advertising apart from if they cover a large city and they may survive.

It certainly makes me glad that I am not paying into BBC any more, the only problem is, no doubt some of my taxes will support this waste of money service.

Depending on the content most of it I guess will land on the BBC's digital channels. Another way is when the regional 'Inside out' programme is on its break then they could show a programme from Local Tv.

Maybe even UKTV could buy some programmes for say 'Blighty' or 'Dave' instead of the endless repeats they show.

Canis Media tells me the MuxCo licence award has been delayed until January - fears that local TV won't be able to start until 2014.
http://www.a516digital.com/2012/12/l...multiplex.html

But they "have a plan".

I think the main sticking point is that Arqiva needed to know by the end of the year, so they could plan works for next year. If that slips and contracts aren't in place then no works will be carried out until 2014.

Although tbh I don't see why the entire 2013 schedule needs to be cancelled - surely they are being paid for the work regardless of when the contracts are signed, and they know that (unless Avanti win) there will be some work required in 2013 so ought to be able to plan for this?

The winner could always go down the site access route and get somebody else to install the equipment if Arqiva can't be bothered.

ETV (Edinburgh) and GTV (Glasgow) were awarded this morning - both owned by STV.

Also, Ofcom are inviting representations wrt the mux licence applications - http://licensing.ofcom.org.uk/tv-bro...cal-mux-invite

Comux have uploaded their technical plan: http://comux.co.uk/wp-content/upload...nical-Plan.pdf

Reading through that, I really can't choose between them and LTM... I can see why Ofcom has delayed this award at least twice!

This is a great model if all the licencees want to hand off all their technical responsibilites to Comux. But given at least one of the licencees (the 'Made in' people) seem to have done a not inconsiderable amount of research into the technical aspects of their bid, combined with the fact they already have a number of licences awarded. I'm not sure how much takeup Comux will get for this 'managed service' approach. Certainly people like STV are simply going to add to their own existing infrastructure aren't they?

My first thought was, maybe the likes of the smaller outfits like the Grimsby licencee might want to take them up on the offer. But then I thought, they're already doing playout and transmission for their existing platforms, so adding contribution for their new licence is bordering on trivial. Sure, there are other small licencees who currently aren't operational that might find it interesting. But when the likes of Playbox are selling a 'Channel in a box' solution with 24/7 support for sub-10k, you have to ask yourself, is it worth it?

I think there are number of licencees who simply want a demarcation point to get their signals to, then they can look after everything themselves.

Did Arquiva not bid for this themselves? Looks like they'll end up implementing it anyway.

Thanks for uploading this document.

I can see some major problems for the Edinburgh station if its output is restricted to just Craigkelly transmitter - a large part of Edinburgh will be excluded from receiving the output due to the fact they receive their signals from Black Hill. I think that the suggestion by Comux to also transmit from Black Hill is the right solution.