Hi. My other thought would be that a high proprtion of Swindon residents receive from Mendip. I can't estimate a percentage, but I wouldn't be surprised if it us over 50% judging from the aerials I spot around there. (And there's a Mendip relay in the town at Seagry Court.)

I can't see that has anything to do with it as we are talking about 6 stations / areas that are basically the same distance from the transmitter and as I have said previously Beckley is first choice transmitter in those areas but they are in other counties. The problem is both BBC and ITV don't really cover the correct area from Beckley (which is north of Oxford) for some reason they do there up most to more or less ignore most stories that are 10 miles north of the city and have done for a few years now. Both are so South orientated and will put stories on out of area but never to the north. This is why many people tend not to watch local new in this area, ITV used to count viewers watching Local News from Beckley as watching Central as they are still the licence holders, in fact they may still do so..

Also if your theory was the one they were using Radio Oxford would have been added to at least Hannington if not a couple of other transmitters.

Areas to the north and north east of Oxford are editorially within the areas of BBC West Midlands and BBC East (Cambridge). BBC Oxford is a part of BBC South, although, similar to Cambridge & Hull, has been given more editorial independence.

As far as distance from the transmitter is concerned, that's no more relevant than population. The basic idea is to get local radio out to as many listeners as practically possible via Freeview. I very much doubt that duplicating BBC C&W or BBC Northants (for those who are able to receive an adequate signal from W. Mids or East (Cambridge) transmitters) was a priority for the BBC. Of course, it viewers in the overlap regions prefer to get their BBC TV News from Oxford rather than Birmingham or Cambridge, then fine, they get BBC Radio Oxford too and miss out on BBC C&W or BBC Northants.

The situation in other directions is more complex. Difficult terrain meaning that viewers have no option other than using Beckley, Reception from transmitters in their natural editorial region is impossible. It makes sense that the BBC would bring local radio to these users, unable to get their local services from anywhere else, in preference to duplicating coverage for those with other options.



Radio Oxford would, no doubt, have been added to Hannington if the BBC had provided a unique transport stream for Hannington. However, the BBC haven't funded a separate transport stream for Hannington. BBC South has the same transport stream across Hannington, Rowridge and Midhurst transmitters. Using a single configuration for the entire BBC South region means that Radio Oxford is a low priority for the region as a whole. I would agree though that a separate transport stream for Hannington would have been preferable and have said this elsewhere in the thread. The BBC, in their wisdom, have decided not to re-engineer Hannington at the present time.

This is odd, I have BBC Radio stoke in the winter hill area on ch 734, this has to be a mistake and should be BBC Radio Lancashire.

I still can't see how your answer applies the cases are the same north south east and west People use Beckley because they can't get a signal from elsewhere which may or may not be the correct region. They are not using it as an alternative it is all they can get. The way they have done it means they are only catering for those people in the Southern half of the area and not the north. Surely if all things are equal population should come into it. Turning it on it's head there are more people on Sutton Coldfield / Lark Stoke in Oxfordshire as their only choice than there are people in Berkshire on Beckley as their only choice. But there is no way Radio Oxford is going to be on Sutton Coldfield. Looking at the list it appears Radio Oxford is only on Beckley so Oxfordshire appears to be treated in a different way to most other counties / stations.

As for the editorial area I have said recently you could turn Beckley off and most people in Oxford could get a signal but it seems strange both BBC and ITV in certain directions cover the overlap areas but in others don't and again it's the north they ignore. They have to be consistent on these matters as quite frankly most of the local news is of no use to the area what so ever because it comes from so far away.

Even 50% percent or less of the Swindon area is far far larger than Berkshire viewers off of Beckley.

No mistake. BBC Stoke is part of the line-up for Winter Hill, as the station's editorial area covers southern Cheshire, which is Winter Hill territory. It's on Freeview before BBC Lancashire because the BBC switched on the Midlands stations on all relevant transmitters this week.

BBC Radio Lancashire will be arriving soon in your area.

Unlike the BBC list, I've added those areas that have already had one or two additional services added ahead of the main roll-out-: http://www.a516digital.com/p/bbc-loc...-freeview.html

Oh okay, I've offered a suggestion that the BBC probably made the decision based on terrain. You appear to have rejected that possibility if favour of your own theory that the BBC are biased against their audience in the north of the area served by Beckley and favour those in the south of the area. I would suggest that, as you see it as bias, you take your complaint to the BBC.



So you think that people use Beckley because they can't get a signal from elsewhere but you think that it could be turned off and most people would still get a signal? Erm... ok.


Indeed, because the coverage of Sutton Coldfield / Lark Stoke extends that far, there is an overlap, which is probably why the BBC decided not to duplicate BBC C&W from Beckley.


Well, it wasn't going to be carried on West MIdlands transmitters, they already had to divide the region in segments to carry all of the local radio stations within their editorial remit.

I've already discussed the position in the BBC South region. Hannington hasn't been given a separate feed. The 2 versions of Radio Solent are the main services within the Rowridge area. Midhurst has to cover Sussex as well as Solent. Hannington needs to carry Berkshire & Wiltshire. That's the limit of 5 stations reached for the region, so there simply isn't enough room to add overlap coverage for Radio Oxford across the southern region.

That would be useful if you had listed the correct services.

I notice that, on your site, you have Radio Sheffield and Radio Humberside listed as arriving soon at Sheffield and Chesterfield transmitters. In fact, as I've previously posted in this thread, the services currently in test mode at Crosspool are Radio Sheffield and Radio York.

I managed to check out Ridge Hill today and just to confirm the radio services being carried and their PID details (don't know if these have already been posted) -

Full set - including Channel Islands - now on the list. BBC Leeds omission from NE&Cumbria deliberate.

Interesting!

The official BBC versions are now available in pdf format:

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/reception...ocalradio1.pdf for the stations already launched

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/reception...ocalradio2.pdf for the next batch of launches due on June 21.

The links from the main BBC site aren't working at present but the above links are "repaired".

It looks as if the Channel Islands will only be carrying Radio Jersey & Radio Guernsey, so it will be interesting to see if these are added as 128kbps joint stereo streams.

North East & Cumbria is also interesting with only Tees, York and Cumbria joining Radio Newcastle on the 21st. Also there isn't a separate link for Kendal, so presumably Kendal will carry the North West stations.

Radio Leeds is still testing in the background on Bilsdale, so the fact that it isn't listed as launching on the 21st is interesting. Perhaps the BBC have a further launch stage with West Borders getting a separate feed from the North East? Maybe Radio Leeds will eventually launch (in the North East) but only on Bilsdale? (unlikely I would have thought). Radio Leeds could even be dropped as a test stream at some point. An interesting development and one to watch...

I see that the London Region is missing BBC Radio Kent I doubt it will be added though

What a shame as Kent borders London

We can get BBC Radio Kent in lift conditions on DAB though

Any sign that these local stations will be added to Satellite and Virgin?

The BBC are indicating that the rollout will complete on the 21st June, so no more additions to Freeview for the foreseeable future. If broadcast Red Button services are significantly wound down at some point, space may become available to add more. Similarly, a migration to DVB-T2 should create more space and give the BBC a chance to fill any remaining gaps.

As for adding the services to satellite, it's probably not economical with the current budget restraints on the BBC. Cable removed all local radio stations from its regional headends some time ago. All radio stations carried by VM are now carried across the whole network and there's no sign of them going back to regional distribution.

Apart from Local TV on Channel 159 of course

How does Virgin distribute the local BBC/ITV (and local TV) channels? Do they receive them locally or get them from the BBC/ITV in a central location? There's no reason why they couldn't do the same with BBC local radio if they felt like it.

As I understand it, they aren't picked up locally but fed from Comux to the national headend and then distributed to all regional headends where the relevant service is extracted.


When VM replaced the legacy Knowsley, Langley and Bromley distribution platforms with a unified NGTV platform, they removed locally fed channels and adopted a policy of removing any local radio stations still carried the legacy platforms.

Sure, they could have central feeds to the national headend and further feeds to the standby headend (dual redundancy is built into the network), then feed a few dozen radio stations onto the national distribution network and make changes at regional headends to extract the relevant services. Fairly hefty costs involved to distribute a few dozen local radio stations, which wouldn't bring in any extra income to VM. Let's assume that, as a commercial organisation, VM wouldn't feel like adding channels that wouldn't bring in any extra income. Of course, the BBC could fund carriage on VM but then we are back to the BBC budget restraints.

I note the channel numbers allocated to Jersey and Guernsey would allow for the addition of Solent, Solent for Dorset and Devon at a later stage without confusion . These would be the most logical stations to add and it's unlikely to be a coincidence that those numbers were used

I'm not sure it would be particularly hefty. My understanding is that Virgin's own core distribution system is all IP based (converted to traditional DVB-C at the headends), so it would not be a huge engineering feat to get a few audio streams to the regional headends - it should be quite flexible. I don't know how the BBC distributes its feeds to Virgin, though, and whether that is as flexible

But yes, would Virgin want to do it? Who knows - though not everything is done on the basis that it will bring in extra income. Most of the channels on Virgin's TV service are not likely to be huge draws for potential customers. The BBC is rather unlikely to contribute towards any costs to do so, though.

That's what I thought and was the reason for asking if Jersey / Guernsey would be in 128k JS. If they had been added with a similar configuration to Nations Radio, I would have expected them to be on LCNs 719 & 720.

It's entirely possible that the stations you have mentioned are currently testing in the background, just as Radio Leeds is testing in the north east.

I have to wonder if the BBC originally planned to launch these "out of area" stations in these regions but have backtracked. Perhaps they are facing a significant number of complaints from users frustrated to find that their regional television transmitter won't be carrying their local radio service. In which case it is probably safer not to fuel the fire by adding "out of area" stations in other regions.

Yes it is IP based but the costs would be the feeds from the BBC and separating out the relevant local services, and extra monitoring needed at regional headends.


If the BBC don't fund it, it won't happen. It's pretty clear that they don't want the extra costs of local radio from the fact that they removed any legacy services when NGTV was introduced. They could have built the channels into the system, across the network, when NGTV was at the planning stage.

As for "not everything is done on the basis that it will bring in extra income". As far as VM TV goes it pretty much is these days. They have even dropped the policy of matching all channels on Freeview. FTA channels added to freeview, such as Spike, TruTV, Your TV, movies4men and several others haven't been added by Virgin. So local radio has no chance.

Nothing to do with TV, but they also dropped all their ADSL customers too.

Maybe because the overlap between CP & Bluebell Hill / Tunbridge Wells group transmitters is smaller than between CP and the other home counties, and people who specifically want BBC Radio Kent are people who have already chosen to use a South East TX over CP?

Well the London region really should have BBC Radio Kent and Sussex - I know that Surrey is between Sussex and London, unlike Kent which adjoins it, but as I have said before, a large part of North Sussex gets its signals from Crystal Palace or Reigate and cannot receive reliably from a transmitter that carries Radio Sussex.

With regard to BBC Leeds you say it is deliberate - do you know why?

I could imagine that in an ideal world Cumbria (Caldbeck) etc would carry BBC Radio Lancashire as an alternate station, and the North East transmitters BBC Radio Leeds. Wondering if that conundrum has anything to do with it?