First 20 Local TV sites
Brian Butterworth published on UK Free TV From Ofcom:
Ofcom today is proposing 20 specific sites for consultation that should constitute the minimum rollout requirement for the local television multiplex licence that Ofcom will advertise, if proposed legislation is passed by Parliament.
These are selected from the sites where local TV is technically possible and we consider there is a potential local service operator, and selected to achieve a range of locations across the UK, and a range of scales of operation. We also take into account evidence of strong local demand.
The 20 sites are: Belfast, Birmingham, Brighton & Hove, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Grimsby, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Plymouth, Preston, Southampton and Swansea.
Each of these towns or cities is the principal conurbation within the technically-possible coverage area. Some transmission areas cover secondary conurbations too, and where coverage is good enough, we will consider applications for local services targeted at these.
In addition, we propose to ask applicants for the multiplex licence how many sites they will cover, on top of this minimum. We propose to award the multiplex licence partly based on the extent of this additional coverage. Additional sites should be in areas where there is an interested local service operator. Currently we believe that these sites are: Aberdeen, Ayr, Bangor, Barnstable, Basingstoke, Bedford, Cambridge, Carlisle, Derry/Londonderry, Dundee, Guildford, Hereford, Inverness, Kidderminster, Limavady, Luton, Maidstone, Malvern, Mold, Salisbury, Sheffield, Stoke on Trent, Stratford upon Avon and York.
Further detail now at Ofcom - Licensing Local Television - How Ofcom would exercise its new powers and duties being proposed by Government.
12:19 PM
What Bangor a 1.4watt tv relay... Surely if a multiplex is considered for Belfast it should be Carnmoney Hill or several other candidates spring to mind before Bangor, would love to know the reasoning behind that.
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Jordy: See Local TV on Freeview - new Ofcom maps | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice - Bangor is served by a "narrow beam" from Landonna, a more main transmitter, not the relay. (It's the last map).
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4:47 PM
Belper
Typical! Once again, it's Nottingham that gets stuff thrown at it, while elsewhere in the East Midlands gets ignored! They're getting extra money for faster broadband, more money to spend on job creation etc, while Derby gets shafted once more with job losses, no extra money, etc. At least I'm too far from the Nottingham relay to pick it up, so there's no way I'd be having it inflicted on me...
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Adrian's: mapA's Freeview map terrainA's terrain plot wavesA's frequency data A's Freeview Detailed Coverage
5:13 PM
Buckley
Jordy / Briantist,
Which Bangor are you referring to - the one in N Wales or the one in N Ireland?
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Robert's: mapR's Freeview map terrainR's terrain plot wavesR's frequency data R's Freeview Detailed Coverage
Adrian I couldn't have said it better.
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Ian's: mapI's Freeview map terrainI's terrain plot wavesI's frequency data I's Freeview Detailed Coverage
7:48 PM
Robert Lee: Briantist is definitely talking about Bangor in Wales, which is near the transmitter at Llanddona (on Anglesey), while Jordy is talking about Bangor, Northern Ireland, for which no spare frequency is available.
Briantist's assumption must be correct as Ofcom's list of sites is based on main transmitters - carrying all six multiplexes - only.
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6:44 PM
Adrian, Ian: The detailed study on which sites are viable, and why, is at xhttp://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/tvops/ArqivaReport.pdf . Basically, there's no channel available to serve Derby.
"Spectrum in central England is limited and available channels are restricted."
Just squeezing in the Derby relay was difficult enough, with the digital services initially starting up at Waltham DSO 2 on former analogue channels and only moving to final channels after Sutton Coldfield DSO.
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So why not have a selectable local service via the red button? that would have served a lot more people.
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Ian's: mapI's Freeview map terrainI's terrain plot wavesI's frequency data I's Freeview Detailed Coverage
Ian: The whole point is NOT to serve more people, but to provide a local TV service.
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1:01 PM
Ian: You can only make a red button service available where there's capacity to run the stream! The red button really only saves getting a Logical Channel Number from DMOL for the service (and BBC Red Button interactive stream actually has one - it's on 301). I don't think DMOL even charge for this. On the other hand, the MHEG program to handle the red button and switch to the alternate video stream would have to be carried by whatever the entry point service was - so you're basically asking the Nottingham service to advertise its competitor!
Local TV has to be carried on a new multiplex from somewhere, or Ofcom have to force a PSB multiplex to free up several slots to carry enough regional services from each transmitter. The PSB multiplexes are already full up, except a small chunk of D3&4 that ITV plc are likely to reclaim, once the squatting Rabbits are kicked off and the capacity is big enough to run a full channel. The COM muxes are not set up to run different regional content (except SDN in Wales).
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