You can receive south coast local radio stations on AM in the Channel Islands, back then in 1979 most likely it was Radio Victory in Portsmouth, although Capital and LBC go a long way south too.
Plymouth Sound too maybe? The other two stations on the south coast - DevonAir and 2CR didn't launch till 1980.
I seem to remember getting stations from the Channel Islands in Bournemouth
Yes, I can just hear them here on AM in deepest North Hampshire 40 miles inland.
Plymouth Sound was (still is) co channel with LBC on 1152kHz, so probably a mangled mess in the CI (perhaps our CI contributor in here can confirm ?) . However as they simply took the IRN/LBC bulletins on the hour back then, the news might have been intelligible ?
Alderney only received ITV in 1976 when UHF finally launched in the Channel Islands. That is what I was told.
Yes, a marginal service from Fremont Point, until the UHF relay on Alderney opened in April 1977
Also, all the BBC national radio stations have been broadcast from the Channel Islands since 1955 from Les Platons transmitter, so lack of news would not be hard for Channel Television to listen into the BBC News service back in 1979 and take note of key news stories and air them on Channel TV during the 1979 strike.
You can't just go nicking the news from other broadcasters. I suspect Channel approached LBC/IRN to gain permission to use their copy. There'd have been all sorts of union sensitivity about that though, so I suspect
the deal was if they could hear by 'normal means' the content, they could use it. The NUJ would have probably blacked sending copy via telex directly to Channel TV
There was no "just" calling up Ceefax - not every telly had it. It was certainly a luxury/novelty where/when I grew up in the 90s.
Newsrooms would have had Teletext tellies though.
However as said you can't do that. Back in the 80s the BBC suspected an ILR station was lifting their travel news from Ceefax, so they inserted dummy incidents to catch them out ISTR
Last edited by Markymark on 25 January 2019 8:11am