The 1980 ITV franchise auction

Yes, this was Live Challenge, and in the Radio Times it specifically referred to it as "Granada and Border's charity initiative". Of course, after Granada took over LWT and there were various programmes shown in both regions, like that Tarby chat show, they were shown on Border as well.



BBC North West did a fully-fledged opt-out on BBC1 the other week for the Isle of Man election...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07w13qv

Heaven knows what the rest of the region made of it, mind.



Well, this happened in the sixties when WWN went bust - the ITA decided it wasn't a viable area so they merged it into the existing South Wales and West region.

I doubt it was the cue-dot that activated the switchover, it would have been some sort of signal, probably VBI based. Cue dots are just visual and intended for humans. There might well have been a cue-dot too, but just to identify which region was which

That would have required extra frequencies (which weren't easily available). Caldbeck serves both northern Cumbria, and Dumfries and Galloway. The BBC had enough of a problem providing BBC 1 Scotland in 625 lines
to D&G, and wasn't until 1979 when they were granted a lower power allocation from the Sandale Tx to provide that. Until 1979 D&G viewers had to put up with BBC 1 North East. BBC 2 Scotland came even later, sometime in the 80s. The Border 'Scotland' sub opt, that was carried by Selkirk, also became available from Caldbeck in the 90s, but was co-channel with Divis in NI, so rather crap.

In short, quality signals for both sides of the border were not really providable, part of the reason I suspect Border TV's franchise area survived into the UHF/625/Colour era in the first place.

I think the switching was more or less automated. There was a line in the VBI that carried a unique code, when
a BBC region opted out, a locally generated code replaced it. It was a system to prevent RBS switching to occur
during opt outs (though it never seemed to work at Hannington!), and was also an anti-piracy measure, to prevent (or at least make it more difficult) to 'hi-jack' a transmitter on its RBL or RBS feed. (After the famous 1977 audio hijackings of ITV Hannington, and BBC Radio 2 Rowridge/NHT/Wenvoe).

The VBI ident was used by Douglas to switch away from Caldbeck to Winter Hill during opts.

You can't get Border in Barrow - the town is served by Granada who have a relay there. It was the southern Lake District which switched from Granada to Border at the start of 1982.

Not wanting to cause trouble but I never understood the Border region. Wouldn't it have been easier for Granada and STV to take over the transmitters in 1980 anyway?

So if either Caldbeck or Winter Hill feed was opted it would automatically switch to Winter Hill? To either avoid a Newcastle opt or take a Manchester one.

That must have looked lovely if Newcastle did their soft opt first, two sets of NICAM splats and a possibly not quite sync switch!

Indeed !! I wonder if Manchester deliberately soft opted earlier to avoid that ?

Read my post above.

http://tx.mb21.co.uk/mapsys/anatv/caldbeck.gif

So, who would have been allocated Caldbeck, STV or Granada ?

The creation of the Border region in 1961 was simply because there were a substantial number of places in Cumberland & Westmoreland; and Dumfries & Galloway, where there was no chance of picking up ITV from either Black Hill or Winter Hill (although Black Mountain could be received in Stranraer and up the south-west coast). The ITA recognised that the most cost-effective solution (as indeed they all were at that time) was to mimic the BBC's coverage from Sandale. However they also recognised that this created cultural and political problems and the elegant solution was a completely separate programme contractor who could provide local news and programming that would appeal to both Cumbrian and Scottish audiences. Plus it added another contractor to the ever-expanding ITA empire. And so it came to pass and Border was given two stations - Caldbeck in England and its relay Selkirk in south-east Scotland. At the time, STV protested that they should have been given Selkirk, but it was necessary to provide sufficient numbers to make the Border franchise (nearly) viable.

When UHF/Colour eventually got as far as border country, there were insufficient channels available to do anything other than copy the VHF Band III plan and use Caldbeck and Selkirk as main stations. If STV had been given Caldbeck , Cumbrian viewers would have been ill-served (and mightily annoyed) and if Caldbeck had been simply made part of Granadaland, Scottish viewers would have protested.

How long has Sandale/Caldbeck transmitted BBC Scotland? I'm intrigued to hear that many areas of Dumfries and Galloway could only receive BBC NE&C until relatively recently.

How widespread an issue was this and what was the cause?

Even now, I'm surprised to find that when putting many southern D&G postcodes (eg DG11, DG12) into 'digital reception' websites, NE&C comes up as the preferred/strongest signal. I know for a fact my relatives in Johnstonebridge (DG11) received BBC Scotland when they lived there in the 90s.

VHF/405 line services from Sandale carried two versions of BBC 1, the Scotland and NE versions,
I think the English version on Ch 4 was from Nov 1956, the Scottish version on Ch 6 from Sept 1965.

Nearby Caldbeck, which was the ITA site allocated to Border TV opened in Sept 1961, carrying ITV on Ch 11

Caldbeck was selected to carry both BBC and IBA services on 625/UHF/Colour, and came on line for three channels in 1971. It carried BBC NE programmes.

BBC 1 Scotland UHF was provided from Sandale in 1979, and BBC 2 Scotland in May 1992



Well, with respect, Tony Currie and myself have already explained up thread the technical issues that led to this ? And the map I posted shows the area in Scotland, and all the relays that meant until 79 (and 92 from BBC2), BBC NE programmes (at least on UHF) Sandale VHF TV closed in 1984