Disputes between ITV companies re sporting events

I have been watching World of Sport on YouTube, the few clips that are available, and one from about 1982 had a horse race from Thirsk planned. However, towards the end of the clip Dickie Davies said that due to a dispute between Yorkshire Television and Tyne Tees Television we are unable to bring you the race from Thirsk. I didn't realise there would be a dispute between the two companies just because Thirsk is close to the old ITV regions border.

I remember reading a while ago that although Thirsk and its neighbouring towns are North Yorkshire, Tyne Tees used to cover the area. I'm surprised it wasn't covered by Yorkshire Television as it's still "real Yorkshire" in that region and of course it's known as Herriot Country.

I have also wondered what ITV region covered the Saddleworth area when Yorkshire Television was formed as Saddleworth is historically Yorkshire and wasn't taken over by Oldham until 1974.

Contrary to popular belief, Yorkshire Television has never covered the entirety of Yorkshire.

We've discussed this before. I seem to recall it was an 'industrial relations' problem regarding a genny truck from one company, and the OB truck from the other ?



Saddleworth is in the Granada region, the transmitter there also hosts Piccadilly Radio's FM transmitter (or whatever it's called today) and a relay for BBC Radio Manchester

Any more than S(cottish) TV covers the whole of that country.

I seem to remember reading Border Television covered southern Scotland and I think it was all due to transmitter locations. Has Thirsk and the rest of North Yorkshire always been covered by the Tyne Tees region, or has there ever been some coverage by Yorkshire Television?

The siting of transmitters was sometimes an issue, as to who covered what. With Tyne Tees, one transmitter, Billsdale, beamed a signal that sometimes went deep into Yorkshire territory, and this led to Trident Television being created, for a few years. Sometimes, Yorkshire cameras would cover Middlesbrough football club matches, despite the signals in that area being very weak for YTV.

Though Harlech Television covered a lot more than Harlech.....

In parts of Middlesbrough, Bilsdale is very weak (due to the Eston Hills), and people have their aerials pointed at Pontop Pike instead. Except in incredibly favourable positions, I don't think anyone was tuning in to Emley Moor/YTV.

Despite the fact they are quite geographically close to Bilsdale, parts of North Yorkshire around Thirsk and Malton generally receive YTV, though they can probably receive Tyne Tees too. It’s also worth remembering that the “footprints” of the various transmitters tended to reach further afield in the VHF days, so it’s not impossible that viewers in North Yorkshire used to watch Granada and YTV from Emley back in the day, before Bilsdale was up and running. Parts of south west Scotland that are now served by Border from Caldbeck used to receive STV before Border launched, and probably continued to do so as long as they could pick up a VHF signal.

The whole reason Border's area exists is because its main transmitter straddles England and Scotland.

Remember STV only used to serve the central belt, until it bought Grampian TV.

Of course until the early 1970s Anglia also covered part of Yorkshire, the county, transmitting from Belmont.

Yes, we certainly confirmed (because I have that week's TV Times) that Yorkshire were covering racing from Thirsk, as would always have been the case - racing at that point was a key ITV sport and the racing calendar and which companies would cover what course would have been arranged and confirmed at a national level, ages in advance.

Because the racing coverage was seemingly only cancelled very close to transmission I think the suggestion was that there was some technical issue on the day, perhaps the YTV truck was having problems but the duty engineer came from Tyne Tees because they were closer, and there was some wrangling over that.