ITV, Channel Four and Five in the Channel Islands

As well as Channel Television, I have often wondered it viewers in the Channel Islands can also receive Channel Four and Five and if they have been able to receive Channel Four for as long as 1982?

I know that many BBC (as discussed on anther thread) and ITV programmes are transmitted from the mainland and received at Fremont Point. Am I right in saying Meridian is the ITV region responsible for transmitting networked ITV programmes to the islands?

AIUI originally Westward was the off-air mainland ITV service that was off-air received and rebroadcast by Channel. Then in 1982 (I think) they switched to TVS as that was a more reliable feed for UHF off-air reception, and stuck with this transmitter source for Meridian. (Some overnight trails on TVS had "Not Channel Islands" on them as Channel TV only replaced breaks during the day - with TVS/Meridian ad-breaks going out overnight - and I believe TVS/Meridian shared the revenue from these breaks with Channel TV?)

When ITV launched on DSat a more reliable and better quality fibre feed was installed to feed Channel TV in Jersey, so they no longer had to rely on off-air rebroadcasting, and the fibre was also used to feed Channel TV back to London for uplink on one of the ITV transponders on one of the Astra 2 satellites. (ISTR that the fibre wasn't available initially, so the off-air feed was still used as the source, and an SNG truck was used to rebroadcast Channel TV to London for uplink)

However I believe that rather than a clean network feed, Channel still get a dirty Meridian feed, and if Channel don't opt-out of this, the Meridian feed is broadcast. (So Channel don't need to run a 24/7 operation - and now that ITV1 is effectively networked most of the time, this is far less of an issue than it once would have been)

(The BBC used to use an off-air rebroadcast arrangement - with the reception array on mainland France - Cherbourg? - and an SHF Microwave link was used to get this to Jersey. However the BBC transmitters are now fed via a standard BBC One CI DSat satellite off-air receiver, and the BBC One CI feed is created in Plymouth - with - last time I heard - the BBC Jersey studio output fed back to Plymouth - where the opt-out switch takes place - via a bunch of DSL circuits dedicated to this function - 4x2Mbs to give 8Mbs?)

Fremont Point certainly carries C4 (on UHF 47). It doesn't carry C5. I don't know whether Channel TV inserted local ads into the C4 transmission?

Thanks for the interesting information. I am surprised that Five can't be received, although I know that in some areas C5 is not radiated from the same transmitters as ITV and C4 - in the West Midlands it is broadcast from the Lichfield Transmitter rather than Sutton Coldfield, although when Sutton Coldfield's conversion is finished, all TV channels will be radiated from there.

I was surprised that even though ITV now uses D-Sat, Channel still gets its feed from Meridian. It would also be interesting to find out if adverts on C4 in the Channel Islands does broadcast regional commercials.

Channel Television is also of course the only ITV region to still have kids' birthdays read out with Oscar Puffin in Puffin's Pla(i)ce.

The problem in the Channel Islands is the proximity to France, which makes clearing frequencies something of a problem. This is why they haven't got digital there yet either.

I can imagine how difficult is must be with frequencies in the islands at the moment. I heard a long time ago that French signals could be received in Jersey so there could indeed be problems when digital is finally introduced to the islands.

Should be fine, DSO occurs there this November. Three out of four of Fremont Point's analogue frequencies (and all the relays) will be used for PSB 1/2/3. There will be no COM muxes.

To clarify earlier points, I'm sure no opt outs were ever carried for ads on C4, the 'TVS provided' ads were rebroadcast from Rowridge, and Channel took their share of the revenue (as for the TVS ads too) Channel as all the ITV companies had to pay for the running of C4 from Nov 82 to Dec 92.

The network 'dirty' feed for ITV, and later C4 was provided by a SABRE receiving array on Alderney, receiving Westward/TSW's Stockland HillTx. Further reading:-

http://tx.mb21.co.uk/features/sabre/index.shtml

Another SABRE was installed in 1984 at Cherbourg, when as Noggin mentioned the ITV/C4 feed was switched to Rowridge/TVS.

The BBC at first refused to use the IBA SABRE on Alderney, instead they used a more conventional array of log periodic aerials, however after a few years the superior performance of the IBA's SABRE persuaded them to switch to it too. They never moved to using the Rowridge/Cherbourg array though, and stuck to using Stockland/Alderney until 2003 (10 years after ITV/4 had stopped using it). One reason was they wanted the islands tied to their SW not South region. Now, BBC 1/2 are fed via Astra 28E, ITV and 4 via fibre optic cable

Jersey had Channel 4 from the day of Launch. I remember watching this launch on a snowy picture on a black and white portable TV in Guernsey as the big TV would not pick up the Jersey transmitter but the portable did.

I think it was a couple of years before Guernsey got it and possibly later for Alderney?

Channel has always had a unique position in its relationship with ITV, and hence C4 in the 80's. Whereas in strict licence terms the Channle Islands form an ITV Region, in commercial terms Channel "affiliates" to the TVS/Meridian region. Channel receives an ITV feed which includes paid spots which it re-broadcasts, thus funding the programme supply.

A further example of the unique position of Channel was the 1979 strike, where it was recognised that a strike at Channel would lead to its financial ruin and it was allowed to continue to operate, albeit without network programming.

Channel 5 was never intended to cover the whole country like the other 4 did, it was squeezed into the spectrum and there weren't enough frequencies. It's not surprising that they've never had C5 as most of the South Coast didn't either - for obvious reasons frequencies are more limited near the coast


It won't do now as C4's adverts aren't regional, they have divided the country up into 6 'macro regions' each can have different adverts. Therefore the Channel Islands will get the same ads as the south of England

It could make it easier, digital signals can be weaker yet cover the same area and they don't interfere with each other as much as analogue. When Northern France, Southern England and the CI are all digital it should be less of an issue