The journey towards Channels 1, 2 3 etc

TV Times from the first days of Thames and LWT (and the last of ATV London and Rediffusion) referring to programmes "on channel nine": https://www.transdiffusion.org/2014/12/08/hello-and-goodbye

There were small numbers of people across the UK who lost TV signals when the VHF service was shut down. I think the powers that be decided that so few people were actually reliant on VHF they could go ahead with the final switch off. The closedown of the 405 line service had actually been in progress for a few years prior to January 1985. The UHF network of transmitters continued to be expanded into the early 90s.

The following is from the 405 Alive website:

405-LINE VHF TELEVISION CLOSURES

The last 24 BBC 405-line television stations listed below will close down between 2nd January and 6th January.

ASHKIRK 1
BETTWYS-Y-COED 4
BLAEN PLWYF 3
CRYSTAL PALACE 1
DIVIS 1
HAVERFORDWEST 4
HOLME MOSS 2
KIRK O’ SHOTTS 3
LLANDRINDOD WELLS 1
MELDRUM 4
MELVAIG 4
MOEL-Y-PARC 6
MORECAMBE BAY 3
NORTH HESSARY TOR 2
PENIFILER 1
PONTOP PIKE 5
REDRUTH 1
ROSEMARKIE 2
ROWRIDGE 3
SANDALE 4
SKRIAIG 3
SUTTON COLDFIELD 4
WENVOE 5
WINTER HILL 12

Extract from Channel 4 ORACLE 4th January 1985:

405-LINE VHF CLOSURES

The remaining ITV 405-line stations (listed below) closed on 3 January 1985

Black Hill Ch. 10
Llandovery Ch. 11
Black Mtn Ch. 9
Llandrindod Wells Ch. 9
Burnhope Ch. 8
Moel-y-Parc Ch. 11
Caldbeck Ch. 11
Mounteagle Ch. 12
Caradon Hill Ch. 12
Presely Ch. 8
Chillerton Down Ch. 11
Selkirk Ch. 13
Croydon Ch. 9
St. Hilary Ch. 10
Emley Moor Ch. 10
Stockland Hill Ch. 9
Lichfield Ch. 8
Winter Hill Ch. 9

As said 405 lines had very few viewers by 1985. 405 line only sets were not made or sold after the mid 60s, so the chance of a 20 year TV still working by 1985 was slim (but there were of course some)



It slowed in the early 90s, but didn't stop. The final UHF (analogue) relay to open was Portbury, near Bristol in summer 1998, two months before DTT roll out started.

I recall when I briefly lived in London, that the switch at 7pm (later 5:15) was rather clunky , to say the least.

You've also got the oddity of Thames handing over to LWT for 15 seconds before handing back to Thames for the news.




(BTW my understanding is that the clunky switch you refer to will have been exacerbated in this video, because it comes from a video recording which would have been less tolerant of sync changes).

On the Thames Clock you can see part of the text that the date is stuck over!

Is it "goodnight" or similar used at closedown?
Note both continuity announcers going for bonfire night gags within the space of a few seconds...

I've asked this question over on the Media Spy forums (the Aussie equivalent of TV Forum) and - although viewers could programme their TV as they saw fit - Aussies were much more likely to store the channels according to their on-air names, certainly in the metro areas where they received the three commercial networks. The switch to UHF transmissions seemed to be much more gradual than in the UK. Regional areas of Australia had different channels (and generally less of them prior to aggregation in the 90s) so Newcastle viewers were familiar with "Channel Four" (NBN Television) and Darwin viewers with "Channel Eight" (NTD8) - both of which, incidentally, are now O&O by Nine and branded accordingly, but maintain different LCNs to their metro counterparts. Just as it makes sense to us to programme Channel Four onto button four, it made sense to Aussies to programme Channel Seven on button seven.

The short answer is it was down to the individual viewer, but it wasn't at all uncommon to programme TVs so you pressed button seven for Seven, nine for Nine, two for ABC etc. That made it nice and easy for "granny" to remember!

So what would Ten be? Zero?

0, 1 or indeed 10 (depending on the number of buttons on the set, or if you could select 10 on the remote).

I'm only stating what people tended to do, based on the equipment they had. The set we rented in the 80s had space for twelve preset channels, but many had only five or six.

Another complication is that - just like in the UK - some parts of Australia (such as the outer suburbs of the main cities) could receive stations from the adjoining market areas, and viewers often stored these extra channels too. As long as you knew what channel was what, you could store them in any order.

VCRs sometimes had the stations pre-tuned in to 2, 7, 9, 10, etc.

Presumably if you were in one of the few VHF 405-only areas which didn't have UHF coverage (at least of BBC One/ITV) you had a strong incentive to keep your VHF 405-compatible set (which may also have been 625-compatible) running though.

Ten, of course was originally the Zero-Ten network, so putting it on Zero would have a certain logic to it.