Pop comes to Freeview

I do remember pop when it first started, cheap was the name of the game back then and it still is What ever did happen to the cheeky monkeys and purday the dragon and his cat?

Don't be so sure about the limited availability. I'm in Hull, and I can pick up Grimsby's Estuary TV as well as Bonanza Bonanza which is on the same mux. If a transmitter area (in my case, Belmont) contains a local channel, that entire area gets Pop, not just the town where the regional channel is broadcasting.

That's no good if you're in Cornwall. That said it's still going to cover several million homes.

Well it's better use of the capacity on local muxes than Bonanza Bonanza or another shopping channel - and in some cases than the local channel themselves.

^Guess what was on the EPG for Estuary TV when I looked earlier? Teleshopping. I guess that proves your point.

To be fair that only takes up 4 hours of the schedule between 6am and 10pm.

No. In your case Hull gets Estuary TV (which was renamed to reflect a coverage area beyond NE Lincs) because the signal is beamed northwards from Belmont passes over the Humber and into Hull. The whole Belmont transmitter area (notably the areas to the south of the mast) does not get the signal.

Likewise from Sutton Coldfield (SW beam only) and Waltham (most E beam and slight beam NW) - most of their national mux coverage areas remain outside the local TV mux coverage area.

I think it is supposed to cover around 60% of UK population once its been built out (also depends how many other local TV areas are licenced - there was no interest in some areas, and the only application for Bangor got rejected). Thus the local mux will technically reach less households than COM7, and significantly less than the original commercial multiplexs (around 90% of the population).

^Estuary's previous name was Channel 7 (as generic as it gets!), so the old name wasn't specific to Grimsby - that's not why it was changed, it was changed because it's on Channel 8 on Freeview and it would've been confusing.

Its origins are actually rooted in Cable 7, which was actually a handful of local stations funded by Diamond Cable. There was certainly a Nottingham and Leicester based operation, and there might have been Derby and Lincoln too.


Content was routinely shared between the local operations. Here's an example from Cable 7 Leicester.



Each of the stations was associated with a local FE college, when NTL withdrew the funding Grimsby College kept up, and continued to use gifted capacity on Virgin (albeit relegated to 872 or something).

You're making assumptions again.

From my understanding the offering when they were on Virgin Media was totally different and far reduced from what they offer now. This is more or less a different service rather than a continuation which would have been one of the reasons it has a different name.

They won the licence as Lincolnshire Living, they probably didn't know what number they'd be getting when they put the bid in and I guess it's this change a516, is referring to.

This is correct. They won the licence as Lincolnshire Living. The Estuary TV re-brand allows the station to make the most of their coverage area both sides of the Humber.

Or 6 hours between transmission time 6am to midnight.