Regional Sky Digital

Yesterday saw the first regional station to broadcast on Sky Digital. For the first time, viewers/listeners in the London area are exclusively hearing a new audio station 'Bright Blue' on EPG 898.

Viewers outside of London do not have the channel listed in their EPG's, however it can be heard by manual tuning. We know that broadcasts can be intermittently blocked (as seen on BBC2 N.I. local sport coverage), which begs the question...

...is the issue of carrying ITV regionally already been solved with this example of postcode carriage?

Viewers in/or around London might want to perform a test... if they can recieve EPG 898, surely this means that they will (in the future) recieve their London ITV service. For viewers around London, especially in an overlap area, the choice of ITV supplier may have already been decided for you...

Where I live, there is a commercial radio station called 'Mercia FM' (available in Coventry and Warwickshire). It is part of a network called 'The Mix'.

It works a bit like ITV: Sometimes all the 'The Mix' stations across the UK join up for netwoked shows (the equivelent of ITV going over to ITN News), the rest of the time they 'go local'.

Networked programming is more prominent overnight (and therefore the logical oppisite of that is also true). This includes 'Late Night Love with Graham Torrington'.

It is available on channel 860 of Sky Digital. I'm not sure if the local variations are available, or if it's a generic version. It is identified on Sky's on-screen banner by the generic name 'The Mix', but that doesn't necessarily mean that the local variations don't come on at the appropriate times. I only happened to have tuned into it on Sky Digital at times when networked programming would be on anyway. Check it out.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR LOCAL VARIANT OF 'THE MIX' IS (PRESUMING YOU HAVE ONE)?

(Edited by SittingOvation at 8:14 pm on Aug. 19, 2001)

'The Mix' is part of a network of stations owned by GWR. 'The Mix' also occasionally broadcasts some programming from GWR's local stations, including Mercia FM. 'The Mix' is simply a national station from GWR.

In the case of 'Big Blue' (incorrectly I named it as 'Bright Blue', another forthcoming station), Sky now has made a regional Sky system, and this seems to be the first example of regional Sky digital.

With the postcode testing, it seems so far that Dunstable in Bedfordshire (overlap point between Carlton London & Anglia) and anything south of this to London will almost certainly be transmitting Carlton London when ITV starts transmissions.

If anyone else can give further tests, we may be able to solve ITV's ideas, before they start...

So, you're saying that 'The Mix' is the generic version of Mercia FM and it's many sister stations?

btw do you know what GWR stands for?

I'm sure there's a radio station that's part of the Mix/GWR (or whatever) network called '2CR' - as in 'Two Counties Radio'. The 'two counties' concerned are either Devon and Cornwall or Devon and Dorset, I think.

What's your local Mix/GWR station called?

A bit OT now, but never mind...
'The Mix' is simply another GWR station, however some of their output comes from other GWR stations. I didn't say its a 'generic version' of Mercia FM, it just broadcasts some of the same content. I would imagine their 'Late Night Love' netowrked programme is broadcast from Swindon (their home base)

GWR used to stand for 'Great Western Radio'. It first started in Swindon in 1982, and is now owning more than 48 radio stations in the UK.

Other satelitte radio stations owned by GWR include Core & The Storm, and also nationally owns Classic FM.

You might want to look at http://www.gwrgroup.com for more information.

Meanwhile, ppl from around London, can you get EPG 898? if so, you know that you'll problably be getting Carlton London/LWT when it comes to DSat.

My GWR Station in Nottingham is 96 Trent FM

You can find out a list of all the GWR stations at koko.com

BTW: My local station is 2-TenFM

Actually looks like that site is shut odwn at the mo!

(Edited by tellynet at 10:30 am on Aug. 20, 2001)

Yeah, koko.com/GWR are reviewing their Internet activities at the moment, for a three month period. So it would seem that little updates would be made to koko.com