Westcountry TV to close

Yep - one major factor was the shift from VHF to UHF and the move to co-sited transmitters.

Another change was Bluebell Hill switching from Thames/LWT to TVS when TVS replaced Southern in 1982.

Yep - it is entirely political rather than technical! Advertising revenue breakdown etc. If STV were part of ITV plc I suspect it would be an easier negotiation...

Out of interest - when you have both a Scottish and English Mux 1 being broadcast (or whatever the new PSB version will be) presumably one mux "wins" in being ITV1 on LCN 3 - with the others going to the no-man's land area (often the 800s?)

It's a very good question, and one I've asked those who are close to DSO implementation. I'm told, 'not to worry, it'll be OK' ! I await June 2009 with interest !!

This isn't tied up with the change to EIT etc. that has rendered the first lump of existing boxes obsolete is it? The second, much larger, lump of boxes will start to stop working in 2009 as the Granada region kicks off the 2k to 8k mode change AIUI (the other existing DSO regions will also be converted retrospectively)

I think most UK Freeview receiver implementations allocate secondary duplicate channels (i.e. those with duplicate LCNs) to the 800s?

Now it's not unreasonable for ITV to expect STV to cough up for Border Scotland, but considering they're abandoning the Border region it wouldn't be unreasonable for OFCOM to redefine the boundaries and switch Border to STV, which makes sense for the viewer.

Unfortunately though the viewers are of little importance in all this.

It's odd to think that in 1988 all of the regions were against Thatcher's changes to ITV (when the whole replacement of IBA with the ITC was been proposed) and all showed pride in been individual & providing a good service to it's loyal viewers. Fast Forward 20 years later & ITV is little regarded, often mocked & a complete shambles.

I do wonder what the bosses of Thames, TVS Television , TSW, etc., would make of today's situation? Of the three that lost their franchise (excluding TV:AM) Thames & TSW probably would have kicked up the biggest stink as one was a proud broadcaster that produced a third of the networks output & TSW was protective of their region. Can't speak for TVS although they went bust in the end didn't they?

Question is, if those three had survived the franchise battle & the same implementations had been applied, do we think any of the three would have given up their franchise had network centre tried & bossed them about too far?

I'm certain the regions are still against changes, as it means their jobs may go.

Apologies I meant that back then you had the bosses of each individual franchise that would fight against anyone trying to dilute their particular region.

Unfortunately nowadays it all falls under one boss & what he says goes, regardless of what others may think

The basic problem is that the environment that ITV operate in today, is quite different to that in 1955 or even 1985.

For some reason (because I don't recall rioting in the streets demanding it ?) it was decided by government and regulators that [I]more is better[I] and therefore we should have dozens more TV channels.

Thirty years ago ITV had a monopoly of TV advertising in the UK (remember for C4's first ten years ITV also sold and kept the revenue from that, in exchange for financing the channel).

However since about 1990 things have changed dramatically, so how can ITV afford to keep its PSB duties on an ever diminishing slice of advertising revenue ? What makes me cross it that it's a total fallacy that we now have more choice than we did 30 years ago. All that's happened is that quality programming has become diluted, in order to finance the majority junk. I still find myself watching the main 'big 4' channels. I could certainly live without all the rest.

It would be no different if TSW, Thames, and TVS had survived in 1993, they'd still have been swallowed up and merged.

True. I agree that if those three had survived they would have still been swallowed up but I wonder if Thames, for example, would have up sticks & left had they had not owned a larger share of the channels.

I'm not sure. The NIT changes were made because the number of services that could be accommodated on a single NIT was about to be exceeded. I don't know if a split NIT allows for better handling of duplicate channels. There is concern that once we have a proliferation of high power DTT transmissions, there will be many cases of duplicate muxes being received, and not necessarily having the correct transmitter being stored on 'low' LCNs for a particular Tx. This has already happened in some parts of Whitehaven, where the existing low power Caldbeck muxes are receivable, and because they are on lower frequencies than Whitehaven, are stored as 'primary' channels, despite being very weak. They are therefore prone to break up. Some viewers are unaware that the proper fully robust versions are hidden away at 800+.

It's funny that they never mentioned the complete loss of any public service on commercial TV when they advertised how great Digital TV was going to be, same with the picture quality which is often no better than old analogue!

Ofcom should increase the cost of owning a broadcasting licence and transfer that money to keep PSB going. Hopefully killing off a lot of the worthless channels in the process