How is the transmitter system in the US structured?

[BMR]

OK, first up, I promise this is my final question on Radio Info for a good while

This is something I've always wondered about in my anoraky way.

In the UK, the transmitter network was built by what was effectively a government department, not the TV stations themselves. and was/is designed to give near-as-possible universal coverage of four analogue services. So you get all your analogue services from the same transmitter wherever you are, and that same transmitter network is now being converted to give near universal provision for the umpteen digital channels*


Do you have a similar system in the US? Do you get all the stations from the same transmitter, or do you have to rotate the aerial to get each of the networks? Have things changed with the introduction of digital?




* this is a slight oversimplification of the UK system, there are a few local quirks, but by and large that is how it works

 

[landtuna]

In the UK, the transmitter network was built by what was effectively a government department, not the TV stations themselves. and was/is designed to give near-as-possible universal coverage of four analogue services. So you get all your analogue services from the same transmitter wherever you are, and that same transmitter network is now being converted to give near universal provision for the umpteen digital channels*

In the USA TV (and radio) are regulated by a federal agency (the FCC) but the stations themselves are responsible for the buildout and operation of their facilities in accordance with licenses issued.

Do you have a similar system in the US? Do you get all the stations from the same transmitter, or do you have to rotate the aerial to get each of the networks? Have things changed with the introduction of digital?

Because of the size difference between the UK and the USA it would not be possible to cover the entire country from one, or even several, sites. Most TV transmitters are located inside the market areas they are licensed to serve (which is usually inside or very close to a city).

Most large cities are served from a common transmitting site (top of high building or mountain) so it is usually not required to have to adjust the antenna to receive a signal. In rural America, especially when located between two cities having TV stations you may have to do that or have two antennas.

Only about 15% of Americans now rely on over-the-air signals with most getting their TV service through satellite or cable so the digital switch didn't affect the majority. For those few OTA viewers some report reduced reception (like me) and others say they can now receive more stations than before. A mixed bag.




* this is a slight oversimplification of the UK system, there are a few local quirks, but by and large that is how it works
[/quote]

 

[BMR]

In the USA TV (and radio) are regulated by a federal agency (the FCC) but the stations themselves are responsible for the buildout and operation of their facilities in accordance with licenses issued.

These days, day to day running and repair of the UK transmitter network is franchised out to a commercial company, but it is still controlled and licensed by the goverment's Office of Communications, and is strictly separated from the stations.

Because of the size difference between the UK and the USA it would not be possible to cover the entire country from one, or even several, sites. Most TV transmitters are located inside the market areas they are licensed to serve (which is usually inside or very close to a city).

Most large cities are served from a common transmitting site (top of high building or mountain) so it is usually not required to have to adjust the antenna to receive a signal. In rural America, especially when located between two cities having TV stations you may have to do that or have two antennas.

Only about 15% of Americans now rely on over-the-air signals with most getting their TV service through satellite or cable so the digital switch didn't affect the majority.

15% is quite low, although over-the-air is now below 50% in the UK. Roughly (for main sets) it's satellite 38%, cable 12.5% with the other just-less-than half using OTA. All over-the-air will be digital in less than two years.

Thanks

 

[Darth_vader]

Are you guys in the UK using DVB-T or one of the other systems? Over here we're using what is basically a horribly convoluted and hacked-up version of the proprietary Digicipher II.

I imagine we'd be on DVB-T right now, had the FCC's brains not been firmly planted in their wallets. ;o)

 

[BMR]

Are you guys in the UK using DVB-T or one of the other systems?

DVB-T.

I had to look it up, as we use the name 'Freeview' for the system, but yes, the correct name is DVB-T

 

[BMR]

Are you guys in the UK using DVB-T or one of the other systems?

DVB-T.

I had to look it up, as we use the name 'Freeview' for the system, but yes, the correct name is DVB-T

Just to comment further, this is from Wikipedia, but I can confirm it's correct

"The digital broadcasting technology adopted in the UK is the DVB-T system (Digital Video Broadcasting - Terrestrial) carrying compressed digital audio, video and other data in a combined transport stream, using COFDM modulation. A total of six 'multiplexes' are broadcast in the UK, guaranteed to reach over 90% of the country when analogue signals are fully switched off. Three of the six multiplexes, carrying the free public service channels operated by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five, are guaranteed wider coverage still, reaching 98.5% of the country including areas dependent on low-power local relays"

This coverage guarantee is the main reason the physical transmitter network is kept separate from the broadcasters- I suppose a commercial broadcaster might not be willing to spend money on reaching the more isolated communities- at the end of the day ITV and Channel Five are businesses, not public service broadcasters.

The whole article is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_terrestrial_television_in_the_United_Kingdom and it seems pretty accurate, although I certainly haven't checked it all for accuracy, it's a pretty good read for anyone with a 'laymans' interest in DTT in the UK.

 

[bpatrick]

Maybe you've already answered this, or maybe I'm confused.
Here in the U.S., stations make affiliation agreements with
the various networks (unless the network owns the station),
so, for example, ABC is seen in Atlanta on virtual Ch. 2 and in
Dallas on virtual Ch. 8.

How does this work with the BBC or ITV; for example, what
channels would they be on in London and Liverpool, respectively?

 

[BMR]

Maybe you've already answered this, or maybe I'm confused.
Here in the U.S., stations make affiliation agreements with
the various networks (unless the network owns the station),
so, for example, ABC is seen in Atlanta on virtual Ch. 2 and in
Dallas on virtual Ch. 8.

How does this work with the BBC or ITV; for example, what
channels would they be on in London and Liverpool, respectively?

'Stations' and 'Networks' don't really exist as separate entites in the UK- we just have TV channels, and they are pretty much all national these days. What happens is this. BBC, ITV and the other stations produce output and then send it to the transmitter network, which these days is owned by a company called Arquiva, who run the actual transmitters on behalf of a goverment department called OFCOM (OFice of COMmunications).

The electronics in all modern TVs (all digital TVs and convertor boxes) hide the exact broadcast frequencies from viewers and display BBC 1 on channel 1, BBC 2 on channel 2, ITV on channel 3 and so on. If you move house, you need to do a rescan of your TV or convertor box, but then the channels will appear as before.....no matter where you are in the UK, the channels are in the same order. There is a full list here, which looks accurate to me en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_digital_terrestrial_television_channels_(UK)

So to answer your question....the short answer from a viewers perspective is that BBC 1 is on channel 1 and ITV on channel 3 both in London and Liverpool. You will get local news at 6.30pm, but all the other programming is the same. The actual broadcast frequency used by the transmitter mast will vary, but you don't need to know that as the electronics in the TV or convertor box take care of that, and deliver the same channels in the same order everywhere in the UK.

Does that answer your question?

 

[BMR]

No idea what happened there? For some reason my post duplicated!

 

[arnoldevns]

The "local" newscast is not really local either. It's more of a regional thing unless you are in London. (which is kind of treated as its own region)

I think the lack of localism in British television is a crying shame.

 

[BMR]

The "local" newscast is not really local either. It's more of a regional thing unless you are in London. (which is kind of treated as its own region)

I think the lack of localism in British television is a crying shame.

Yes, that is one area where the British system falls down.

 

[FreddyE1977]

I had heard that in Britain the independent (non-BBC) stations were forced to lease their broadcast time through the IBA, another government agency. The IBA actually built the sites and operated the transmitters, and then just leased the broadcast time to whatever successful bidder. And that during sign-on each day the IBA would first make a stern announcement that the transmitter was in full control of the government, and then announce that they are turning the airwaves over to London Weekend or whomever the franchisee was for a time. Sounds like the government in the U.K. is extremely paranoid about the whole idea of a TV transmitter being in private hands. Is it still the case?

 

[BMR]

I had heard that in Britain the independent (non-BBC) stations were forced to lease their broadcast time through the IBA, another government agency. The IBA actually built the sites and operated the transmitters, and then just leased the broadcast time to whatever successful bidder. And that during sign-on each day the IBA would first make a stern announcement that the transmitter was in full control of the government, and then announce that they are turning the airwaves over to London Weekend or whomever the franchisee was for a time. Sounds like the government in the U.K. is extremely paranoid about the whole idea of a TV transmitter being in private hands. Is it still the case?

No, British TV has undergone a revolution in the last 20 years, and especially in the last ten.....

The IBA is no more, and the transmitter network has been privately owned for a long time now. The BBC and IBA transmitter networks have been merged into the new privately owned network which carries both BBC and commercial channels. London Weekend is also gone, now part of a single company that operates ITV- which in turn is one of many commercial channels. ITV is the most popular commercial channel by far.

There is still a high level of goverment involvement in the whole process though- OFCOM licences the TV broadcasters, who then pay their licence fees to OFCOM, who in turn pays the transmitter operating company- which goes by the funny name of Arqiva.

As far as I know, the rules wouldn't allow Arqiva to own one of the TV channels it broadcasts, but I'm not sure on that one.

 

[bpatrick]

I've picked up the BBC's early-evening newscast on the Internet
(I listened to it every day at 1 PM ET when Tony Blair was going
to join the Iraq effort and was getting a lot of opposition
from the public) and I thought they allowed a few minutes toward the end for their
regional channels to at least present some headlines and weather.

And while the explanation of the British approach to "channels" answers my
question, it still seems a bit odd. But who knows? Someday the U.S. networks
may be totally on cable, and we'll have ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, the CW, MyNet,
PBS, and ION without local affiliates.

 

[BMR]

The "local" newscast is not really local either. It's more of a regional thing unless you are in London. (which is kind of treated as its own region)

I think the lack of localism in British television is a crying shame.

Yes, that is one area where the British system falls down.

Thinking about it, the idea of city stations was first put forward when the government decided to licence a fifth analogue station in the 1990s. I think the idea was to have a station for London, one for Newcastle, one for Liverpool etc etc. which offered local news in the early evening and late night programming such as discussion shows, but shared a few hours in prime time in between. A bit more like the US system, if not a true network/affilate model.


Instead we got the snowstorm that was/is Channel Five analogue, which neither has the universal coverage of the main four stations nor offers any local content.- the worst of both worlds. And IMHO the programming is nothing special either.


Not sure if anything can ever be done about this now. In the 1990s the idea of going from four channels to five was exciting, especially as it also increased the number of commercial stations from two to three. In 2010 we have dozens of commercial channels- so I doubt we'll see a great rush of interest for another licence, either from viewers or broadcasters......

 

[BMR]

I've picked up the BBC's early-evening newscast on the Internet
(I listened to it every day at 1 PM ET when Tony Blair was going
to join the Iraq effort and was getting a lot of opposition
from the public) and I thought they allowed a few minutes toward the end for their
regional channels to at least present some headlines and weather.

Correct. There is also a longer regional bulletin at 6.30pm everyday. However you will still get BBC 1 on channel 1 everywhere in the UK- if I pressed channel 1 and got anything other than the BBC, I would know my convertor box was faulty, just I expect to get ITV everytime I push button 3

And while the explanation of the British approach to "channels" answers my
question, it still seems a bit odd. But who knows? Someday the U.S. networks
may be totally on cable, and we'll have ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, the CW, MyNet,
PBS, and ION without local affiliates.

.

The idea of having say ITV on channel 8 in Liverpool and channel 6 in London would seem crazy to most Brits- because ITV is synonymous with channel 3- indeed we often say ' did you catch such-and-such-a-show on three last night?' meaning ITV.

I can see how it would seem odd when you are comparing it to the US system. But that is how TV over here has developed over the years. It has the strengths of strong national channels with very good (98.5% coverage) and the weakness of very little truly local content.

 

[FreddyE1977]

Thanks for the updated info! I guess it has been about 20 yrs. since I had worked with several
Brit expats.

 

[hintomedia]

The "local" newscast is not really local either. It's more of a regional thing unless you are in London. (which is kind of treated as its own region)

I think the lack of localism in British television is a crying shame.

Yes, that is one area where the British system falls down.

It's only gotten worse in recent years, at least on ITV. Plymouth-based ITV Westcountry was merged into Bristol-based ITV West, and similar changes have been made in other regions too.

The idea of having say ITV on channel 8 in Liverpool and channel 6 in London would seem crazy to most Brits- because ITV is synonymous with channel 3- indeed we often say ' did you catch such-and-such-a-show on three last night?' meaning ITV.

Although this was the case (to a limited extent) once upon a time. A few ITV stations gave their VHF channel numbers on their idents from the 50s and 60s, like Tyne Tees on Channel 8, Westward on 9 and 12, and Granada on 9. This practice (by no means universal) was done away with by the time colour was introduced in the late 60s, and the beginning of the abandonment of VHF for UHF. That the stations are regional in nature rather than targetted at a particular city (except London), and the subsequent need for multiple transmitters to cover the whole region probably also factored into it; the individual "Channel 8"/"Channel 12" type branding works better for the American-style local stations with a primary transmitter serving a particular metro area.

Thinking about it, the idea of city stations was first put forward when the government decided to licence a fifth analogue station in the 1990s. I think the idea was to have a station for London, one for Newcastle, one for Liverpool etc etc. which offered local news in the early evening and late night programming such as discussion shows, but shared a few hours in prime time in between. A bit more like the US system, if not a true network/affilate model.

Instead we got the snowstorm that was/is Channel Five analogue, which neither has the universal coverage of the main four stations nor offers any local content.- the worst of both worlds. And IMHO the programming is nothing special either.

Not sure if anything can ever be done about this now. In the 1990s the idea of going from four channels to five was exciting, especially as it also increased the number of commercial stations from two to three. In 2010 we have dozens of commercial channels- so I doubt we'll see a great rush of interest for another licence, either from viewers or broadcasters......

Some restricted service licences (RSL) were given in the 1990s and 2000s to serve as local independent TV stations, the most prominent of which is probably Manchester's Channel M. These stations just don't seem to have caught on though, and a number have gone off air. Even Channel M, which remains on air, has cancelled all in-house production (even local news).

Maybe this really is too little too late... Viewing habits have been firmly established by the time these stations came about, and upstart TV stations are generally at a serious disadvantage.

 

[Darth_vader]

The channel numbering thing sounds somewhat similar to how it stands here, particularly with regard to virtual channels. For example, in my hometown Portland, Oregon (not technically my home town, as I actually live north of there) there were two stations on channels 2 and 6, in the low-VHF band. These now reside in the UHF spectrum, as lof-VHF was abandoned for digital TV broadcasting. (There was an ATSC station operating there on channel 4 a few years back, but it has since moved to UHF as well.)

So to make it easier, the stations transmit an "alias channel", hence despite the fact that KOIN (CBS) is on 40 and KATU (ABC) is on channel 43, you'd still tune KATU as 02-01 (or 02-02 for their rebroadcast of "This TV", a movie channel) and KOIN as 06-01. On the other hand, some receivers can be set to be tuned using the physical channel, and I have one such receiver at home. So instead of punching in 02-01 to see KATU's widescreen programme, I'd enter 43-03 instead.

But then again, DVB doesn't use virtual channeling in the same manner as DC2/ATSC! (Too bad ATSC couldn't follow DVB's many good examples.....)

As for everything being the same nationwide, there are some "translator networks" that mostly exist on a state-to-state basis, so depending on where you moved within the state you'd only need rescan your receiver. The stations would all be on different (likely UHF) channels but they'd (hopefully!) all be there regardless. If I had taken my receiver with me to Pendleton, OR and scanned it here, I'd get the Portland stations via the translators they have here, possibly some from SE Washington, and maybe Idaho if I were lucky.

But if you were to move to a different state altogether, you'd get all the channels from that state's major market. So if I moved to, say, Kentucky, I would only get the Kentucky TV stations and not those from Oregon.

Kinda' messy, I know.....

 

[bpatrick]

What does it mean, then, when I see something like
BBC1 on C28 in Brougher Mountain?