Was able to find a surviving video of the report. Quite bizarre they travelled down to Bannockburn when the people there can’t pick up the WIN signal from Lookout Hill. Some minor pixelation at parts in this one tells me someone there from the FSU had a massive mast antenna setup and amp to pick up WIN and record this?
Most of Bannockburn isn’t in the Lookout Hill coverage area despite being in the Ballarat LAP, but it’s not impossible. If you happen to be in a poor predicted coverage area (go to mySwitch and take a look) you could still pick them up with an extremely powerful mast antenna/amp setup.
I really don’t understand the fascination of “out of area” content that pops up on regional television that has evolved here - its happened for a very long time now (I say that as someone who used to see ads for Taree in Tamworth on 9/8 Television)
A few years ago, I recall seeing WIN News Central West doing a report in Merriwa. Which is not in the Southern NSW aggregated area, but in the Northern NSW market with NBN having a translator there since the 1970s. I can’t remember what the story was about but i couldn’t work out why it was on the Central West bulletin.
I have written a few stories about regional signals.
I should know what this means but I am not sure I understand it exactly.
These two licence areas are operated by a single company WIN.
Is WIN asking for these these two areas to move into a supplementary joint venture operational model - so for example Seven owns Seven. WIN owns Nine and then a JV for 10?
My interpretation of the consultation paper is that WIN is asking ACMA to make permanent the current arrangement where Seven and 10 share the same multiplex (and hand back the unused multiplex). Doesn’t seem to indicate that a joint venture of any sort is being proposed (WIN will still broadcast all 3 networks).
They are seeking a license variation to reflect the change that has already occurred - the Seven and Ten services sharing the same multiplex. The proposed variation notes that it is to be retrospective.
For the South East licenses - BSL1130144 and BSL1150799 are the SDS and MGS licenses respectively - while the transmitter allocations are the ones for SDS, which matches reality.
The text of the amendment allowing this makes it clear it is very broad for consolidating licenses, including where there is not common ownership, and would allow for three licenses to share one transmitter, not just this case of 3 into 2.
I’d worry though, as this process requires forfeiting the transmitter license - there’s a disincentive for regional broadcasters to work together on consolidation, for not wanting to risk not being entitled to the eventual digital dividend revenue because they’d already given up the frequency.
Surely a better solution here is to merge all of SA regionally under the same license area and force Seven and WIN to compete rather than leaving monopolies in place.
At The Gap today and took a couple of pictures to show what I meant. In this spot on the main drag Waterworks Road you could see the top of the Nine tower - far right just next to the truncated Seven tower peeking over the hill. Far left is 10, with ABC in between. But, as you go closer to the hill ,which is the case for half the suburb, the top of the main Nine tower becomes hidden behind the mountain.
Now it’s better with DTV, as the 10 tower is the main commercial site, but I wonder what happens when Nine, that is the backup, is used.
I believe the Sydney TV commercials switch from Artarmon to Gore Hill for a couple of hours every 2nd week for testing/recovery mode. Once I had Channel 7 go missing for a bit due to this, but I’m very deep fringe.
Find out what day/days DR testing is done & take & small TV with rabbit ears to an area you think best & test it for yourself, of course this test will be worst case scenario, but if nothing happens with rabbit ears, then nothing will happen if you have a normal FTA antenna setup at a house.
Yes as per this, it’s normally done after midday for an hour or 2. In Sydney 9 is done every Tuesday, 7 every Wednesday & 10 do fortnightly on a Thursday, but theirs goes from about 7am - 1pm.
Melbourne 7 & 9 are done every Monday with 9 usually first at midday then 7 following around 1pm, 10 is done the same as Sydney, often the same day but commonly the alternating fortnight.
I think 7 & 9 Brisbane are done Wednesdays & Thursdays, but not sure, 10 I think is the same as Sydney/Melbourne, but I’m not sure what fortnight that’s usually done.
SBS never seem to do a transmitter site change DR/test & ABC generally but not always do a transmitter site change DR/test once a month/every 6 weeks & it normally lasts 24 hours starting & finishing around 1am. @gordo92 can probably elaborate on those last 2 more, I’m just an outside observer on those, noting what transmitter is on at what site & when.
If everything goes according to plan when doing the transmitter site change DR/tests, you won’t notice the switch between main sites, but the off air fed translator sites will drop out & go black screen briefly (up to 15-20 seconds) on changeover.
It mainly gets swapped to the TXA site when there is a fault or they need to do some maintenance to the TX at the BA site
POP testing is done from time to time to ensure reliability but can’t think of the top of my head how often this is done, likely once a month been an A Class site
ABC and SBS much prefer having there services come from the BA site due to been better class of TX and slightly better coverage
In Sydney, ABC has a newer TX at Gore Hill than Artarmon, but it’s an historic thing & in their internal mindset with Gore Hill being the past home of the ABC, that they more insist than prefer to transmit from there, unless of a fault, even though Artarmon has better coverage because it’s higher.
SBS are the reverse, they will never go to Gore Hill unless there’s a fault at Artarmon due to the better coverage & having the same TX’s at both sites.
Artarmon also has a higher gain antenna than Gore Hill, so transmitter output power levels at Artarmon are lower, thus lower operating costs, but the ABC don’t care about that with free ongoing taxpayer funds.
Yes other states are different though with both ABC & SBS preferring the BAI sites as historically used.
Many years ago in the 1990’s I noticed that occasionally (more often than I expected), during the evening, all the FM stations from Mt. Dandenong would go off the air at the same time, then come back on one by one, with community stations coming back last. I assumed it was due to an outage, and once it was during a thunderstorm, but it was happening more often than I would expect. Given that they’re similar to TV transmitters, could this have been scheduled testing?
Not likely, FM’s aren’t tested or site changed anything like TV, FM’s mostly stay as they are unless of a fault.
Still today Mt Dandenong has a really crap power grid, the transmitter sites up there lose power far more than any viewer/listener would ever know.
There’ll be a mains bump at one or more sites up there every couple of weeks with a mains power outage every 4-6 weeks on average, with sites running on generator for anything from 15 minutes to hours before mains power restoration, most or all of the FM’s up there have UPS backup & are connected to the TV sites generators.
At TXA Eyre Rd, EON FM had their own generator seperate to TV, (it’s now the TV generator with no FM’s at that site any more), Kerry Packer put in 20,000 litre diesel tanks at the GTV/now TXA Observatory Rd transmitter site as it was in power outage & on generator so often for such long periods of time back in the day, it’s now the FM’s generator with no TV at that site now.
The FM’s at TXA Ornata Rd also had their own generator but now they use the TV site one.
I don’t think the community stations at the BAI Eyre Rd site were connected to any generator, even quite recently, that’s one of the reasons most of them moved to either TXA Obs Rd or TXA Ornata Rd sites.
Back in the 90’s the TV generators probably came on line much quicker then the commercial FM’s generators did, & then the community stations would’ve been powered up last on generator, if they were lucky enough to have been connected to any.
