Accurate maps of ITV regions

I'm not sure if anybody has asked this one before, but did accurate maps of ITV regions down to the nearest mile exist in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s? Such maps would have been useful for purposes of news gathering, advertising areas, and applicants at franchise auctions.

There's plenty of coverage maps available, but there isn't a defined border between regions because there will always be a crossover area. You simply can't stop transmissions at a set point. And in that crossover area, local conditions will mean that some residents can only receive one transmitter, so both (or more) regions need to cover that area, which pretty much makes trying to make such a map a pointless exercise.

I'm not sure but I very much doubt maps as accurate to the nearest mile were ever drawn up. It would've surely created controversy between neighbouring ITV companies. Really, the ITV stations didn't have official boundaries and where they were received depended on the footprint of the transmitter. They all overlapped and some were quite significant, such as Yorkshire/Tyne Tees.

I've always been interested in what the boundaries are for the Sky regions based on postcodes. I've looked for this online before but not found anything.

North Wales used to be a big crossover area. Granada's signal goes well into the north of Wales, and for some time Granada used to cover the area on the News, but since becoming ITV plc Granada doesn't refer to Wales. Historically the signal is still strong from Winter Hill (and vice versa with Moel-Y-Parc) and many aerials still point towards Granada.

I'm well aware of the transmitter coverage overlap between regions extending for more than 20 miles either way but were any (almost) guaranteed areas of reception from a particular transmitter maps drawn up? Did ITV company news gathering teams know which towns were and were not in their company's territory or were the frontiers of the territory very fuzzy?

That never stopped them, Ive seen STV do a report about something from Duns? ( border area) Im sure Anglia and YTV had alot of cross over around Kings lynn. YTV tried in view to nick viewers from TT.

Depended largely whether or not it was a slow news day in their core region or not

King's Lynn was officially in the Yorkshire region. That didn't ever stop Anglia from covering news from there, and why should it?

Lincoln is covered by both Central and Yorkshire and overlaps BBC regions too. Living at different addresses in the city, in the 2000s, I had aerials pointing at Waltham, Belmont, Emley Moor and the local relay Lincoln Central which, when it was analogue, was in the unusual setup of rebroadcasting the BBC from Waltham and ITV from Belmont.

IIRC, NTL/Virgin Media across the city were programmes from Nottingham as presumably that's where the headend was, and Sky was Yorks&Lincs/Yorkshire East (presumably for all LN postcodes).

ITV Yorkshire had a former shop/studio in the Bailgate area of the city, until around 2003/4 when they moved their news team to studios near to the University which is in Waltham transmitter territory.

I assume nowadays reports are shared across both programmes at BBC and ITV rather than both broadcasters having separate reporters for both programmes in the city.

I think the likes of the IBA did have maps although I can't locate any decent examples online. I don't think they ever had boundaries as detailed as what you're looking for though. Yes, I think quite simply the news gathering teams stopped quite simply where their service watched in so few households that it was deemed not worth the time and cost of covering the area.

Of course, Ulster and Channel were clearly defined because of geography.

Here's a 1984 one, that lives on my study wall

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gh2x5gbjk4oryr9/2016-05-30%2018.33.46.jpg?dl=0

I have an image now of a team from Yorkshire being chased back over county lines by the lot from Tyne Tees, to the tune of either Benny Hill or The Dukes of Hazzard .



Well, you say that. I seem to remember Alderney causing a bit of a hoo-hah (it doesn't take much down here) a few years back by claiming, in tourism promotional material, to be the only real channel island. Though no controversy as far as ITV regions are concerned, granted.