The TV Question Amnesty Thread

So this was a capgen on the recieve side of the channel that apologised if it had reception problems?


I remember in the days when Children In Need had lots of local phone numbers, that ones for Brussels and possibly The Hague or similar appeared on screen in the South East region along with Medway, Brighton, Oxford etc

They had rudimentary caption and switching facilities, before 24hr broadcasting they would switch to a PM5544 test card and BBC Radio 2 audio (that must have been sourced from Astra 19E?)

Mr T can give us chapter and verse, but they were replaced in 2001. The two Dover transmitters were dual standard, and were redeployed in 2013 for COM 7 and 8 at Emley

I'll put this here ....

Rather bizarre situation, One Series, Two Channels. Two Catch-up Services.

The series ... "Africa's Great Civilisations" with Henry Louis Gates Jr produced by Nutopia, McGee Media and Kunhardt Films with WETA support for PBS has been aired on BBC FOUR several times since May 2018, and again recently. It's also been shown on PBS America. This has resulted in a very rare occurrence, the series is currently on both BBC iPlayer AND My5 in the PBS America section. I've not seen this before, programmes have moved across from Channel to another, and appeared sometime later on other catch-up products, but I don't recall this very unusual situation previously.

It's possible that the ESPN Film 'OJ: Made in America' was available on iPlayer and the BT Sport app at the same time, or certainly within the same month.

(The BT Sport film 'Brothers in Football' isn't currently on the latter but is on the ITV Hub, after having had a repeat on ITV last week)

Why was ITV given the channel three slot when BBC 2 was launched 9 years later?

It wasn't given any slot specifically I don't believe. Its legal name was and still is AFAIK "Channel 3". That I believe was introduced as per one of the Broadcasting Acts, was it 1980 in preparation for Channel 4?

Remember that BBC One wasn't actually called BBC One when it launched, it was the BBC Television Service. It was only when BBC Two came along in 1964 that the first channel became BBC One. Of course BBC Two was only launched because In 1962, the Pilkington report was highly critical of ITV and suggested the licence to run the third channel should be awarded to the BBC.

The 1990 Act (s14(1)). Its legal name in the 1981 Act was “ITV” (s10(2)(a)), but even that was used solely to disambiguate between the existing service and Channel 4.

Because it has the number 2 in its name. When TVs with presets were introduced it was the obvious button to put BBC2 on.


When those channels launched TVs were still tuned in according to VHF/UHF channel number so there weren't any 'slots'

Incidentally, in Ireland, TnaG was the third channel, but booted to four on nearly all EPGs when digital came along because TV3 (the fourth channel) had “3” in its name. It changed its name to TG4 to prevent any further gazumping of its position.

Correct me if I’m wrong but TV3 had been in the pipeline a lot longer than TnaG/TG4, it was just that TnaG appeared before TV3.

It had - an extraordinary nine years from contract award to going on air, because it didn’t have its funding in order, then it had its contract terminated, then it got it back after a successful JR, and then it had to get new investors twice.