Networked ITV - 1990s and before...

Yes, beyond the dual Central, HTV, and TVS/Meridian regions, there was nor regulatory requirement to provide anything 'smaller'.

As part of TVS's 1991 renewal proposals, they intended to add a sub regional opt for Brighton, run along similar lines to the 5 min sub opt for the Thames Valley (Hannington) (presented from the continuity studio at Southampton) and East Sussex (Heathfield) (presented from the continuity studio in Maidstone).

Of course they lost to Meridan, who instead expanded the Thames Valley opt into a full third sub region, and built a studio in Newbury to present it from.
I think they dropped the Heathfield opt totally ?

Of course Meridian later took advantage of those dedicated transmitter feeds to provide local ads, which remain to this day, and will live on far longer I suspect than those 'Trojan Horse' news services

The IBA must have known something, they had to modify the transmitter at Crosspool to accept baseband video and audio for starters. I know one of the complainers, he was phoned back by a very embarrassed sounding Bruce Randell at Crawley Court.
I've got a feeling, and I'll check because I have a scan of the correspondence somewhere, that YTV didn't provide a DSIS stream to Crosspool, only a bog standard mono analogue circuit. Sloppy of the IBA not to check. ITV, C4, and the IBA used NICAM 728 on their DSIS streams, so basically the signal was coded into NICAM at source, and travelled to the viewer's telly without any trans-coding required. The Beeb initially used a different flavour of NICAM (the same as was used for the national radio distribution/contribution) so that required conversion at the Tx sites to 728.
AIUI the Beeb later converted to all 728 operation on all DSIS links ?

Out of interest, is there anywhere online that has the 1991 Franchise application documents, or a summary of them.

Or is there anywhere I could go to read them?

I have two Q:

* Why was Emmerdale moved to 18.30pm from Jan 1988 - Dec 1989?

* Was this game show: Split Second (1988) with Paul Coia. seen by anyone else out side stv?

I knew about the Hannington sub opt (there is a clip of it on TV Ark) but not the Sussex one. I assume that was a sub-opt of the South East news? Where is/was the boundary between the 2, One of the few times I saw TVS was on the East side of the Isle of Wight and you could get both perfectly well.


Have they survived the world of digital TV?

There are 4 Meridian micro's at present - thames valley, hampshire, sussex and kent.

There were plans to scrap some of the micro regions, across the network, but the plans were put on hold.
http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/news/1036295/ITV-pushes-back-regional-advertising-plans/

There is a bit of heavy reading in a book on the topic called "Under the Hammer" by Andrew Davidson which is quite detailed in what went on. Also http://www.transdiffusion.org/ has plenty of info

Yes, the East Sussex opt came after the Hannington one. The Hannington one launched on Dec 12th 1988, the day of the Clapham rail crash. (Not because of it, the service had been advertised for a few weeks as starting on that day ). The East Sussex opt was indeed an opt out from the South East TVS programme that was presented from Vinters Park. AIUI the opt came from a continuity studio at Vinters Park, so the operation mirrored what was happening in Southampton with the Hannington opt.

Editorially the dividing line between the two halves of the TVS/Meridian region was/is the A23, but Brighton and Hove are in the 'West' half. The coverage area of Heathfield is more or less all of East Sussex, the other two transmitters Dover, and Bluebell Hill cover Kent between them. Heathfield is receivable a fair distance into West Sussex, but few bother with it, west of the A23.

http://tx.mb21.co.uk/gallery/heathfield/heathfield-map.php

For the 'West' half, Midhurst and Rowridge cover West Sussex between them, and of course Rowridge also serves the Southern half of Hampshire, South Wiltshire, and East Dorset.

Post DSO next March, the BBC are moving Brighton and Hove (as served by the Whitehawk Hill) transmitter from the South to South East regions. Not sure if ITV are doing the same ?

Is it a relay? If so isn't there some rule about the relays for BBC/ITV having to be fed from the same source, hence all the jiggling around in the early days in places like Berwick, the Isle of Man and Ridge Hill?

I assume Heathfield is BBC South East?

I presume this was why BBC on Lincoln Central moved from East Midlands to Hull.

Yes.

Whitehawk is a relay in analogue terms, but is line fed for DTT (being one of the legacy 1998 DTT sites). You're right though, all muxes must either be fed from the same parent SIPSI server (or for smaller re-broadcast fed relays, the same parent transmitter) Or, as in the case of Kendal it can be its own SIPSI site in its own right. For Kendal and its relays, a special SIPSI site was created, BBC fed from Winter Hill (aka Manchester), ITV/4 fed from Caldbeck (aka Border). The SIPSI is called 'South Lakeland'.

Am I right in thinking that this is largely for EPG reasons? Is there any other reason why a small relay couldn't RBR from separate parent DTT stations?