Early days of NICAM Stereo

I've been looking for information on how quickly NICAM Stereo developed, as Wikipedia only lists 1986 for the start of experimental transmissions and 1991 for when full time broadcasting began. This BBC Research Department report from 1990 fills in a lot of the dates: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/reports/1990-06.pdf

A rough timeline as far as I can tell:

1984: Tests performed after closedown on the Crystal Palace transmitter
(sometime thereafter tests were also performed on the Wenvoe transmitter in Wales, "where the digital signal was satisfactorily received at the end of a long chain of five relay stations")

18th July 1986: first programme broadcast using NICAM stereo - First Night of the Proms - on Crystal Palace transmitter. (Also broadcast in FM stereo on Radio 3 of course).

From this date, programmes continued to be broadcast in the format on an experimental basis, from Crystal Palace.

Spring 1987: Now available on both BBC1 and BBC2.

March 1989: IBA starts experimental test transmissions from Crystal Palace (Thames/LWT and Channel 4) and Emley Moor (Yorkshire Television and Channel 4) and their dependent relay stations.

September 1989: Limited public service starts in these two ITV regions.

(By) September 1990: NICAM sound signals being transmitted from thirteen of the main IBA transmitters.

September 1990: Approximately twenty programmes a week being broadcast in the format on the BBC.

31st August 1991: Official launch of NICAM Stereo on BBC1 and BBC2. The BBC claims over 70% of the country will be able to receive broadcasts in the format at launch.

If anyone has any more dates or details on the development of the technology, please reply.

Blackadder Goes Forth, shown in 1989 on BBC1, was I assume one of the earliest mainstream programmes to be made in stereo. I can't imagine many people were able to hear it in stereo on its first broadcast though.

Remembrance of the Daleks was the first Doctor Who episode to be broadcast in NICAM (in London only), which was in October 1998, and according to composer Keff McCulloch it was "the first show on the BBC to use NICAM digital stereo," excepting one-offs like the Proms perhaps.

We had a retro-fitted early NICAM decoder installed in our VHS HiFi VCR (you used the Simulcast setting to record NICAM audio) and were watching and listening to Crystal Palace NICAM broadcasts from c.86 or 87.

Whilst technically they were 'test' broadcasts, the reality was that stereo production became the norm very quickly, particularly for live shows, and for recoded shows that went through a 'dub'. Shows that didn't go through a dub and were edited quickly on 1" or Beta SP were less likely to be stereo - as there are limited audio tracks on that format (and you used to have to use external digital lay-off devices ISTR)

ISTR that Yellowthread Street (set in Hong Kong with a decent budget) was the first ITV stereo drama.

The old engineering pages on both Ceefax and Oracle are a goldmine for info on when various regions had access to NICAM on the transmitters, although it doesn't reveal much about when/what programmes were actually going out in stereo. I can give out some details for Tyne Tees at least - via the set of pages already on TV Whirl for October 1990 they refer to NICAM as coming on to Pontop Pike from October 1990 and Bilsdale from December 1990. Although given Tyne Tees' general shoestring investment in tech, the transmitters being enabled probably doesn't mean the station were actually broadcasting anything.

Pages from 4/10/1990



I can actually narrow down the Pontop launch even more accurately to 26th October 1990 from a slightly later set of Tyne Tees' IBA engineering pages I have but which just aren't on the site yet. Below are both the Tyne Tees and Channel 4 IBA engineering pages from December 31st 1990, with apologies for the typos as I've not gotten these properly cleaned up yet. Given the TTTV IBA pages still list Bilsale as coming for the 'End of December' when it's already 31/12 and you'd have assumed they'd have wanted it out of the way before Christmas, either that one was delayed or with the spinning off to NTL due in January they just weren't as bothered about updating the pages. It was certainly listed as being in place on Bilsdale by February 1991 though.

Pages from 31/12/1990




Pages from 17/2/1991

It was a licence requirement for the new 'Jan 1 1993' period , (by then the ITC) that all ITV companies should be stereo equipped, GMTV was the only company to struggle with that ISTR ?

All of the ITV/4 Tx network was NICAM enabled by the end of 1993, it took the Beeb another 9 (yes nine !) years to roll out
NICAM to all BBC 1 and 2 transmitters (mostly North Scotland, and Orkney/Shetland (plus the CIs) Ironically
the N Scottish transmitters were carrying DTT and therefore stereo a couple of years before NICAM on analogue !

There were a couple of issues:-

Yorkshire TV experimented with 'psuedo stereo', taking a mono source, and frequency spliiting the L and R feeds (some pre NICAM stereo tellies did the same). The IBA were not amused, and had it stopped

Often on Emley and CP the audio source on NICAM and the vanilla FM mono sound carrier differed (test signals or music on NICAM) this led to folk with NICAM VCRs unwittingly recording programmes with the wrong sound. Naughty IBA !

CP, Sutton C, Winter Hill, Emley, Wenvoe, Sandy Heath, Black Hill, Mendip, Belmont, Pontop (and most of their relays)

See page 18 onwards here and page 22:-

http://www.bbceng.info/Information/eid/press-releases/Engineering_Press_Releases_part1_23Mar1994_to_20Mar1989.pdf

The first IBA transmission in stereo was an edition of Engineering Announcements, from Crystal Palace and Emley Moor only.

I think there were some further shenanigans in YTV land with the establishment of the Calendar South opt, the NICAM audio was missing during opts.

At the Beeb, there was a summer period where Children's BBC was presented from "The Boiler Room" which was actually the continuity for NC3 (aka sub control, the spare continuity suite) standing in front of the monitor stack rather than at the desk. This was because NC1 was being reengineered for stereo. Until this point I believe there was a kludge involving a separate sound desk in CAR for the stereo audio.

There was also some interesting audio decisions in the early days of stereo. For example in this Going Live clip from the start of series 5 (originally on the MHP PP) Phillip says that their microphones are coming out of the left and right speakers separately. Unfortunately this clip is in mono!

I recall the same being done on a TOTP with Simon Mayo on the left, Diane Oxberry on the right and Rod McKenzie in the middle (or some combination of that).

I think it was completely missing, from the moment Crosspool was converted ( for ITV) from an Emley transposer, to a line fed Tx to enable the S Yorks opt. No one from the IBA or YTV had thought about retaining the NICAM service!

There was a story that YTV had set it up off their own bat without reference to the IBA, but that can't be true, can it?