40 years since ATV, Southern & and Westward ended

[Markymark]

Moving the South Lakeland relays to Border involved a microwave link from BT at Carlisle to Lancaster and another link from there to Kendal. I'm not sure when exactly all of that was implemented and patched in.

It's one of those vague things you seem to remember from the past, but maybe wrong.

In the days when the Sunday Papers (well the Times and the Observer) ran extensive articles on ITV politics, I seem to recall an idea that Border would get the Lancaster relay (a big relay). The Border feed to Kendal went via IBA Lancaster, and then on a self-provided microwave link to the South Lakes.

Why?

Presumably, the Lancaster into Border concept was fixed as an idea, and a PO link ordered on a long lead time?

Another possibility is that the feed from Carlisle couldn't be easily extracted at PO Whinfell Common, but could at PO Heysham?

South Lakes taking Border makes sense as the area is genuinely Cumbria (or Cumberland as was). Whereas Lancaster would have become an enclave, with Barrow-in-Furness coming off Winter Hill. Do recall a rebuttal argument (may have been on here in the last couple of years), that Border wouldn't be able to afford the journalistic resource to cover Lancaster properly.

I've just dug out the IBA coverage map for Lancaster, it covers/ed a big area, right down into the northern suburbs of Blackpool (though I doubt anyone that far south ever used it).
Under the original Stockholm plan it was due to be a 100kW main transmitter, in the end it became a 10kW relay of Winter Hill.
I suspect also the use of Lancaster for the onward SHF link to Kendal was partly because it kept the link within 'IBA' premises ? However wasn't that still the era when the BBC or IBA could only provide their own SHF links if BT couldn't (or couldn't be bothered to) ?

During the Granada era Kendal was an off air relay of Lancaster (and Windermere and Coniston relays of Winter Hill) For Border both those sites became relays of Kendal, and Kendal became in effect a low power main station (fed by 'line')

The BBC carried on with keeping those relays as slaves of the North West region. They'd have had to have provided a similar arrangement to the IBA to have moved them into their NE+Cumbria region.

To this day, in the DTT era those relays are still a special SIPSI region of their own, with BBC NW, and ITV Border. I think they are the only relays in the UK with such a special (and expensive) arrangement.