ITV Region: ITV News Tyne Tees
BBC Region: BBC Look North (NE)
I believe that in the IBA days, there were four ROCs at Croydon, St Hilary, Emley Moor and Black Hill. I’m sure they had many functions, but was one of them to monitor the quality of the TX feeds from various regions/transmitters? I think Emley dealt not only with YTV, but also Granada and TTT?
How did the staff at the ROCs receive these feeds? Did they rely on off-air signals from neighbouring transmitters or were they line-fed or similar? Or have I got this part of things completely wrong and the ROCs did not perform this task?
Was there an alternative for the BBC, and does something similar still exist?
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I believe the ROCs replaced the previous Colour Control Rooms in each region. They monitored the output and remote controlled it as required.
Quote:With the bringing into operation of the fourth IBA
regional operations centre (ROC) at Black Hill near Glasgow the entire ITV transmitter network is now
being supervised from just four centres. The other
computer -based ROCs are at Croydon, Emley Moor and
St. Hilary (near Cardiff), the whole system forming one
of the largest and most sophisticated TV transmitter
networks anywhere in the world. Black Hill is the
control centre for Central and North Scotland, The
Borders, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man, covering
17 high -power transmitters and some 150 low -power
relays.
To provide visual quality assessment of the off -air
pictures being radiated in each ITV region, the ROCs
have receiving aerials capable of providing good -quality
pictures from distant transmitters. Since it's impossible
to receive high-grade off -air pictures from Ulster and
The Boarders at Black Hill however microwave links are
used for the purpose. The TV4/Sianel 4 Cymru
transmitters will be controlled from the same centres.
Source: courtesy
https://worldradiohistory.com/UK/Practic...982-03.pdf
The BBC equivalent (ish) was the MIC, the Monitoring and Information Centre.
Write that down in your copybook now
ITV Region: ---None Selected---
BBC Region: ---None Selected---
The modern day equivalent - Arqiva's main control room which I'm pretty sure is at Emley Moor. Although Arqiva have lots of other locations including the old IBA engineering place at Crawley Court
The BBC had five MICs, they were established in 1982, and each looked after their own areas, until the start of Breakfast Time, when the Crystal Palace one would be in "All UK mode" outside the normal shift hours at the other sites.
In 1986, CP's MIC was the all UK one from 8pm until the following daytime shifts came in at 8am. It even had control over some of the shortwave sites overseas.
It was there to take data feeds of fault conditions, although it could see off air feeds from some of the main TV, or hear some of the main Radio transmitters in its patch. Those transmitters also sent fault data over subcarriers. Obviously overnight it couldn't see the entire UK transmission network off air, so data fault reporting was what it depended on. That was either via data lines or via dialup modems.
When BBC Transmission was moved to Warwick, there was a "Super MIC" set up there, which handled the entire BBC UK network.
Of course that was privitised and was owned by various companies, CCI, National Grid Wireless, and finally Arqiva, where it was combined with the former IBA transmission.
I am trying to remember where the other MICs were. I think it was Sutton Coldfield, Holme Moss, Kirk o'Shotts and Wenvoe, but I am happy to be corrected on that!
Do these places also have biss encrypted receivers pointing to 27.5w I’d love to be monitoring that in Emily moor.
