[Stooky Bill]

Tipped off last night about this website, launched to mark the forthcoming centenary of 5PY, the first BBC transmitting station in Plymouth (which happens to be this Thursday - perhaps worthy of a piece on Spotlight?)

5pyheritage.com 

No exaggeration - it is a goldmine. Lots of archive material, background info and insight - especially concerning BBC SW but not forgetting the contribution of Westward, TSW and even, Channel.

Yes, am amazing site. So much detail and inside information, I wonder who is behind it

There's even a separate page looking at the Channel Islands - including how Channel ended up playing host to an edition of Spotlight (the garage studio at Fremont was probably a bit too basic for the job)

As it says in the article the reason they had to use Channel's facilities was because of the connectivity back to the UK. The circuit was from Channel TV to allow them to contribute to ITV. The output of the 'studio' at Fremont Point just went directly into the transmitter hall next door. To use that would still have required some way to get the video to Channel TV

To be honest I was surprised that there was a circuit in that direction in 1995, and as it was a result of Channel 4's distribution it presumably had been there since 1992. When Channel TV went onto satellite in the early 2000s it was done initially by a satellite link back to the UK. The BBC didn't get a way of getting video from the CIs until fairly recently via IP. The TV opt out from BBC Jersey had a low resolution video link back to Plymouth for monitoring purposes

The shot of the Jersey studio on the end of the national news is done via IP whereas the rest are done with traditional baseband video