[Stooky Bill]

Yes, they gave the contract for their distribution to NTL* (now Arqiva) and the easiest/quickest/cheapest way to distribute it to the transmitter network was by satellite.

From launch there were 4 regional versions of Channel 5**. They were uplinked onto 4 digital satellite channels, two on each of two satellites - IIRC two Sirius satellites. This setup provided redundancy - if the uplink for one, or even the whole satellite failed then they had the other

Which of those 4 regions each transmitter was taking could be remotely changed which added quite a lot of flexibility - they could theoretically broadcast a different ad break or even a different programme to just one part of the country (potentially useful for PPBs or football or very specific marketing)

Then a few months after launch there was a massive thunderstorm over Croydon one evening and took Channel 5 off air in London. Problem was that their resilience relied on having at least one of the two satellites available.... and both were taken out by heavy rain. So after that they ran a fibre to the Croydon transmitter. I'm not sure they did to any others, Croydon not only had the biggest number of potential viewers it was also the easiest to run fibre to, in fact being one of their main control rooms they probably already had the connectivity and fibre routes



*this is also why they used different transmitters to the others in some places - they only used NTL sites

**IIRC when the Astra 1 service launched that was region 5