TELEVISION RECEPTION IN NEWHAVEN - 1960s TO THE PRESENT DAY
We're a Cinderella Town - yet again!
By Andy Gilbert
1960s ITV coverage in the South East - but not for Newhaven!
Courtesy of ITA
Newhaven's transmitter mast on The Highway, overlooking the town.
Courtesy of Simon Carey
When I was growing up in the early 1960s, TV reception in the town was dire. You got a fuzzy, grainy BBC picture from the transmitter up at Heathfield on a good day. As for ITV, unless you lived high up in the town, you were often lucky to get a signal at all. As you can see from the map, Newhaven fell into a dead spot between the coverage of the ITV transmitters at Dover and at Chillerton Down on the Isle of Wight. Just one small area - The Highway - could get a clear signal.
In the late 1960s things were set to change with the construction of the relay transmitter mast on The Highway, overlooking the town. This went live for BBC1 transmissions in 1969 but it was almost another year before ITV programmes were broadcast, starting on the 3rd of August 1970. In fact, the Newhaven transmitter was the very last link in ITV's UK coverage but this, like the BBC1 signal, was on the old VHF 405 line standard. (I somehow find it unsurprising to learn that Newhaven was the very first 405 line transmitter to be switched off a few years later in 1982!)
Although the higher quality UHF 625 line transmissions had already started to come on line nationally in 1964, with BBC2 starting up in the same year and colour broadcasting commencing in 1966, it would still be several more years before UHF arrived at Newhaven, with programmes only starting to be broadcast in 1973. At last, Newhaven had decent, up to date TV reception - we even got colour and BBC2!
However, Newhaven's reputation as the Cinderalla TV Town was set to continue, and continue and continue.....
Channel 4 was launched in 1982 but, as usual, Newhaven was late to the party and didn't get a signal until 1984. As for Channel 5, that was launched in 1997, rebranded simply as '5' in 2002 and went back to being Channel 5 in 2010 but, whatever name it bore, Newhaven simply never got the channel as an analogue signal.
With the much heralded big change to digital signals, Newhaven was once again right at the back of the queue, one of the very last transmitters to switch over at the end of May 2012. And with that change came the arrival of Freeview. You'll probably remember all the glossy magazine adverts and countless TV trailers at the time, with dozens of balloons bearing the names of all the more than 50 channels on offer.
Well, surprise, surprise, Newhaven's transmitter offers only the bare minimum required by public broadcasting regulations. Not for us the likes of ITV3 and 4, 5*, 5USA, Dave, Yesterday, Challenge or Quest. We don't even get Channel 5 in HD!
Fair enough, we're in the same boat as a lot of UK TV viewers, as the commercial interests who run the transmitters won't pay up to make these extra channels available country-wide. It's not profitable enough for them, and the broadcasting regulator Ofcom won't force them into doing it, so what we've got is almost certainly all that we'll ever have.
I won't enter into the debate as to whether or not these extra channels are actually worth having, but it's nevertheless par for the course for sleepy old Newhaven!
Do you have any photos or stories about the construction of the TV mast? If so, I'd love to include them on this page.