Bilsdale transmitter fire over 1m affected

cheesefest

cheesefest

cheesefest

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-58169501#comments

Also it will be ‘indefinitely’. The areas affected are North Yorkshire, Teeside and part of County Durham. Affecting all Freeview, DAB and FM services.

I feel sorry for the elderly who probably just got the above (like my grandmother) and use the tv and radio for company. Also not very good with technology.

Indefinitely is not good enough.

Not everyone has VM, Sky, streaming services and internet at home - like my grandmother. Though she lives in South Yorkshire.

Anyone here affected by this or have family and friends living in the Bilsdale transmitter area?
 
They are using other infrastructure to restore services i heard, dunno how good it will be but hopefully some channels will be available with a retune till its backup for those affected.
 
I was reading a thread about this over on Digital Spy with some people in the industry who were talking about it, and it looks like part of the problem at the moment is that no one, not even the engineers are being allowed near the transmitter (let alone up it) due to the fire damage and risk of it falling. Apparently they're currently doing a survey using drones, and by the sounds of it the reason it's an "indefinite" resolution is they don't know how badly the mast is damaged and can't even set up a temporary one on site at the moment.
I've no doubt they've got a contingency plan in place (both for a short term fix possibly with a short mast, and then a full replacement mast), but probably can't do anything until they've assessed the current tower and if it is unsafe worked out how to drop it safely - one suggestion for that is basically remotely cut the guy cables at the base on one side so it falls more or less on command (a suggestion was to use small explosive charges so only the guy that sets them up is at any risk from an uncontrolled collapse, and is on the edge of the danger area).


I think that particular site was also problematic during the DTV switchover which may mean there are issues with setting up a temporary transmitter, especially as temporary transmitters are usually both much shorter and lower power than the main, but they're trying to use some of the other transmitters to help make up some of the shortfall or something.

I suspect the secondary freeview channels might be down for a lot longer than the primary PSB mux's because of the legal obligations, so if they've only got the ability to get one or two mux's up it'll almost certainly BBC1/2, ITV, C4, C5 etc first.
 
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