Question about Downtown Radio in NI?

tinytobe

Just wondering, is the FM Frequency of 103,4 for Belfast new?

I recall times when Downtown Radio had FM coverage for NI, but interestingly not for Belfast? Belfast was covered only on AM? Any reasons for that?

dxhound2005

According to this site March 2020. Frequencyfinder lists it as 10 watts and someone on Digital Spy says it is because 1026 AM opts out of Downtown for the evening hours. There is another transmitter covering the Newcastle area, 200 watts.

https://radiotoday.co.uk/2020/03/new-logo-and-transmitter-for-downtown-radio/

The mast is on Carnmoney Hill which is in the Northern outskirts of Belfast. So I’m not sure how much of the city a 10 watt output would cover.

dxhound2005

This is the quote from Digital Spy. And the BBC stations are using just 20 watts.

"The addition of Downtown on 103.4 from Carnmoney Hill last year was an interesting development since, even with just 10 watts of power it does cover a sizeable part of Belfast and North Down, although I think the reason it was added was because they split their AM frequency with FM for the evening country shows"

tinytobe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119615209#Comment_119615209

Thanks for all the answers and explanations.

It always surprised me that I could always receive Downtown Radio on FM nearly everywhere in NI, but not in Belfast. Maybe it was a licensing issue? Also, I noted that few listeners were prepared to tune to Downtown Radio on AM, - only those with DAB had a decent option.

emilynxlan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119615221#Comment_119615221

From what I recall reading, I believe it’s due to Cool FM launching on the Belfast FM frequency due to the IBA requiring AM and FM frequencies to broadcast different programmes or they’d lose one (or both). Belfast would have initially had both AM and FM frequencies when launched as it was initially a Belfast station

I have an old Downtown Radio annual at home that has a page about where it broadcasts, giving a clue to its broadcast area. Notice the 293 metres and FM96 (now BBC Radio 4) frequencies too.

TheBMG

I can remember picking up the Downtown 96FM TX in Dublin around 1987. Modulation levels always seemed quite tame compared to what the larger Dublin stations were putting out.

Glaceon

I'm always amused by coverage maps of NI transmitters. They somehow found a way for RF to respect borders! 😉

Losty Dublin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119635159#Comment_119635159

Maybe thats because they had to adhere to like rules and shctuff from the DTI.

TheBMG

Would’ve been the IBA back then and yes, the only audio processing they’d permit their stations was something like 10db of gain reduction on MW and limiting on FM.

Losty Dublin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119647705#Comment_119647705

Back then audio processing for the medium wave was not having another station broadcasting under or over yours.

tinytobe

When and why was the frequency of 96.0 for Downtown Radio turned off?

I understand that 96.0 is now used by BBC Radio 4, but weren't there alternatives possible for Downtown Radio in Belfast?

The 103.1 and the 103.4 are hardly an excellent long term choice.

TheBMG

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120979642#Comment_120979642

I think it was around the time that BBC Radio 1 got their own FM frequencies and there was a reshuffle. I do remember DTR-FM (as it was then) coming in quite clearly to South Dublin in Summer 1988 on 96.0 - no mean feat as Dublin had a very busy band back then.

tinytobe

Why didn't they coordinate another FM frequency for Belfast? FM reception of Downtown radio isn't that great there and fewer and fewer people are using MW. Or is it because the long term plan is DAB?

TheBMG

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120981912#Comment_120981912

Downtown had 97.4 but decided to split programming in 1990 and so CoolFM got the Belfast frequency and Downtown had 1026am. Probably made a lot more sense at the time when AM was a viable medium.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120979642#Comment_120979642

Downtown on 103.1 from Camlough is the only station from that site that has poor reception here in Dundalk (on a radio in my house). Maybe its nulled to the South?

TAFKAlawhec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120982023#Comment_120982023

Just to add more to this - the UK Government in the late 80s had indicated that the upcoming broadcasting act (brought into force in 1990) would have meant that already licenced local commercial radio stations that had a FM & MW simulcast broadcast that covered similar areas of geography would (without a very good technical reason) be forced to provide two separate services on each band. Downtown was well aware of this quite early on, and had made plans for Cool FM as far back as 1987 IIRC.

Whereas most such stations in Britain decided to keep their "main" station on FM and launch a different service on MW ("Gold" music formats were popular), Downtown took a rather unique approach - back in 1986 they essentially went from being a station for the Greater Belfast area to one covering much of Northern Ireland when they were allowed to switch on two new TX's on Sherrifs Mountain (Derry) and Limavady on the 1st October. Just over a year later they added coverage into Fermanagh & West Tyrone with the switch on of their Brougher Mountain TX on 31st October 1987. So Downtown now had a significant FM network, but still had a (important still at the time) MW tx that served its core area.

I'm not sure of the exact date the switching of frequency for Downtown from Black Mountain from 96.0 to 97.4 MHz took place but it was either on or before the 24th November 1988 as this is the date BBC Radio One launched as a temporary low-power broadcast from Divis on 96.0 before moving to 99.7 MHz on 2nd March 1990 (not on full power yet though as extensive refurbishment was taking place at the Divis TX station at the time, full power would come a year later) to make way for BBC Radio 4 on 96.0, which remains there to this day.

So the owners of Downtown were in a bit of a conundrum and came up with their own solution - namely "sacrifice" their FM frequency serving the Greater Belfast region for the more urban & youth targeted Cool FM service & keep Downtown on 1026 kHz, while in the rest of Northern Ireland, keep Downtown on the new-ish FM frequencies. Since the FM coverage expansion did not have a corresponding MW coverage increase (save for an ERP increase at Knock-Breckan from 1kW to 1.7kW), this was permitted.

While I'm sure the decision to keep Downtown on MW only in Belfast at the start of the 90's made sense at the time, it only took a few years for them to realise how much of a handicap this was becoming for the station - I remember hearing spots on the station in the late 90's advertising how you could listen to the station via Cabletel/NTL via their FM cable feed in the city (a rarity as far as UK commercial radio went), while also expanding their FM network particularly around the fringes of the 1026 kHz service area - Portglenone on 102.3, Larne on 97.1, Camlough on 103.1 & Newcastle on 103.4.

From memory, when I was a student in Jordanstown in the early 2000's, 103.1 from Camlough was the best signal to hear Downtown in Whiteabbey (northern outskirts of Belfast) with 103.4 MHz also their but weak, and 102.3 MHz barely audible.

This continued lack of effective FM availability in the city also meant them pushing their availability on DAB as well once such sets started becoming affordable around two decades back. Nevertheless, they did finally get an opportunity to place the station as a 10 watt "relay" at Carnmoney Hill to the north of the city, and while 10 watts seems that it wouldn't do much - and is only half of what the BBC & Q Radio ERPs are from the same site - Carnmoney Hill is able to cover a surprisingly good part of the city with usable FM coverage.

--------

Note 1: The expansion of their FM coverage in the 1980's was supposedly down to the failure of Northside Sound, originally allocated a UK ILR licence to serve Derry City & an extended area covering he Causeway cost and all the way down to Enniskillen & Fermanagh. Notably, there was a MW frequency allocated for Northside (supposedly 990 or 999 kHz for Derry with possibly 666 kHz for Omagh) but that was never offered to Downtown AFAIK - by this stage the IBA in the UK was starting to licence new local stations in the UK on FM only.

Note 2: The FM network split that still exists to this day presumably came about because the owners of Downtown were not confident that the format of Cool FM would have worked West of the Bann - had DTR been also given a MW frequency for the North-West back in 1986 I'd guess they might have been tempted to have otherwise placed Cool FM on 102.4 when it launched in February 1990, but it doesn't appear they were so any such ideas never came to pass.

Note 3: Also worth remembering around this time that even without the potential threat of the border-blazing superpirates like Kiss 103.7 that closed down by the end of 1988, Downtown were well aware of the the incoming FM broadcasts to Belfast of BBC Radio 1 as well as BCR also coming on air later in 1990 - Cool FM was the hand that Downtown played boy in response to both the UK Government's radio broadcasting plans as well as to stave off the challenge of the two prior stations mentioned.

Antenna

"Note 3: Also worth remembering around this time that even without the potential threat of the border-blazing superpirates like Kiss 103.7 that closed down by the end of 1988, Downtown were well aware of the the incoming FM broadcasts to Belfast of BBC Radio 1 as well as BCR also coming on air later in 1990 - Cool FM was the hand that Downtown played boy in response to both the UK Government's radio broadcasting plans as well as to stave off the challenge of the two prior stations mentioned."

You omit mention of the challenge of a subsequent legal "border-blazing" station - that being of course Atlantic 252 - which made a big impact in Northern Ireland in its early years.

So the arrival of A252 may also likely have been a factor in DTR taking on that type of audience with an FM service Cool FM Belfast ?

TAFKAlawhec

Atlantic 252 wasn't on FM in Belfast or NI as a whole, though. So that's why I didn't mention it. In saying that, dunno about Belfast itself but it was a hugely popular station in rural parts of NI at least in the early-mid 90s.

tinytobe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121006718#Comment_121006718

Nobody said that Atlantic 252 was on FM anywhere ever. The only frequency was 252 kHz.

Yes, Atlantic 252 was hugely popular, but that popularity decreased more and more over the years.

Antenna

They were initially 2kHz higher on 254 before moving to 252 shortly after.

Regarding FM, I believe there was a studio link, or backup studio link, in Trim , within the regular FM band for a while in the early days.

tinytobe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121029124#Comment_121029124

The first statement, I've heard before as well. Did they still market it at 252 or as 254? Just wondering?

It's possible that the link between the studio and the transmitter was on FM, but I think it wouldn't have been between 87.5 to 108, but maybe some other frequency below that? As far as I knew the studio of Atlantic 252 was always in Ireland, they just had an office in London, probably selling advertizing and stuff like that?

Glaceon

It was marketed as 252 from the start. I read something before where they got a message from a listener asking why they were on 254.

tinytobe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121030405#Comment_121030405

It was probably easier to market 252 instead of 254, and with an analogue radio or if you were closer to the transmitter you didn't notice it so much. Plus at the time they went on air first, they probably knew that they would be moving to 252 at some point in the future.

Glaceon

I’d say you’re right. They probably would have known that they wouldn’t be on 254 for long.

TheBMG

They were on 254 for the first few months but always knew they were moving so marketed themselves as Atlantic 252 from the start.

They had a low powered FM for a few months but it too disappeared (by mid 1990?) but I did pick it up clear as a bell in South Dublin. I could also hear their UHF link in later years. @alzer100 could tell u more but I do recall the jocks having the choice of being able to monitor from program feed (flat straight off the desk), the LW252 TX, or a local processed (by Optimod) feed that served the building.

There’s some recordings out there of that Optimod feed and it’s weird to hear 252 in stereo (apart from the in-house production that is)