SWITCHING off Britain’s analogue television network threatens to silence its theatres, concert halls and TV studios.
After 2006, the government plans to raise billions of pounds by auctioning licences to use the UHF frequencies currently occupied by analogue TV transmissions. Two years ago it made £22 billion when it sold off a range of microwave frequencies to phone companies for their “next generation” 3G services. The buyers in the next round could be mobile phone service providers who want to feed video into 3G handsets.
But television isn’t the only service that transmits on these UHF frequencies. Every radio mike in Britain also uses them, so selling them off could silence theatrical productions. TV studios, sports broadcasters and conference producers also rely on radio mikes.
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Radio mikes and the earpiece monitors used in TV studios exploit the top of the UHF TV band. While their loss might not sound a big deal, they are crucial for some activities. For instance, Granada Television uses 40 radio-mike links to record This is Your Life. West End musicals typically use up to 50, and film makers such as Robert Altman strap a radio mike to every actor on the set to capture their dialogue.
In a low-key announcement last year, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, alongside the Department of Trade and Industry, which is ultimately responsible for allocating the radio spectrum, suggested that the 10 TV channels at the top end of the UHF band could be sold off for mobile services. A consultation period on that idea ends on 5 April.
It’s likely to go ahead. The government’s review of spectrum management published last week recommends that frequencies continue to be auctioned to the highest bidder.
Licences for radio mikes cost just £8 for a weekend, so they’re hardly a big moneymaker for the government. But broadcasters are alarmed at the prospect of losing them. “If switching to digital television means we lose our radio links, there won’t be any programmes to put on digital television,” warns John Hesketh, Granada TV’s technical coordinator.
But maybe there is a way to remind politicians just how vital radio mikes are for getting their message across. “Let’s just turn them all off for a day. The government would then find it can’t talk to anyone,” says Ron Hope, sound supervisor at Carlton TV.
