Satellite Frequency for Newstalk?

seligehgit

Just wondering if anybody knows if the satellite frequency for Newstalk has changed from 12633Mhz H 22000KS/s?There appears to be no signal?

byte

Frequency: 11.170
Polarity: Horizontal
FEC: 22000
SR: 5/6

Shares the transponder with Al Jazeera and movies4men, etc.

Greenman

Hello seligehgit,
If you get a moment and get NT tuned in can you comment on the NT audio on satellite.


Thanks JD..

seligehgit

Greenman wrote: »

Hello seligehgit,
If you get a moment and get NT tuned in can you comment on the NT audio on satellite.


Thanks JD..

More than happy to oblige JD, I've retuned it using those transponder details on a Ferguson Ariva 120 combo and audio is first class.Similarly I've it on an old Thomson box I use for getting the free Sky TV and radio channels and again the audio is first class.

I'd love to know if one can get Today FM on satellite??

byte

seligehgit wrote: »

I'd love to know if one can get Today FM on satellite??

No, Today FM isn't available on satellite.

seligehgit

Anybody know if the satellite frequency for rte radio one has changed from frequency 12.226 polarity H S/R 27500?

mackersdublin

RTE Radio frequency is

11836 H 27500 5/6

Mickey Mike

Newstalk should have issued a statement saying it was to withdraw its service from the Astra satellite system, just be upfront about it and not let people pondering and wondering, at the end of the day people do notice. You can be sure Beauer Media Audio made that call. And finally we'll never see Today FM on satellite.

Ballycommon Mast

Did they ever even promote being on satellite in the first place ? I don't recall ever mention of it in their taglines over the years. I remember when 2fm went on sky back in 2002, they made a big deal about it

Ger Roe

They never officially announced the satellite channel, because it was not intended as a listener service. In the days before reliable remote internet infrastructure, the satellite signal was used as an audio feed to the regional transmitters. It wasn't on the Sky EPG (very, very expensive) so it had to be 'discovered' if anyone wanted to hear it.

It was an effective, if expensive way to link. Carriage on the Astra 28.2 was very expensive, since every almost satellite dish in the country is aligned to it and charges would reflect the potential audience, whether you were targeting that audience or not. At one stage we were looking at a satellite feed for Phantom during our internet only operation phase and could have got coverage on an Iranian focused satellite that had peripheral coverage over Ireland, for a fraction of the cost. It would just have meant putting up a specifically aligned dish for the alternative satellite at the downlink site. Newstalk fell into the common trap of thinking that satellite services in Ireland means you have to use Sky and Astra 28.2 - that might be true of you are looking to build audience on the platform, but for a technical link, you can send to the cheapest and most obscure satellite that you can find with a footprint over Ireland.

Anyway, these days satellite is not the fave potential distribution platform that it used to be. There are cheaper and easier alternatives for both distribution and your listeners.

Ballycommon Mast

How much would Sky/satellite carriage be costing RTE for their 4 main radio stations ?

Ger Roe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118394937#Comment_118394937

Difficult to know - the standard quoted rate would be a lot... but it's probably costing RTE nothing. RTE have a very early agreement with Sky for carriage that basically sub contracted the satellite distribution of their radio and TV services exclusively to the Sky platform. When the deal was signed Saorview/Saorsat was not on the horizon and it seemed like a simple option for satellite distribution - it wasn't a great concern for RTE and so it was easy to let someone else do it rather than go to the expense of setting up an independent satellite distribution platform. The seemingly perpetual exclusivity clause, later turned out to be a problem. That's one of the reasons why Saorsat was set up on a different satellite (9.0 East). It means that you have to do a specific dish setup so as not to compete with the Irish TV package sold by Sky - it also has a very tight 'Ireland only' coverage footprint to reduce programming rights costs that would usually be based on a larger potential audience. That issue is solved on 28.2E by Sky not selling the Irish TV package outside of Ireland. While the Saorsat tight footprint on 9.0E would reduce operating costs, it still probably works out as expensive for the amount of viewers that actually use it (intended for less than 2% of national available audience - not sure how many do use it).

I remember the station manager at Radio Caroline telling me that it was costing them around £30,000 a year to be on the Sky EPG, just for a radio service. They eventually reduced costs by dropping the EPG listing but that obviously drastically cut their potential audience since most Sky subscribers have no idea of how many other available radio and TV channels they are not seeing, and how many that they are paying for, are freely available on the same satellite anyway. Caroline kept a non EPG (basically hidden from all Sky subscribers) service for a while to use as an audio feed for distribution to cable TV operators around Europe, including Cablelink/NTL in Dublin. They eventually dropped the satellite feed completely and now have a very successful (and cheaper) internet based distributed service.

The non Astra 28.2E carriage service we were looking at for Phantom FM (around 2005) was working out at less than €10,000 per year - a big saving for default broadcasting to Iran (would be freely available to dishes already pointing at the satellite) and only requiring a differently aligned dish to receive here in Ireland and then pass on to cable operators. This was in the early days of developing 'broadcast content licenses' and it caused the BAI a bit of bother when they realised that we were serious about the proposal and had the means to do it more cost effectively. They were worried that a former pirate operation would be able to set up a legal nationwide (on cable TV) distributed radio service and so bypass the traditional radio licence process and the geographical constraints that they were aligned to (protected franchise areas).

Again tech has moved on and the internet now wipes out franchise area constraints anyway.

Ballycommon Mast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118395478#Comment_118395478

Yep if you think about the whole Midwest/Northwest radio and Ocean FM thing back in 2004, nowadays everyone in the northwest would easily be able to continue listening to Paul Claffey and Co on MWR via smartphones smart speakers etc but at the time people resorted to putting up outdoor antennas to try to pick it up on 96.1

L1011

The basic rate is £22,000 a year to Sky on top of what you pay for the bandwidth. Restricting to Ireland costs £1,750 more - most stations would have to due to licencing.

ford fiesta

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118395551#Comment_118395551

well yeah that was nearly 20 years ago. but older, rural listeners still prefer to listen to their local station on reliable FM...they spend a lot of time in their cars/vans with FM and their houses may not be connected for fast broadband.

Ballycommon Mast

Another thing that has made the whole ocean FM/NWR thing moot now is that Ocean FM now plays more C&W than MWR does. Remember when ocean launched, it was full of Dublin presenters playing Classic Hits & POP ?

ford fiesta

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118416388#Comment_118416388

no - MWR plays much more US and Irish Country & Western / Trad./ Ballads.

Ocean "Full" of Dublin presenters - who are you referring to? Mike Moloney?

Ballycommon Mast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118416406#Comment_118416406

Yes him + Paul Scanlon, Lindsey Dolan and Robert Walsh. When I said Dublin, I meant they had all come from the Dublin airwaves at that time in 2004 but they are all long gone now.

ford fiesta

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118416499#Comment_118416499

Moloney was the only born Dub