Swindon Cable
Encyclopedia
Swindon Cable was Swindon's local television channel. It closed permanently in 2000 after 16 years of putting out mostly local programming on the Wiltshire
industrial town's radio and television relay cable network
.
in Swindon
began life as Swindon Viewpoint
on the 11 September 1973 as an experiment in community television
on cable TV. It was managed initially by Richard Dunn, who later went on to become Head of Thames Television. This experiment started with EMI
finance on the Radio Rentals
cable radio
and television relay network. Local people could train in using television production equipment. Many of the programmes were 'one-off' documentaries that interested the volunteers involved or programmes of more general public interest. The studios were in the basement of Radio Rentals premises on Swindon
's Victoria Road.
The experiment ended in 1976 when EMI decided to pull out of funding the service. Although it was popular and flourishing. The main reason seems to have been that the Government would not allow advertising or sponsorship. Amid much local concern, Swindon Viewpoint was sold to the public of Swindon for £1 and an elected board of directors set up to oversee it. Viewpoint thus became the first television service that was publicly owned and managed. Programming continued successfully for the rest of the decade with a staff of around six to train the public to make programmes, and was funded by a mix of sponsorship and a Ladbrokes operated lottery scheme (the forerunner of the National Lottery. Viewpoints central programming strand was magazine based programmes called Seen in Swindon.
When the Lottery scheme ended in 1980, funding dried up and Viewpoint went into partnership with Media Arts, the public media centre in Swindon. Though this partnership recognised and maintained the independence of Viewpoint. With no staff the operation was now entirely volunteer based, but nevertheless programmed through the eighties. Its main programme strand was called Access Swindon. In the early nineties Media Arts was restructured and support for Viewpoint was ended. With no access to production resources the board of directors resolved to suspend programming operations but to maintain its structure and registration as a Company, pending a more favourable climate. It has since restarted operations online where it shows selections from its archive of programmes, as well as recent material.
Radio Rental Cable Television in November 1981 started the UK
's first pay-per-view
movie channel
, Cinematel, also shown on a sister operation in Kent
. The signal were encoded and the service was available only to subscribers, who had 'set-top' boxes to decode the signal.
After a few years, when it was not showing film, the cable company began itself to show local programming headed initially by Sue Stevens, who had been involved with Swindon Viewpoint and the programming reverted to news and occasional 'one-off' documentaries about events in or around Swindon
. The service also provided a local 'teletext
' service with the graphics designed by David Hounsell a Graphic Designer and Technical Operator (1981–1987), Thorntel which provided local information from bus and times to job vacancies as well as Scene in Swindon, launched on 1 May 1984 was a news magazine programme and Sport on Saturday.
opened. Focus on Swindon was started, produced by Sue Stevens with presenter/reporter Trevor Cribb. The channel increased the programme's frequency from twice a week to three times a week. Thorn EMI
then sold its stake in the channel to British Telecom, which pulled the plug on Focus on Swindon on February 4, 1986. Bought-in content, such as CBS
's daytime soap The Bold and The Beautiful
replaced the community
programming.
Viewers marked their cards at home to win cash prizes as Paul Langcaster (Who had also trained with Swindon Viewpoint) drew numbers at random in Home Shop Tele Bingo from a studio dressed with goods available from the Littlewoods
catalogue shopping business's retail stores. This was not Littlewoods
' only flirtation with television
. With Granada TV it ran the Shop! TV channel launched in 1998 on the ONdigital
digital
terrestrial
platform and closed in 2002 after Granada
and digital broadcasting
partner, Carlton Communications
, pulled the plug on the platform.
When the sponsorship deal ended the channel was again re-launched. In June 1989 under a new name, The Local Channel. The old mix of news and one-off documentaries returned on a much smaller scale. It had full-time staff and a team of volunteers. They produced a familiar mix of programming about local sports and local news
and events. The teletext
operation was re-vamped and became the forerunner of the Cable Vision Information Service.
After a Canadian company took the channel over, its studio was refitted and became the country's then-most modern local programming suite. It relaunched in 1994 as Swindon Cable's Local Channel aimed to give the town a local slant on current affairs and news of events in and around the town. Ashley Heath and Paul Langcaster presented 'news, views, entertainment and the Cable Christmas Show'. Local sports news and results formed an important part of the schedule.
The Swindon
team in 1998 started producing a community
news magazine programme
for ComTel in Oxford
Channel 10 - Scene in Oxford. During Swindon Cable's last week, Langcaster and Heath showed excerpts from Swindon
-made community
television programming. They included Cable Club launched in 1981 and its Music Box, 'Cinematel, Encore and Cable Text sections. NTL
(later renamed Virgin Media
) took over ComTel's franchises and announced a plan to introduce video-on-demand but that never materialised. NTL
scrapped Swindon Cable on June 1, 2000.
was the UK's broadband
capital, with more than 50% of households having high-speed internet access, the BBC
reported on August 2, 2006. It quoted research group Point Topic, whose report put the town's high broadband
take-up down to its being relatively prosperous and well covered by BT
's DSL network and cable
.
Wiltshire
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...
industrial town's radio and television relay cable network
Cable network
A cable channel is a television channel available via cable television. Such channels are usually also available via satellite television, including direct broadcast satellite providers such as DirecTV, Dish Network and BSkyB...
.
Swindon Viewpoint
Local programmingTelevision program
A television program , also called television show, is a segment of content which is intended to be broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series...
in Swindon
Swindon
Swindon is a large town within the borough of Swindon and ceremonial county of Wiltshire, in South West England. It is midway between Bristol, west and Reading, east. London is east...
began life as Swindon Viewpoint
Swindon Viewpoint
Local programming in Swindon began life as Swindon Viewpoint on the 11 September 1973 as an experiment in community cable television, or Public-access television. It was managed initially by Richard Dunn, who later went on to become Head of Thames Television. This experiment started with EMI...
on the 11 September 1973 as an experiment in community television
Community television
Australia's Community Television is a form of Citizen media much like Public Access Television in the United States and the Community Channel in Canada...
on cable TV. It was managed initially by Richard Dunn, who later went on to become Head of Thames Television. This experiment started with EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
finance on the Radio Rentals
Radio Rentals
Radio Rentals was formed in 1932 to rent out radio sets by Percy Perring-Thoms with a turnover in the first year of £780. It later moved into televisions and ultimately video recorders. In 1965 it merged with RentaSet, Joseph Robinson's similarly formed company...
cable radio
Cable radio
Cable radio or cable FM is a concept similar to that of cable television, bringing radio signals into homes and businesses via coaxial cable. It is generally used as cable TV was in its early days when it was "community antenna television", to enhance the quality of terrestrial radio signals that...
and television relay network. Local people could train in using television production equipment. Many of the programmes were 'one-off' documentaries that interested the volunteers involved or programmes of more general public interest. The studios were in the basement of Radio Rentals premises on Swindon
Swindon
Swindon is a large town within the borough of Swindon and ceremonial county of Wiltshire, in South West England. It is midway between Bristol, west and Reading, east. London is east...
's Victoria Road.
The experiment ended in 1976 when EMI decided to pull out of funding the service. Although it was popular and flourishing. The main reason seems to have been that the Government would not allow advertising or sponsorship. Amid much local concern, Swindon Viewpoint was sold to the public of Swindon for £1 and an elected board of directors set up to oversee it. Viewpoint thus became the first television service that was publicly owned and managed. Programming continued successfully for the rest of the decade with a staff of around six to train the public to make programmes, and was funded by a mix of sponsorship and a Ladbrokes operated lottery scheme (the forerunner of the National Lottery. Viewpoints central programming strand was magazine based programmes called Seen in Swindon.
When the Lottery scheme ended in 1980, funding dried up and Viewpoint went into partnership with Media Arts, the public media centre in Swindon. Though this partnership recognised and maintained the independence of Viewpoint. With no staff the operation was now entirely volunteer based, but nevertheless programmed through the eighties. Its main programme strand was called Access Swindon. In the early nineties Media Arts was restructured and support for Viewpoint was ended. With no access to production resources the board of directors resolved to suspend programming operations but to maintain its structure and registration as a Company, pending a more favourable climate. It has since restarted operations online where it shows selections from its archive of programmes, as well as recent material.
Radio Rental Cable Television in November 1981 started the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
's first pay-per-view
Pay-per-view
Pay-per-view provides a service by which a television audience can purchase events to view via private telecast. The broadcaster shows the event at the same time to everyone ordering it...
movie channel
Movie channel
Movie channels are television specialty channels that present movie content.Popular movie channels:* AMC * ClassTV MSNBC * Cinemax * Kino Polska * Encore * For you * Fox Movie Channel...
, Cinematel, also shown on a sister operation in Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
. The signal were encoded and the service was available only to subscribers, who had 'set-top' boxes to decode the signal.
After a few years, when it was not showing film, the cable company began itself to show local programming headed initially by Sue Stevens, who had been involved with Swindon Viewpoint and the programming reverted to news and occasional 'one-off' documentaries about events in or around Swindon
Swindon
Swindon is a large town within the borough of Swindon and ceremonial county of Wiltshire, in South West England. It is midway between Bristol, west and Reading, east. London is east...
. The service also provided a local 'teletext
Teletext
Teletext is a television information retrieval service developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s. It offers a range of text-based information, typically including national, international and sporting news, weather and TV schedules...
' service with the graphics designed by David Hounsell a Graphic Designer and Technical Operator (1981–1987), Thorntel which provided local information from bus and times to job vacancies as well as Scene in Swindon, launched on 1 May 1984 was a news magazine programme and Sport on Saturday.
Swindon Cable, The Local Channel and Closure
In 1984 Radio Rentals Cable Television moved re-launched the channel as Swindon Cable, which The Duke of KentPrince Edward, Duke of Kent
The Duke of Kent graduated from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst on 29 July 1955 as a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Scots Greys, the beginning of a military career that would last over 20 years. He was promoted to captain on 29 July 1961. The Duke of Kent saw service in Hong Kong from 1962–63...
opened. Focus on Swindon was started, produced by Sue Stevens with presenter/reporter Trevor Cribb. The channel increased the programme's frequency from twice a week to three times a week. Thorn EMI
Thorn EMI
Thorn EMI was a major British company involved in consumer electronics, music, defence and retail. Created in October 1979 when Thorn Electrical Industries merged with EMI, it was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index but it demerged again in...
then sold its stake in the channel to British Telecom, which pulled the plug on Focus on Swindon on February 4, 1986. Bought-in content, such as CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
's daytime soap The Bold and The Beautiful
The Bold and the Beautiful
The Bold and the Beautiful is an American television soap opera created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell for CBS Daytime. It premiered on March 23, 1987....
replaced the community
Community
The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...
programming.
Viewers marked their cards at home to win cash prizes as Paul Langcaster (Who had also trained with Swindon Viewpoint) drew numbers at random in Home Shop Tele Bingo from a studio dressed with goods available from the Littlewoods
Littlewoods
Littlewoods is the name of a former retail and gambling company founded in Liverpool, Merseyside, England by John Moores in 1923.It started as a shopping catalogue company, processing orders by post in the early 1970s. In 1981, it expanded to a call centre, processing orders via telephone. At its...
catalogue shopping business's retail stores. This was not Littlewoods
Littlewoods
Littlewoods is the name of a former retail and gambling company founded in Liverpool, Merseyside, England by John Moores in 1923.It started as a shopping catalogue company, processing orders by post in the early 1970s. In 1981, it expanded to a call centre, processing orders via telephone. At its...
' only flirtation with television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
. With Granada TV it ran the Shop! TV channel launched in 1998 on the ONdigital
ITV Digital
ITV Digital was a British digital terrestrial television broadcaster, which launched a pay-TV service on the world's first digital terrestrial television network as ONdigital in 1998 and briefly re-branded as ITV Digital in July 2001, before the service ceased in May 2002. Its main shareholders...
digital
Digital
A digital system is a data technology that uses discrete values. By contrast, non-digital systems use a continuous range of values to represent information...
terrestrial
Terrestrial television
Terrestrial television is a mode of television broadcasting which does not involve satellite transmission or cables — typically using radio waves through transmitting and receiving antennas or television antenna aerials...
platform and closed in 2002 after Granada
Granada
Granada is a city and the capital of the province of Granada, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. Granada is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains, at the confluence of three rivers, the Beiro, the Darro and the Genil. It sits at an elevation of 738 metres above sea...
and digital broadcasting
Digital broadcasting
Digital broadcasting is the practice of using digital data rather than analogue waveforms to carry broadcasts over television channels or assigned radio frequency bands...
partner, Carlton Communications
Carlton Communications
Carlton Communications was a British media company. It was led by Michael Green and listed on the London Stock Exchange from 1983 until 2 February 2004, when it taken over by Granada plc to form ITV plc with Carlton gaining 32% of the new company....
, pulled the plug on the platform.
When the sponsorship deal ended the channel was again re-launched. In June 1989 under a new name, The Local Channel. The old mix of news and one-off documentaries returned on a much smaller scale. It had full-time staff and a team of volunteers. They produced a familiar mix of programming about local sports and local news
Local news
In journalism, local news refers to news coverage of events in a local context which would not normally be of interest to those of other localities, or otherwise be of national or international scope.-Television:...
and events. The teletext
Teletext
Teletext is a television information retrieval service developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s. It offers a range of text-based information, typically including national, international and sporting news, weather and TV schedules...
operation was re-vamped and became the forerunner of the Cable Vision Information Service.
After a Canadian company took the channel over, its studio was refitted and became the country's then-most modern local programming suite. It relaunched in 1994 as Swindon Cable's Local Channel aimed to give the town a local slant on current affairs and news of events in and around the town. Ashley Heath and Paul Langcaster presented 'news, views, entertainment and the Cable Christmas Show'. Local sports news and results formed an important part of the schedule.
The Swindon
Swindon
Swindon is a large town within the borough of Swindon and ceremonial county of Wiltshire, in South West England. It is midway between Bristol, west and Reading, east. London is east...
team in 1998 started producing a community
Community
The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...
news magazine programme
Television program
A television program , also called television show, is a segment of content which is intended to be broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series...
for ComTel in Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
Channel 10 - Scene in Oxford. During Swindon Cable's last week, Langcaster and Heath showed excerpts from Swindon
Swindon
Swindon is a large town within the borough of Swindon and ceremonial county of Wiltshire, in South West England. It is midway between Bristol, west and Reading, east. London is east...
-made community
Community
The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...
television programming. They included Cable Club launched in 1981 and its Music Box, 'Cinematel, Encore and Cable Text sections. NTL
Virgin Media
Virgin Media Inc. is a company which provides fixed and mobile telephone, television and broadband internet services to businesses and consumers in the United Kingdom...
(later renamed Virgin Media
Virgin Media
Virgin Media Inc. is a company which provides fixed and mobile telephone, television and broadband internet services to businesses and consumers in the United Kingdom...
) took over ComTel's franchises and announced a plan to introduce video-on-demand but that never materialised. NTL
Virgin Media
Virgin Media Inc. is a company which provides fixed and mobile telephone, television and broadband internet services to businesses and consumers in the United Kingdom...
scrapped Swindon Cable on June 1, 2000.
Cabled in the 21st Century
SwindonSwindon
Swindon is a large town within the borough of Swindon and ceremonial county of Wiltshire, in South West England. It is midway between Bristol, west and Reading, east. London is east...
was the UK's broadband
Broadband
The term broadband refers to a telecommunications signal or device of greater bandwidth, in some sense, than another standard or usual signal or device . Different criteria for "broad" have been applied in different contexts and at different times...
capital, with more than 50% of households having high-speed internet access, the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
reported on August 2, 2006. It quoted research group Point Topic, whose report put the town's high broadband
Broadband
The term broadband refers to a telecommunications signal or device of greater bandwidth, in some sense, than another standard or usual signal or device . Different criteria for "broad" have been applied in different contexts and at different times...
take-up down to its being relatively prosperous and well covered by BT
BT Group
BT Group plc is a global telecommunications services company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is one of the largest telecommunications services companies in the world and has operations in more than 170 countries. Through its BT Global Services division it is a major supplier of...
's DSL network and cable
Cable
A cable is two or more wires running side by side and bonded, twisted or braided together to form a single assembly. In mechanics cables, otherwise known as wire ropes, are used for lifting, hauling and towing or conveying force through tension. In electrical engineering cables are used to carry...
.