The

Alexandra Palace Alexandra Palace is a Grade II listed entertainment and sports venue in London, situated between Wood Green and Muswell Hill in the London Borough of Haringey. It is built on the site of Tottenham Wood and the later Tottenham Wood Farm. Origi ...

television station in North London () is one of the oldest

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

transmission sites in the world. What was at the time called "high definition" (

405-line The 405-line monochrome analogue television broadcasting system was the first fully electronic television system to be used in regular broadcasting. The number of television lines influences the image resolution, or quality of the picture. It wa ...

) TV broadcasts on

VHF Very high frequency (VHF) is the ITU designation for the range of radio frequency electromagnetic waves (radio waves) from 30 to 300 megahertz (MHz), with corresponding wavelengths of ten meters to one meter. Frequencies immediately below VHF ...

were beamed from this mast from 1936 until the outbreak of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. It then lay dormant until it was used very successfully to

foil Foil may refer to: Materials * Foil (metal), a quite thin sheet of metal, usually manufactured with a rolling mill machine * Metal leaf, a very thin sheet of decorative metal * Aluminium foil, a type of wrapping for food * Tin foil, metal foil ...

the German Y-Gerät radio navigation system during the last stages of the

Battle of Britain The Battle of Britain, also known as the Air Battle for England (german: die Luftschlacht um England), was a military campaign of the Second World War, in which the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Fleet Air Arm (FAA) of the Royal Navy defende ...

. After the war, it was reused for television until 1956, when it was superseded by the opening of the BBC's new main transmitting station for the

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

area at

Crystal Palace Crystal Palace may refer to: Places Canada * Crystal Palace Complex (Dieppe), a former amusement park now a shopping complex in Dieppe, New Brunswick * Crystal Palace Barracks, London, Ontario * Crystal Palace (Montreal), an exhibition building ...

. In 1982 Alexandra Palace became an active transmitting station again, with the opening of a relay transmitter to provide UHF television service to parts of North

poorly covered from Crystal Palace. The transmitter is owned and maintained by

Arqiva Arqiva () is a British telecommunications company which provides infrastructure, broadcast transmission and smart meter facilities in the United Kingdom. The company is headquartered at the former Independent Broadcasting Authority headquart ...

Channels listed by frequency

Analogue radio (FM)

Digital radio (DAB)

Digital television

Digital television replaced the analogue television signals during the

digital switchover The digital television transition, also called the digital switchover (DSO), the analogue switch/sign-off (ASO), the digital migration, or the analogue shutdown, is the process in which older analogue television broadcasting technology is conv ...

of April 2012. However, only 3 of the 6

multiplexes In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource - a ...

are available: BBC A & B and Digital 3&4. BBC A launched on UHF 61 on 4 April 2012, before moving to its final allocation of UHF 49 on 18 April, when BBC B and Digital 3&4 launched. As part of the 700 MHz clearance programme the UHF channel numbers were changed in March 2018.digitaluk.co.uk

Analogue television

Analogue television is no longer transmitted from Alexandra Palace. BBC Two was closed on UHF 64 on 4 April 2012, when ITV1 temporarily moved into its frequency. The remaining three analogue services closed down on 18 April 2012. *Aerial group: C/D *Polarisation: horizontal

References

External links

The Transmission Gallery: Photographs and Information
{{Alexandra_Palace_VHF_405-line_Transmitter_Group Transmitter sites in England Infrastructure in London Alexandra Palace History of television in the United Kingdom