The Rosemarkie transmitting station is a broadcasting and telecommunications facility, situated close to the town of

Rosemarkie Rosemarkie ( sco, Rossmartnie, from gd, Ros Mhaircnidh meaning "promontory of the horse stream") is a village on the south coast of the Black Isle peninsula in Ross-shire (Ross and Cromarty), northern Scotland. Geography Rosemarkie lies a quart ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

, in

Highland Highlands or uplands are areas of high elevation such as a mountainous region, elevated mountainous plateau or high hills. Generally speaking, upland (or uplands) refers to ranges of hills, typically from up to while highland (or highlands) is ...

(). It consists of a high guyed steel lattice mast erected on land that is itself about 210 m above sea level only a few hundred metres from the coast of the

Moray Firth The Moray Firth (; Scottish Gaelic: ''An Cuan Moireach'', ''Linne Mhoireibh'' or ''Caolas Mhoireibh'') is a roughly triangular inlet (or firth) of the North Sea, north and east of Inverness, which is in the Highland council area of north of Scotl ...

. It is owned and operated 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 headquarters ...

Coverage

Coverage Coverage may refer to: Filmmaking * Coverage (lens), the size of the image a lens can produce * Camera coverage, the amount of footage shot and different camera setups used in filming a scene * Script coverage, a short summary of a script, wri ...

includes the areas around the Moray Firth, in the

region of

, including up to

Helmsdale Helmsdale ( sco, Helmsdal, gd, Bun Ilidh) is a village on the east coast of Sutherland, in the Highland (council area), Highland council area of Scotland. The modern village was planned in 1814 to resettle communities that had been removed from ...

in the north, Elgin to the east,

Dingwall Dingwall ( sco, Dingwal, gd, Inbhir Pheofharain ) is a town and a royal burgh in the Highland council area of Scotland. It has a population of 5,491. It was an east-coast harbour that now lies inland. Dingwall Castle was once the biggest cast ...

to the west and the northern shores of

Loch Ness Loch Ness (; gd, Loch Nis ) is a large freshwater loch in the Scottish Highlands extending for approximately southwest of Inverness. It takes its name from the River Ness, which flows from the northern end. Loch Ness is best known for clai ...

to the south. This also includes the city of

Inverness Inverness (; from the gd, Inbhir Nis , meaning "Mouth of the River Ness"; sco, Innerness) is a city in the Scottish Highlands. It is the administrative centre for The Highland Council and is regarded as the capital of the Highlands. Histori ...

History

The station was built in 1957 by the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...

to bring BBC Television to North East Scotland for the first time. The

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 was ...

monochrome transmissions were on channel 2,

Band I Band I is a range of radio frequencies within the very high frequency (VHF) part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The first time there was defined "for simplicity" in Annex 1 of "Final acts of the European Broadcasting Conference in the VHF and U ...

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 ...

. When colour

UHF Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter (on ...

television began in 1970, the site was chosen over the nearby IBA owned station at Mounteagle to carry these broadcasts. Both the UHF and VHF services continued in tandem until 1985, when VHF television was discontinued in the UK.

Channels listed by frequency

Digital television

20 October 2010 – present

Digital switchover was completed at Rosemarkie. All analogue television was switched off and the new post-DSO multiplexes took over the analogue frequencies plus a few new ones.

Analogue radio (FM)

Former Services

Analogue television

16 August 1957 – 11 July 1970

405-line BBC television arrived in the northeast of Scotland.

11 July 1970 – October 1973

BBC Two UHF colour television commenced.

October 1973 – 1 November 1982

BBC One and ITV UHF colour television commenced.

2 November 1982 – 3 January 1985

The UK's fourth UHF television channel started up.

3 January 1985 – 15 November 1998

The VHF 405-line system was discontinued across the UK, and from that point for the next 23 years, television from Rosemarkie was the originally-intended four channels on UHF only.

Analogue and Digital television

15 November 1998 – 6 October 2010

The initial roll-out of digital television involved running the digital services interleaved (and at low ERP) with the existing analogue services.

6 October 2010 – 20 October 2010

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 ...

commenced at Rosemarkie, with analogue BBC Two being switched off on channel 45 and BBC Mux 1 being switched off on channel 47+. Channel 45 was reused by the new BBC A multiplex at full post-DSO power (20 kW) and using 64-QAM with 8k carriers.

References

External links

Entry for Rosemarkie at The Transmission Gallery
{{Rosemarkie_VHF_405-line_Transmitter_Group Transmitter sites in Scotland 1957 establishments in Scotland Black Isle Infrastructure completed in 1957 Buildings and structures in Highland (council area)