South Coast TV was a television deflector and MMDS service operating in

County Cork County Cork ( ga, Contae Chorcaí) is the largest and the southernmost county of Ireland, named after the city of Cork, the state's second-largest city. It is in the province of Munster and the Southern Region. Its largest market towns a ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

. Its headquarters were in

Carrigaline Carrigaline () is a town and civil parish in County Cork, Ireland, situated on the River Owenabue. Located about south of Cork city, and with a population of 15,770 people, it is one of the largest commuter towns of the city. The R611 regiona ...

History

South Coast TV was founded in 1985 as the Carrigaline Community Television Project, to provide a multi-channel TV service to the people of Carrigaline initially, and later much of the rest of Co. Cork who, at the time, were unable to receive cable service. The service was operated using an antenna array, erected in the Comeragh mountains, which was then relayed to Carrigaline for further transmission around the county. The service initially provided just one channel (

HTV Wales ITV Wales and West, previously known as Harlech Television (HTV), was an ITV franchise area in the United Kingdom until 31 December 2013, licensed to a broadcaster by the regulator Ofcom. There is no channel, past or present, named "ITV Wales ...

), but was quickly followed by

BBC One BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, ...

and BBC Two. Eventually, the fourth Welsh channel was added, S4C. From the early 1990s, the service was able to carry up to six channels with one or two of Sky1, Sky News or

Eurosport Eurosport is a group of pay television networks in Europe and parts of Asia. Owned by Warner Bros. Discovery through its international sports unit, it operates two main channels— Eurosport 1 and Eurosport 2—across most of its territories, ...

in addition to the four terrestrial channels. The service from the originating transmitter was initially powered by tractor batteries (replaced every few days by volunteers), until a long (approx 3 km) power cable was laid with voluntary effort to the site some months later. Digital satellite was introduced in 2001 with

BBC One Northern Ireland BBC One Northern Ireland is a Northern Irish television channel based on the UK-wide BBC One, owned and operated by BBC Northern Ireland. The service is broadcast from Broadcasting House in Belfast. In the rest of the UK, BBC One Northern Irela ...

replacing BBC One Wales, BBC Two Northern Ireland replacing BBC Two Wales, and

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...

replacing S4C. SCTV's analogue UHF service was always effectively a free-to-air service, and could be received by anyone within coverage using an appropriate domestic UHF aerial installation. The service relied on the goodwill of viewers to pay the annual sum of money sought by the operators. The service initially operated illegally and suffered occasional harassment from the authorities (in the form of raids) and rival licensed operators (in the form of court injunctions) but after a long campaign was awarded an official licence in 1999. Around the same time similar operations were licensed in other parts of Ireland - particularly Mayo and Donegal. After a share-offer to raise finance, a digital MVDDS service (SCTV Digital) operating at 12 GHz, using a system built by MDS America, with more than 60 channels was launched by SCTV in 2006 with plans for broadband. The service failed however as a result of free-to-air coverage of UK channels, lower cost options via

Sky The sky is an unobstructed view upward from the surface of the Earth. It includes the atmosphere and outer space. It may also be considered a place between the ground and outer space, thus distinct from outer space. In the field of astronomy, ...

and UPC, and slow rollout. Complete line-of-sight was required to the transmitter for the new service. Some prospective viewers also declined the new service as it was hoped by many that Ireland's imminent national DTT service would provide UK channels at low cost (it doesn't). SCTV Digital went bankrupt in mid-2010 because of these problems. Transmission of premium channels stopped in June 2010, and was replaced by a message that told viewers it was shutting down. The service was fully shut down in Autumn 2010. Most of Ireland's other deflector systems ceased operation in 2012 as part of the general shutdown of analogue based services. Proposals for a digital based replacement having never been realised.

References

{{Reflist

External links

SCTV (Archived)
Television in the Republic of Ireland County Cork