Jew World Order

By
Robert Hardman

PUBLISHED:

14:43 EST, 17 April 2012

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UPDATED:

14:48 EST, 17 April 2012

End of an era: Robert Hardman at the Crystal Palace broadcast tower

Later on tonight – so late, in fact, that most of us will be in bed – an engineer called Andy Elston will walk into a concrete bunker in South London and press a button marked ‘off’ on the side of several white steel cabinets. As these machines fall silent, Andy will walk next door and press the ‘on’ button to start up what looks like a brand new ship’s engine.

And up above – at London’s highest point – a stack of metal dishes will start pumping out an entirely new digital television signal. Even though there will be nothing to see and most of us will be asleep, this moment has already been hailed as the ‘most important moment’ in modern British broadcasting history.

Andy Elston, take a bow.

The great £630 million UK switch-over (from analogue to digital television) has already happened in several regions across Britain. And it will not be until October that the last old-style analogue transmitter is finally disconnected (in Northern Ireland).

But, as far as the industry is concerned, the most important moment is tonight when the Crystal Palace Tower changes its tune. Because Crystal Palace, perched above south London suburbia, is to television and radio broadcasting what Wembley is to football.

Britain actually has a total of 1,154 television transmitters reaching 60 million people, from the Outer Hebrides to Bodmin Moor. All of them either have been, or are about to be, converted to the new technology.

But this single monster is by far the most important because it accounts for a fifth of the population all by itself. It was from here that colour television first took flight in 1967, from here that HD television was transmitted for the first time in 2009.

So it will be the end of one era and the start of another at one of Britain’s most conspicuous – and well-connected – landmarks.

After all, it is from Crystal Palace that the Queen and her Government receive everything from Coronation Street to Question Time. If radio transmitters were awarded royal warrants, this one would have a handful.

Well-connected: It is from Crystal Palace that the Queen and her Government receive everything from Coronation Street to Question Time

Back in the day: The control desk at the BBC’s new London transmitter at Crystal Palace in March 1956

Crystal Palace started transmitting pictures and sound to millions of people more than 50 years ago. But in those days, Britain had just one telly channel. It was not known as BBC1 or even BBC. It was called, simply, ‘Television’.

In the earliest days of this exciting but rather sober new medium, the BBC’s main transmitter was located at another ‘people’s palace’ in north London – Alexandra Palace. By the mid-Fifties, though, a massive Coronation-fuelled rise in television ownership meant that a more powerful antenna was required.

The new tower was built on the ruins of the original Crystal Palace, the Victorian exhibition centre which burned down in 1936.

Although the new structure was not a conventional beauty, people marvelled at its size, calling the 720-foot creation ‘London’s Eiffel Tower’.

But while the Eiffel Tower claims to sell more admission tickets than any other paid monument in the world, the Crystal Palace Tower is strictly off-limits to everyone. Given the number of signs inside the place saying ‘Danger: Risk Of Death’, this is not wholly surprising.

In honour of the great television
switch-over, I have been allowed through the closely guarded perimeter
for an exclusive tour to see how it all works. Several hours later, I
cannot pretend that I am much the wiser, but I have no doubt that if I
were a radio ham, this would be the Promised Land.

Transmission: The ultra short wave sound radio transmitter in 1935

Standing
at one of the tower’s four great feet, the only way to appreciate all
the kit up above is to lie down on the ground underneath. Right up at
the top, a huge white plastic cylinder protects all the old analogue
stuff from the elements.

Just below it, a lot of white plastic boxes
protect all the new digital electronics. The next level is crammed with
various radio transmitters and below that is assorted telecoms stuff.
Down at ground level, there is a huge greenhouse full of lethal-looking
generators covered in ‘Death’ signs.

While this thing lords it over London
and the Home Counties, the actual nerve centre is dug into the side of
Sydenham Hill down below and has no view whatsoever.

The BBC Transmitter
Hall – a strip-lit windowless chamber with all the charm of a mortuary –
is nerd Heaven.

There, I find banks of steel cabinets
with a lot of pipes and dials. Next door, the ITV Transmitter Hall is
much the same, although the kit is older with some clunky levers
protruding here and there.

Tonight, all these rooms will become obsolete
as the action moves to a gleaming, freshly-painted chamber called the
Combiner Room.

In simple
terms, the old system works as follows. All the old analogue television
output from the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 is channelled from the studio
into this place via underground cables (Channel 5 emanates from another
tower in nearby Croydon and will switch at the same time).

Each station is then fed into its own amplifier and whooshed up a pipe to the top of the tower from where it is sprayed electronically to every receiver in a 50-mile radius. Under the new system, the whole lot will be fed into a mixer which can not only pump out loads of extra digital channels at the same time but its signal is ten times stronger.

Analogue is broadcasting’s gas guzzler, its couch potato. It has served us well for years, but is hopelessly inefficient compared with a digital signal.

And once the switch-over is complete, we will not just end up with many more channels. Our reception should also be significantly better.

Grand: The original Crystal Palace site before it become the broadcast site

The downside is that, wherever you live, unless you have a Sky dish or cable television, you need to buy a digital set top box or a new telly and then retune your set the morning after Andy Elston and his team have pressed the ‘Off’ switch.

Digital UK, the body overseeing the transformation, insists that most televisions have made the switch very easily and that it’s only older ‘secondary’ sets that are likely to face problems.

To the untrained eye and the wider world, London’s Eiffel Tower will hardly look any different. But Arqiva, the company which owns and manages Britain’s transmitters, is planning a huge party at Crystal Palace tomorrow night to celebrate the entire national operation. Six tons of lighting equipment will be hoisted up the tower for a light show visible right across the capital and beyond.

The guest of honour will be the elder statesman of British broadcasting.

‘With the switch to digital TV, we’re celebrating the start of a new, very exciting time in broadcasting,’ says Sir David Attenborough. ‘This is as wonderful as anything I’ve experienced in my 60 years in the TV industry.’

The Crystal Palace Tower has certainly seen – and transmitted – it all, from Suez and the Moon landings to Big Brother, 9/11 and last year’s royal wedding.

The digital switchover will finish in October, when the final analogue transmitter is disconnected

Today, we are bombarded with choice. Back in 1956, when this thing revved up for the first time, there was none at all.

On that day, ‘Television’ did not start until 3pm when the Greenwich Time Signal was followed by something called Mainly For Women: Family Affairs and Watch With Mother.

‘That evening, viewers were offered the news, a play, the Burns and Allen Show, a wildlife programme presented by Peter Scott and, finally, a documentary series called Travellers’ Tales. On March 28, 1956, that particular episode was titled The Berbers Of The Atlas Mountains. The producer was a promising young thing called David Attenborough.

Technology may come and go. But it is good to know that some things never change.

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