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Lower Edmonton > General information and oddments > TV and radio

TV and radio

A quick look at radio and TV stations you should be able to pick up locally. I'm not convinced this page really belongs on this site but as I can never find the information when I need it I thought others might have the same problem.
This information is based on my own limited testing and may be affected by local conditions and the equipment you are using. By all means let me know if things are different where you are. The information may be out of date if radio stations have rebranded or been taken over, or if new ones have come along. However I hope the bulk of it remains correct and useful.

Terrestrial TV

Reception of all five analogue terrestrial channels is fine.  Five generally needs something a bit more elaborate in the way of an aerial, but for the others even loop aerials on portables can be tolerable. 'Freeview' digital reception is also fine and I find a set top aerial with a booster is adequate. Lower Edmonton is covered by the Crystal Palace transmitter for analogue and digital and the Croydon transmitter for Five on analogue, which means the aerial should be pointing roughly south, should cover group A and be horizontally polarised.

The 'Croydon' transmitter is actually NTL Croydon on South Norwood Hill which is about half a mile south of the Crystal Palace one, so there shouldn't be a problem with aerial direction. I am also well aware that technically 'Freeview' only applies to multiplexes B, C and D but the term has now entered common usage for digital terrestrial TV.

Channel MHz Station / MUX Comments
22 479.25 MUX 2 ITV and Channel 4 digital channels.
23 487.25 ITV1
25 503.25 MUX 1 Major BBC digital TV channels.
26 511.25 BBC1
28 527.25 MUX B Other BBC digital TV and radio channels.
29 535.25 MUX D Assorted Freeview channels licensed by Crown Castle.
30 543.25 Channel 4
32 559.25 MUX A Five and most Top-Up TV digital channels ("SDN Multiplex")
33 567.25 BBC 2
34 575.25 MUX C Mostly BSkyB digital channels.
37 599.25 Five

There is also a 20W transmitter for "Edmonton" and the map reference places it near Edmonton Green, though I don't know how accurate that is. That uses a group E aerial, horizontally polarised, and channels 57, 42, 60 and 53 for the four main analogue channels. Presumably those who need to use that transmitter will already know about it.

If you connect a video to your TV using the aerial sockets, you can potentially get problems related to the channel used by the video by default. Those I have seen lately are the video output being unusable because of interference and digital channels going missing when the video is switched on. Once upon a time they came tuned to something like channel 36 which was too close to that used by Channel Five (remember they came round retuning everyone's video when that channel launched?). I don't know if there is a default today but one I have seen is tuned to channel 22 by default which clashes with ITV and Channel 4's digital channels. The cure is to retune the video out of harms way so look for somewhere higher than channel 40 (623.25 MHz) and you should be OK.

AM Radio Stations

kHz Station Comments
198 BBC Radio 4 Long Wave.
828 Classic Gold
909 BBC Radio 5 Live
963 963/972 Liberty Radio
972 963/972 Liberty Radio 963 should be stronger.
1089 talkSPORT
1152 LBC News
1305 Premier Christian Radio
1458 Sunrise Radio
1548 Capital Gold

Lists of "London" radio stations on AM include a number of other stations that sound like they might potentially by available but could not be usefully picked up on my receiver. These included Atlantic (252LW), Spectrum (558MW), BBC Asian (630MW), BBC World Service (648MW), BBC Radio 4 (720MW version of 198LW), Classic Gold (828MW) and London Turkish Radio (1584MW). Just because I didn't get them when I tried doesn't mean they aren't there to others with different equipment. Some of the stations above broadcast on more than one frequency but the others weren't useful when I tried them.

FM Radio Stations

MHz Station Comments
88.8 BBC Radio 2 89.1 may well be the stronger signal.
89.1 BBC Radio 2
91.0 BBC Radio 3 91.3 may well be the stronger signal.
91.3 BBC Radio 3
93.2 BBC Radio 4 93.5 may well be the stronger signal.
93.5 BBC Radio 4
94.9 BBC London
95.8 Capital FM
96.6 Mercury FM Watford & St Albans.
97.3 LBC
98.5 BBC Radio 1 98.8 may well be the stronger signal.
98.8 BBC Radio 1
100.0 KISS FM
100.6 Classic FM 100.9 may well be the stronger signal.
100.9 Classic FM
101.7 Mercury FM Harlow.
102.2 Smooth Radio Previously Jazz FM then Smooth FM.
103.3 London Greek
104.9 Xfm
105.4 Magic
105.8 Virgin
106.2 Heart FM
107.1 Choice FM

You may be able to tune into a number of other FM stations that are not listed above. On one test I foundweak signals, generally mono, on 87.5 / 88.8 / 89.4 / 90.2 / 90.6 / 99.6 / 100.3. However on FM weak signals can be OK to listen to, unlike on AM, so I note their existance. I guess they could be pirate stations but I don't really know and haven't looked into it much. There may be other of these stations to be found but I feel I have all the named ones (or at least all those I found listed in various places).

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