I can't remember much about Rediffusion.
1 How much did it cost and was there also a TV licence 1950/60s?
2 The switch to turn on and off and get channels,
was it for radio and tv channels or was there a radio only one
3 What radio stations and tv stations could you get
4 Could you get tv signals by aerial then?

I was only young but had the impression as a child that it was piped in? All I know was that Grandad used to bang the top of the TV when the signal got lost, which seemed to be quite frequent.

Quite right, Pax.
Here's all you need to know about Rediffusion
http://www.rediffusion.info/
And about licence fee.
http://www.radiolicence.org.uk/costlicence.html

Thanks Chris for the two links. I found the info on the sites very interesting

We had a Rediffusion radio set in the 1950s (TVs were still out of most people's league).The radio was a plain brown bakelite box, with a clunky switch screwed on to the wall next to it.

The switch gave you a choice of about six stations - I can't remember which, but they were probably the BBC Light Programme, the Home Service, etc. You could possibly also get Radio Luxembourg.

Rediffusion was an early form of cable. It gave interference-free reception, but obviously limited your choice of stations. Once you subscribed, they hooked you up, just as the modern cable services do now. The Rediffusion base in Birkenhead was at Elm Street, just off Hemingford Street near Thompson's Mission.

Redi what

What happened to this alien form of television signal?

My dad still had the old Rediffusion box on his windowsill in his living room up until about 3yrs ago when he got new windows put in, and he said he was able to pick up some radio stations on it prior to its removal

we had the same,we had no leccy,we could see the mast from our house in marion street.workers playtime,down your way,top of the form,billy cotton,wakey wakey,the archers,countless hours of great listening,the huggets.

We had one of the giant brown radio sets till well into the 1980s (!!!) - we could get Radio 4, Radio 2 and Radio Merseyside. It came via Radio Rentals in Liscard precinct, and I remember the switch on the wall too. Good reception most of the time, just the odd taxi coming through and occasional breaks in transmission.

A lot of houses still have the wire fixed to the brickwork but it goes nowhere.

It's all been said but I remember it well. The switch on the wall or where ever had the letters A to F, each letter corresponding to a station. Surprised the Radio Ventriloquist, Peter Brough and his dummy Archie Andrews weren't mentioned. When TV came out then that was his doom because his lips moved something rotten. Luxemburg you could get, and the rest was the BBC Home Service, Light Service and Third Service from what I can remember. BBC and ITV when that came out. Brilliant technology at the time and they called it cable when it came out later. It was better than the old wet battery radio (accumulators the batteries were called and you had to change them when they ran out of power). Funny old days.
I think Rediffusion was the original ITV North, or Granada or whatever.

I remember them well. Whoever sold the BBC the idea of a ventriloquist on radio was a genius.

Wasn't it called the "Light / Third Programme"?

I remember receiving satellite TV via our old Rediffusion box in the 1980s and early 1990s. After Rediffusion went out of business the yard in Elm Street was taken over by another company who used to distribute four satellite channels via the cable network. I remember getting Sky Channel (which showed a mix of old US programmes, kids' cartoons and Europop programmes), Music Box (a sort of early version of MTV), Screensport (mainly showing US football, baseball, golf and motor-racing), and a movie channel whose name escapes me (could have been Prime Movies?). At some point we also got Lifestyle as well, which showed lots of old black & white US TV shows, many of which had never been shown in this country before. This was in the days when receiving satellite TV meant getting a humungous (and expensive) motorised dish erected in your back garden, which required planning permission, so the cable option was somewhat cheaper even if it only was four channels.

After Rupert Murdoch opened up his new Sky service on the Astra satellite and BSB started up in competition with their 'squariel', the cable company went over to showing BSB channels, so we got Galaxy, Power Station, the Movie Channel and the Sports Channel instead of the ones we'd previously had. Until BSB was taken over by Sky that is! When we moved house in the mid-90s the Rediffusion switch was still there, but by that time we'd invested in an Astra dish, so I don't know if it provided any services.

Yes.

I've seen several different types of loudspeaker housing used, from steel, through Bakelite to plywood with a cream coloured leatherette finish. It was also piped into hospitals. A little selector knob and volume control on the wall next to the bed, usually a bit loose, led to either a headphones socket (for the S.G. Brown type headsets) or an outlet for an acoustic tube type headset. The system could also be found in schools.

The oldest window selector boxes that I remember were, as stated, brown bakelite. Initially their rotary selector had for positions, marked A B C D. A little later, they had six-way switches, adding channels E & F. Subsequently, this went up to a ten-way switch and now came in ivory coloured bakelite box.
Black sheathed distribution cables went around the back of nearly everybody's house, and where the two houses joined, a black box was fitted to take the lead-off cable to the house. The black box also contained a 'splitter' on a per channel, per house basis. This maintained the electrical integrity (or correct ballance) of the circuit.

Once in a while, the volume would go low. Then the Rediffusion man would come out to check the boxes, to see who had illegally connected his own loudspeaker onto the system, thus draining all the power due to the miss-match.
Although illegal connections were problem, the system could suffer from 'overhearing', or the bleeding through of the audio from an adjacent channel, and TV channels could suffer from 'ghosting' - a second, fainter image which was offset slightly from the wanted one. This assumes that it was not the sort of interference from foreign TV stations, should good weather and the cricket season ever coincide!

There are still a large number of abandoned relics from Redifussion to be seen in our streets. Apart from cables on walls, to wire wrapped suspended cables, brackets and poles, there are still street junction boxes and green cabinets as a reminder of the network.

The Light programme became Radio 1 (and Radio 2?)
The Third programme became Radio 3
The Home Service became Radio 4.

Didn't the change of titles occur during the '70's ? Remember stickers were given out to cover up the "old" names on the dial.

The frequencies were all given then out in kilocycles. None of this kilohertz crud then!

Radio Luxemburg was known by it's wavelength ,"This is Radio Luxemburg on 208metres medium wave". I got used to the Khz and Mhz in a later life, it started in the Military I think with the Frogs and what have you being in NATO so that all the publications were uniform. Could be wrong though it might have been European driven.

All this talk of kilocycles reminds me, I must pump up me bike tyres!

Make sure you don't give yourself a hertz attack.

Rediffusion (Broadcast Relay Service Ltd) originally started off supplying cable radio services way back in the late 1920's before venturing into television. They also went on to become quite big in the world of analogue computers (Redifon) and aircraft flight simulators.

They introduced an early form of cable TV (known as "Pipe TV") as early as the 1930's but services were disrupted by the Second World War.

Thanks norton, always wondered what those boxes were for.

Radio One was launched as the BBC's (read establishment's) answer to the illegal pirate radio stations - most of which had some reference to the wavelength (in metres) that they broadscast on, as part of their jingles. At the same time, all the other BBC national stations became numbered. Remember how they rymed 199 & 259 for the Radio Caroline jingles?.

We all remember Radio Luxenbourg on 208, which was a perfectly legal comercial station, but here's a bit of useless information. Remember how Luxenbourg used to fade in and out. No one could explain what caused it at first. When they did find out, they gave it the title of 'The Luxenburg Effect'.

Radio One came out on 247 metres (all on the Medium wave) which was the wavelength vacated by the Light Programs' medium wave transmitter. The Light Program was normally heard on 200 kilo cycles on the Long Wave in those days, but they had to call it 200 kilo Hertz (kHz) after we officially adopted the metric system of SI units in 1971.

When the local radio stations came about, starting with the BBC ones, they were normall refered to by their wavelength, thus Radio Merseyside was 202 and Radio City was 194, although their frequencies are 1496 kHz and 1548 kHz respectively. (200 metres equals 1500 kHz).

Did you know that City and Merseyside could be heard over the phone in the late 70's to early 80's. You just had to dial 194 or 202 to get them. Local rates, too!

Historically, locally, 202 metres had been the wavelength of the BBC Third Program repeater station, which had been located at the end of Bedford Road East, in Rock Ferry. This transmitter had to close and was demolished due to the construction of the Rock Ferry By-pass.

At a decision made by the World Administrative Radio Conference in 1979 (WARC'79 for short), they agreed that all long and medium wave radio stations around the world would be spaced 3kHz apart, and that they would be refered to in terms of frequency (kHz) rather than wavelength (metres). This meant that some of them had to make a slight change in their frequency, but not one that the user would generally notice. In the UK, this meant that Radio Two was no longer on 200 kHz as it had to move to 198 kHz. This caused some technical difficulties for those who used the Radio 2 carrier as a frequency reference.

WARC'79 also had a big effect on Band 2 VHF radio in the UK, but I'll cover that one another time if anyone is interested.

I think anyone who was young in the early 60s will thank God for Radio Luxembourg - otherwise, we'd never have heard any pop music.

BBC radio at that time was intrinsically hostile to anything that smacked of youth, innovation or controversy. They thought they'd keep the masses happy with condescending rubbish such as Uncle Mac on a Saturday morning.

Even as the early 60s were unfolding with an astounding musical revolution, the Beeb actively conspired to deny it. Instead, it continued steadfastly to feed us a diet of blandness and conformity.

Meanwhile, Luxembourg was putting out the fresh, new stuff that young people wanted to hear. This was before even the pirate stations came on air.

Luxembourg pioneered the Top 20 - required listening on a Sunday night around 11pm. The format was later stolen and converted to television by BBC's Top of the Pops. Luxembourg also had programmes such as Battle of Bands, pitting two big-name groups against each other in a musical play-off.

Finally, of course, the BBC was dragged screaming into joining the rest of us in the real world and admitting that pop music existed. But the powers-that-be then immediately hijacked the new youth culture by outlawing the pirate stations and creating Radio One.

I remember rediffision very well. My parents got in and i used to watch The Childrens Channel. It was big with the kids.. Lifestyle Channel had an amazing Earth Zoom show which was very instresting to me. Screen Sports for WWF (now wwe) wrestling. Sky.. (21 Jump Street, i was there for the Simpsons first show..) Music Television (MTV) always remember Money for Nothing (Dire Strights) then Sledgehammer.. It was an amazing experience.. as we only ever had 4 channels back in the Eightys.. A few other programs i remember.. Childrens Corner, Jack in the Box.. Heman, Braveheart, Thundercats.. Amazing memories.. as if they where yesterday.... Then it died.. We didnt bother with satelite so it was just the Four Channels once Rediffision finished. Good site chris

Anyone reply the little red and blue self adhesive diamonds that were provided for you to stick on your radio dials when they switched from Light, Home and whatever to Radio-1/2/3/4 ?

Yup. Still got them stuck to an ancient Grundig Transistor job stashed in the loft somewhere. Transparent little diamonds with 1,2 etc. printed on and a thin red/blue surround (?)

The Beeb's answer to Radio London, Radio Caroline etc.

Radio Caroline. For those who remember - and those who missed a great chunk of broadcasting history ..........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDDcz9o2yCs

That's the ones. My grandad had them until about 30 years ago, your's may be the last ones left!