Swindon Cable

Swindon Cable

Country	United Kingdom
Headquarters	Hawksworth Ind Est, Swindon (1984-2000)
Ownership
Owner	ComTel(1998-2000) NTL (2000)

Swindon Cable was Swindon's local television channel. It closed permanently in 2000 after 16 years of putting out mostly local programming on the Wiltshire industrial town's radio and television relay cable network.

Swindon Viewpoint

Local programming in Swindon began life as Swindon Viewpoint on the 11 September 1973 as an experiment in community cable television, or public access television. It was managed initially by Richard Dunn, who later went on to become Head of Thames Television. This experiment started with EMI finance on the Radio Rentals cable radio and television relay network. Local people could train in using television production equipment. Many of the programmes were 'one-off' documentaries that interested the volunteers involved or programmes of more general public interest. The studios were in the basement of Radio Rentals premises on Swindon's Victoria Road.

The experiment ended in 1976 when EMI decided to pull out of funding the service. Although it was popular and flourishing. The main reason seems to have been that the Government would not allow advertising or sponsorship. Amid much local concern, Swindon Viewpoint was sold to the public of Swindon for £1 and an elected board of directors set up to oversee it. Viewpoint thus became the first television service that was publicly owned and managed. Programming continued successfully for the rest of the decade with a staff of around six to train the public to make programmes, and was funded by a mix of sponsorship and a Ladbrokes operated lottery scheme (the forerunner of the National Lottery. Viewpoints central programming strand was magazine based programmes called Seen in Swindon.

When the Lottery scheme ended in 1980, funding dried up and Viewpoint went into partnership with Media Arts, the public media centre in Swindon. Though this partnership recognised and maintained the independence of Viewpoint. With no staff the operation was now entirely volunteer based, but nevertheless programmed through the eighties. Its main programme strand was called Access Swindon. In the early nineties Media Arts was restructured and support for Viewpoint was ended. With no access to production resources the board of directors resolved to suspend programming operations but to maintain its structure and registration as a Company, pending a more favourable climate. It has since restarted operations online where it shows selections from its archive of programmes, as well as recent material.

Radio Rental Cable Television in November 1981 started the UK's first pay-per-view movie channel, Cinematel, also shown on a sister operation in Kent. The signal were encoded and the service was available only to subscribers, who had 'set-top' boxes to decode the signal.

After a few years, when it was not showing film, the cable company began itself to show local programming headed initially by Sue Stevens, who had been involved with Swindon Viewpoint and the programming reverted to news and occasional 'one-off' documentaries about events in or around Swindon. The service also provided a local 'teletext' service with the graphics designed by David Hounsell a Graphic Designer and Technical Operator (1981 - 1987), Thorntel which provided local information from bus and times to job vacancies as well as Scene in Swindon, launched on 1 May 1984 was a news magazine programme and Sport on Saturday.

Swindon Cable, The Local Channel and Closure

In 1984 Radio Rentals Cable Television moved re-launched the channel as Swindon Cable, which The Duke of Kent opened. Focus on Swindonwas started, produced by Sue Stevens with presenter/reporter Trevor Cribb. The channel increased the programme's frequency from twice a week to three times a week. Thorn EMI then sold its stake in the channel to British Telecom, which pulled the plug on Focus on Swindon on February 4 1986. Bought-in content, such as CBS 's daytime soap The Bold and The Beautiful replaced the community programming.

Viewers marked their cards at home to win cash prizes as Paul Langcaster (Who had also trained with Swindon Viewpoint) drew numbers at random in Home Shop Tele Bingo from a studio dressed with goods available from the Littlewoods catalogue shopping business's retail stores. This was not Littlewoods' only flirtation with television. With Granada TV it ran the Shop! TV channel launched in 1998 on the ONdigital digital terrestrial platform and closed in 2002 after Granada and digital broadcasting partner, Carlton Communications, pulled the plug on the platform.

When the sponsorship deal ended the channel was again re-launched. In June 1989 under a new name, The Local Channel. The old mix of news and one-off documentaries returned on a much smaller scale. It had full-time staff and a team of volunteers. They produced a familiar mix of programming about local sports and local news and events. The teletext operation was re-vamped and became the forerunner of the Cable Vision Information Service.

After a Canadian company took the channel over, its studio was refitted and became the country's then-most modern local programming suite. It relaunched in 1994 as Swindon Cable's Local Channel aimed to give the town a local slant on current affairs and news of events in and around the town. Ashley Heath and Paul Langcaster presented 'news, views, entertainment and the Cable Christmas Show'. Local sports news and results formed an important part of the schedule.

The Swindon team in 1998 started producing a community news magazine programme for ComTel in Oxford Channel 10 - Scene in Oxford. During Swindon Cable's last week, Langcaster and Heath showed excerpts from Swindon-made community television programming. They included Cable Club launched in 1981 and its Music Box, ''Cinematel, Encore and Cable Text sections. NTL (later renamed Virgin Media) took over ComTel's franchises and announced a plan to introduce video-on-demand but that never materialised. NTL scrapped Swindon Cable in June 1, 2000.

Cabled in the 21st Century

Swindon was the UK's broadband capital, with more than 50% of households having high-speed internet access, the BBC reported on August 2, 2006. It quoted research group Point Topic, whose report put the town's high broadband take-up down to its being relatively prosperous and well covered by BT's DSL network and cable.

External links

• Swindon Viewpoint
• Swindon Cable - The Cable Connection (Nostalgia site)