2-in-1 TV Station For BBC - 1953

[Alvin]

Earlier today I was watching Murder, Mystery & My Family on BBC! which featured a murder case from 1953 and I was intrigued to see the headline '2-in-1 TV Station For BBC' below the main story on the page of the Daily Mirror from October 1953 that was used as a prop throughout the programme.

Not being sure what was meant by '2-in-2 Station I watched it again on iplayer and grabbed the attached screenshots then it became clear the paper was referring to the proposed new Crystal Palace transmitter so my question is was it common practice then to refer to transmitters as stations or was this just sloppy journalism?


Alvin

[Nuvistor]

I don’t think it was sloppy journalism, the word station was used for transmitters and receiving sites, time as changed to channels in TV with more than one, interestingly we still use radio station for BBC Radio 2 etc, well I do, others might not.
Word use and meaning change over time and it’s nealy 70 years ago.

[Richard_FM]

Many of the earlier opening announcements for ITV companies used the term station to mean transmitter rather than the channel or company.

[vidjoman]

Perhaps it was ahead of the times. Today we have TV etc. delivered on Platforms.

[Graham G3ZVT]

Sorry to offer a boring answer, but it occurs to me that "transmitter" is four characters longer than "station", and simply wouldn't have fitted in the column with the typeface used, so the shorter word was substituted.

[Synchrodyne]

I suppose that one could rationalize this by noting that the Crystal Palace facility could be described as a “television transmitting station”, and depending upon one’s preference, this could be shortened to either “television transmitter” or “television station”.

Wireless World appears to have swung both ways as it were, judging by these excerpts:



The “2-in1” description for the duplicated vision and sound transmitters and duplicated radiators is not inaccurate in and of itself. But had an earlier TAC proposal proceeded, 2-in-1 could have had a different meaning:



If “station” was chosen as better fitting the available column space than “transmitter”, then why not the even shorter “sender”, which was I think a BBC term for transmitters.

Cheers,

[Radio Wrangler]

"Station" has the same roots and meaning as stationary, and a station is a fixed place for something or some operation. So a railway station is a fixed place for getting on and off trains. So the transmitting site as a 'radio station' fits the original meaning. Station meaning radio programme/service/brand evolved when one site used to transmit only one service. The railway meaning grew to mean larger places with ancillaries like fat controllers, waiting rooms, grumpy ticket issuers etc, and basic places became known as 'halts'. Buses started with 'stops' and only later acquired large 'bus stations'

David