Pieria tv

Pieria  TV

A  short  history  on 1993

From  the only left sticker !!!

Pieria TV has started by chance after a friend and TV mate named MIltos from Langadas , a place 20 km north of Thessaloniki,   tried to extend his opportunities in TV narrow casting in the city of  Katerini on early 1993   . Katerini is located 80 km  SSW of Thessaloniki

I previously already  had a  cooperation with this man for less than 1 year in Langadas by providing him some transmission equipment. 

Eugene the head person of Radio Faros 92.3 MHz a local radio station and him (Miltos ) tested a 5 W transmitter in a new built building quite close the radio station  inside the city.  The results  were totally disappointing. Given that all TV sets in the city uses a pre-amplifier  , the  5 W signal was more than enough to overload the antenna preamplifiers and causing a total wipeout in the UHF band The man was ready to stop his tests  and return back to his main business , a local radio station.

ON the start   a near commercial system  was used linking via VHF but soon it was  replaced with a UHF link system The technician who designed the VHF link was a friend of the person from Langadas  Later i heard that he died from cancer – around early 2000-

Fortunately, an old pal from the past offered us his facilities of his factory to install the relay system. His factory is very clos to the national road connecting Thessaloniki and Athens.

The studio and link system was run in the facilities of the new – for the time- bus routes building  in the opposite of the town. This relay link system had direct  distance of around 2 KM.

The TV channels offices  consisted of two rooms of 25 sqm each , one of them separated by a wooden wall. The front part of the room was used for the production while the rear part was the studio. It was used for both live and recorded programming.

We commenced programming on this narrow casting station on ca March 1993  The  project stopped on October 1993 due to less interest from the other parts ie Eugene. A lawyer  was also used to legislate the whole process but due to the stop of interest  from the cooperator he was also widrawn from the TV project.

Interersting to notice 3 years ago  I was ranked #5 applying for a registration to the state for TV license

Programming consisted Of

-         Relays from some sat TV programs  on the start  little later replaced with computer generated  adverts , in iteration

-         Movies in general

-         News , by our special journalist team

-         Interviews or debates produced in our studios. Mrs Glykatzi Averler was one among the interviewees. She I quite known internationally as a byzantine author and philosopher

         Special local sports events

Stations personnel  was about 10-12  persons  :

-         2 cameramen

-         2 journalists , mainly with local  news.  Eugene was the head of  news.

-         1 electronic engineer

-         2-3  system technicians including me

-         Newscaster.

 The studio system included:

-         Several  video players

-         One of my satellite TV antennas with  horizon mount

-         One S VHS  video camera

-         One multi-channel video mixer /console  with digital effects

-         One push button and variable resistor video mixer

-         An Amiga computer with Genlock for mixing with video

-         Several TV  monitors built into an angled metalic support system.

-         One VHF-I  antenna  as link antenna and RG type cable  (on the start season)

-         One dish antenna  for the UHF , originally a bulk made in lathe for advertising use of the sat dish company

-         0.5 W transmitter on extended UHF band

The relay system included:

-         A relay transceiver   

-         Heliax cables

-         Lazy H  type TV transmission antenna

-         UHF+  transmitter

Channels used:

24 on first months

43 after   QRM  from ERT started  on 24

After the channel dissolved the equipment has been either sold lost or stolen Only a few part of the equipment  returned to us