All Freeview viewers in north Shropshire and parts of south Shropshire will today need to retune their TVs and boxes today in order to receive all channels as the first phase of the digital switchover got under way.

Shortly after midnight, the analogue BBC2 l was turned off permanently at both The Wrekin and Ridge Hill transmitter in Herefordshire.

The Wrekin transmitter

The move allowed Freeview coverage of eight BBC channels to be boosted to reach tens of thousands of new homes for the first time.

By 6am, engineer Andrew Elston had completed stage one of the digital switchover at The Wrekin transmitter.

As part of the process, switchover manager Mr Elston turned on high-powered transmissions of digital BBC television services.

To enable this, all analogue terrestrial services, including BBC1, ITV channels, Channel 4 and Channel 5, were temporarily switched off. Analogue BBC 2 was then left off.

Viewers of analogue TV found that BBC1 was being broadcast on their BBC2 channels.

The switchover means that north Shropshire and large parts of south Shropshire, where homes receive signals via their aerials from a separate transmitter at Ridge Hill, woke up to a spectrum of new digital TV channels as long as their televisions were fitted with equipment to receive them.

On April 20 the same process will be repeated over commercial channels, including ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5.

Mr Elston said: “People will get all the same stations that they get now but BBC services will be in higher power.

“But if you have got a Freeview box you will have to retune.”

Andy Elston, switchover manager, inside The Wrekin transmitter

Peter Monteith, Digital UK regional manager for the central regions, said: “We do it in two stages because if anybody leaves it to the last minute it means they have only lost one analogue channel.”

“The vast majority of people have got digital already and the switchover for them is about two retunes.

Stage one of the switchover at The Wrekin was the culmination of five years’ work which has included installing new transmitting antennae on the mast itself.

A new state-of-the-art digital transmitter hall, which receives programmes from TV broadcasting studios, has been constructed to replace the old unit.

By Ben Bentley