I recently spoke with a resident who lives just south of Perth Road in the Sinderins area. She was surprised to have received a mailing in the past few days from Digital UK about TV digital switchover when, like all other residents in the area, she had done this last August.
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| Oh no, it doesn't - it happened last August! |
The mailing was aimed at occupiers of flats and it talks about switchover happening from May of this year. I queried this with Digital UK and am advised by their Assistant National Manager :
"The simple answer is that constituent will have received the mailing as she has a chance of receiving a signal from Craigkelly. Where someone is in an area where there is a chance of receiving signals from different transmitter groups, we include them in mailings for all the relevant transmitters they could be getting their signals from.
We try and target the information we issue as specifically as we can. But, as you can imagine there are some areas where crossovers exist and we have to cover all bases. As you know we do not know which properties have and have not made the switch, so we need to include all possible properties in case they are included in that particular transmitter group.
We appreciate that this will cause confusion for some who made the switch in August. To deal with this, we have a three-point 'What to do' list in the leaflet and the first point is to speak to your landlord or property manager to see if anything needs to be done. Any good landlord/property manager should know the answer to this straight away."
The Craigkelly transmitter covers part of the STV Central area (Edinburgh/Lothians/South Fife) and although quite a few residents in southern parts of the West End may get TV signals from it, it is very much a "secondary" transmitter for the area as its target audience is largely south of Glenrothes/Central Fife. This resident's primary transmitter is Tay Bridge in the STV North area and it was part of the STV North digital switchover that happened last August.
Although this resident is not elderly, as she points out many of her neighbours are elderly and she's concerned that this mailing may cause them some confusion. I've pointed out to Digital UK that I doubt there's more than a small handful of people in Dundee who have not already made the digital switch - the vast majority of residents will have transferred to digital TV either before or at the STV North switchover last summer.
The message is simple - if you get a mailing about digital switchover and you have already switched to digital TV, ignore the mailing - but if you need any advice, contact Digital UK on 08456 50 50 50.