The station was built by the ITA in the early 1960s to provide a 405-lineITVBand III TV service for north west Wales. Unlike the BBC, which served the area from Llanddona, Arfon gave better coverage to some areas. The tower was completed in 1962 and began broadcasting that same year. In October 1975 the site became a medium powerUHFanaloguecolour television relay of Llanddona, at the time carrying BBC One, BBC Two and ITV. S4C was added in 1982. 405-line TV was finally discontinued in the UK in 1985, but it appears that Arfon's VHF transmitters were decommissioned a year early in 1984 and the transmitters themselves were reused for clinical radiotherapy. More recently, Police and Ambulance communications have been added, in addition to mobile telephone antennas. In 1993, Classic FM began using the site for FM coverage of north west Wales in preference to Llanddona, partly due to a dispute over BBC charges for sharing fees of its transmitter masts and antennas, but more because Arfon, in conjunction with Great Orme's Head gave Classic FM better coverage than the BBC sites. On 16 November 1998, local commercial radio station Champion 103 launched from studios in Bangor with its transmitter at Arfon. The mast had its aircraft warning lights replaced in Summer 2006 to red lamps employing arrays of ultrabright LEDs. On 18 July 2006, national digital radio networkDigital One began broadcasting from the station.
1982 saw the rollout of the UK's 4th planned UHF television channel. As with all Welsh transmitters, Arfon was required to carry S4C instead of Channel 4 which is broadcast to the rest of the United Kingdom.
Frequency
VHF
UHF
kW
Service
10
—
10
HTV Wales
—
41
3.6
HTV Wales
—
44
3.6
BBC2 Wales
—
47
3.6
S4C
—
51
3.6
BBC1 Wales
January 1984 - 21 October 2009
After 22 years of VHF television from this site, the service was discontinued in January 1984. On UHF, Arfon was destined only ever to transmit the originally-planned four of the eventual five analogue terrestrial television channels.
There never was a pre-DSO digital TV service from Arfon. DSO for the repeaters of Llanddona occurred between 21 October & 18 November 2009. In preparation for this, the transmitting antenna at the top of the Arfon mast was replaced in March 2008. This new antenna is slightly taller than the previous one, resulting in the mast's total height increasing to from its previous height of. On 21 October, BBC2 Analogue was switched off, and ITV1 Wales took over its frequency for its final three weeks of service. BBC Mux A took over channel 41 that had just been vacated by ITV.
The analogue television transmissions from Arfon ceased and were replaced by digital transmissions. Unusually for the UK, the digital transmissions from this site are considerably more powerful than is usual practice considering the ERP of the analogue services that they replace.
† MuxCo North west Wales is on this transmitter carrying both the Welsh language Capital Cymru and the English Capital North Wales coast. Also carries Smooth radio. Nation Radio Wales and Dragon radio.
