Millennium Transmitter (right) before renovationMillennium Tower at night in 2012
The Millennium Transmitter, also known as the ABS-CBN Tower, and provisionally called as AMBS Tower, was constructed at the corner of Mother Ignacia Street and Sgt. Esguerra Avenue, within the ABS-CBN Broadcasting Center, at the time of its construction, it was one of the tallest lattice towers in the world. Construction began in the third quarter of 1968. On March 21, 1969, the tower became operational, transmitting television and radio for ABS-CBN and also used to beam color broadcasts in Metro Manila, and to nearby provinces. After martial law was declared on September 21, 1972, as ABS-CBN suspended their operations the following day, the facility was taken over by the crony-owned BBC-2 from 1973 to 1979; state-run People's Television's predecessors GTV/MBS-4 also occupied the tower from 1974 to 1992 to beam their programs. When the EDSA Revolution happened, both the tower and Broadcast Plaza were stormed by reformist rebels as escalating battle occurred on February 24, 1986. After the revolution, the tower was returned to ABS-CBN. Since then, the tower became the primary source of transmission for both DWWX-TV and DWRR and later it began transmitting the company's sister UHF station DWAC-TV in 1996.
The ABS-CBN Broadcasting Center as viewed from the rooftop of the main building of ABS-CBN. Millennium Transmitter (right).
Its previous height was 650 ft (198.1 m), until ABS-CBN started a major reconstruction and rehabilitation of the whole tower, which included changing cylinder antennas to the more powerful dipole antennas with reflector, and increase of its height which was finished by the 3rd quarter of 2009.[2]
After two years of being non-operational for transmission, ABS-CBN granted the request of AMBS to use the transmitter for the analog and digital broadcasts of ALLTV. This was confirmed by Willie Revillame on his show Wowowin.[1] ALLTV later beginning simulcasting several ABS-CBN programs, such as TV Patrol, Magandang Buhay and It's Showtime, since April 15, 2024. This marked the return of ABS-CBN's operations to the transmitter tower after four years since its shutdown in 2020, albeit as an airtime lease operator.[5][6][7][8][9]
Features
Tower
The tower uses dipole antennas with reflector, and UHF panel antennas for wide coverage of analog (VHF and UHF TV) and digital (ISDB-T) TV reception in Metro Manila some nearby provinces in both grades A and B, for the broadcasts of DWWX-TV and DWAC-TV respectively. Despite the name, the Millennium Transmitter is not a transmitter of its own, but rather a communications tower with antennas connected to multiple transmitters.
Transmitter facility
The transmitter facility housed both DWWX-TV and DWAC-TV that contained sets of transmitter equipment imported by Harris and Jampro of the United States.
All stations that were previously broadcasting from the Millennium Transmitter ceased transmission on May 5, 2020, following the expiration of its legislative franchise.
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