ITV abandons the South Bank

According to SRO Audiences, Graham's first show to be recorded at Television Centre will be Thursday 5th April 2018, with broadcast the following day I assume. I am sure Graham will settle well into Studio TC1. 10,800 Sq Ft, 2,450 Sq Ft more space than The London Studios Studio 1. I wonder if the production will use the move to bring a new set and a new look, as Graham has been using this set look since 2007.

It's going into TC1

Why does that matter? it's still a theatre that was used to film a TV show.

Programmes Like 'Live from Her Majesties' and Sunday Night at the London Palladium were deliberately from theatres and had variety acts, do they not count?


The same goes for Comic Relief, having comics in their 'natural environment' was one of the reasons they used the Palladium and the O2. It was vastly improved by being in the palladium too

Yes, just saw it on the SRO Audience website. Thursday nights is when he will be recording in there from early April 2018.

Then you’ll be probably bowled over to be told that in its heyday, Television Centre used to have all 8 main block studios struck and reset overnight, ready for the next programme. Even when I started there in the mid 90s it was very common to be able on a quiet nightshift to look into studios busy with painters repainting exquisite artwork onto the floor to look like wooden floorboards, tiled pavements etc all precisely in line with the floor plans drawn up weeks beforehand by the designers. Then the set flats would be wheeled in, from the design block the other side of the ring road. Meanwhile the basic lighting plot would be rigged and hoisted up. By morning, the set was in, for dressing, the fine light done in time for the actors to arrive for rehearsal and recording or transmission that afternoon/evening. And by 10pm or whatever was the agreed cutoff, the whole process would start over for the next production.

Television Centre really was an end to end production factory. Pretty outdated by the end, but even so, the problems of set storage and turnaround really haven’t been improved by getting rid of so much infrastructure at the centre.

The big studio at Media City doesn't seem to get a lot of bookings for the biggest shows outside of The Voice really does it? Most big productions still not keen to move out of the capital it seems.

That's what purpose-built TV studios (as distinct from film stages used for TV production) are designed to do. At TV Centre it wasn't unusual to shoot a show one day, strike the set at the end of the day, set a new set overnight, light in the morning, rehearse in the afternoon, record / TX in the evening, and then repeat all over again.

Purpose built studios with saturation lighting rigs, decent set facilities are incredibly useful - particularly for weekly, topical shows, which don't make sense in 'set standing' studios (such as are used for game shows where you record on the same set for days on end)

There have been many people saying this, that the London centric attitude remains. They think big stars do not want to travel to Manchester to appear in the big shows. Ant and Dec would easily move into HQ1 at Dock10 Studios, over 12,000 Sq Ft, but would the get the big guests to come up to Manchester, and would Ant and Dec want to move there in the first place. London seems to be key, however it seems many studio facilities don't care about that, and are knocking down studios all over the capital. We have already lost five studios at Television Centre, Fountain Studios, and now The London Studios.

Very interesting. So where do they keep all the sets?

The London Studios has a lot of set storage space I assume. When sets are packed away, easily assembled when needed each week.

As well as Teddington and Capital Studios.

That is a silly argument though, go back 20+ years and big stars used to appear on tv shows made all over the country - Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Nottingham, Southampton. The biggest music stars in the world went up to Newcastle to appear on Tyne Tees' music shows and big stars would go up to Liverpool to be interviewed by Richard and Judy.

If anything it's easier now, rail and road links are much better

And if it hadn't have been for TV made outside London Ant and Dec wouldn't exist