Never really understood the move to Glasgow for the summer - I'm guessing it was a kind of Salford-lite deal back in the early 90s to ensure some sort of Scottish quota was met, even if that meant basically shipping up a production team from London for the summer.
I remember it being announced in the mid-nineties that they were now going to be commissioning 25% of childrens' programmes from BBC Scotland, as part of a move to get more programmes made across the UK. Clearly producing a two hour show from there for 26 weeks of the year was an obvious way to meet the quota.
As mentioned it more or less replaced the old BBC Manchester childrens' department which closed down in the early nineties, and which up until 1991 produced the summer Saturday morning shows. When that closed a couple of its continuing series were moved to other departments, like Why Don't You. In fact the sports show Activ8 was made by three different departments during its run - it was initially a BBC Manchester production, was then moved down to London when Manchester stopped making kids' shows, and then a few years later was one of the existing shows moved up to Glasgow to meet the quota. And I remember the head of the unit at BBC Scotland was Edward Pugh, who had filled the same role at BBC Manchester.
I think it's because they made Fully Booked from 1995 (albeit on BBC2 Sundays from 1996-99, while BBC1 Saturdays just had extended CBBC) and FBi (which was basically a revamped Fully Booked) in 2000, so I guess they decided to keep summers with them.
Yes, BBC Scotland had been making the summer Saturday morning shows since 1995, but in 2000 FBi hadn't been very successful at all, and clearly it was decided that with SMTV running all year round, it would make more sense to have Live and Kicking running all year round as well, as the stronger brand. But it wouldn't do to make it all in London so they continued making it in Glasgow in the summer months.
The presenters came with it but I don't think it was the case that many of the production team came up, the team at Glasgow who made Fully Booked and FBi were still in charge, and it certainly had a different "feel" when it was in Glasgow. They were pretty experienced in making that style of show in Glasgow, though, not only had they produced the Saturday morning shows for a couple of years but they'd also obviously made Saturday morning-style shows for the Scottish school holidays.
There are other examples of the same show being made by more than one department. For a couple of years in the eighties Russell Harty did his show twice a week on BBC2, where on Tuesdays it came from London and on Thursdays from Manchester, with a different production team in each city.
