ITV abandons the South Bank

Didn't the BBC sell half its estate to LandSecurities Trillium in the early 2000s and lease it back from them, so in the event they decided to dispose of the site, LST sold it and then lease back from the new owners.

It was reported back in 2012 that the BBC had only sold the leasehold to the site, not the freehold - which might mean they're leasing parts of it back from themselves. (I can't find anything to say the freehold changed hands in the interim but I might not have been looking hard enough)

Yes land prices weren't doing so well at the time so they didn't sell the site. Although I've heard a suggestion that they weren't allowed to

As I understand it the BBC own the site and Stanhope have the leasehold on it. The BBC (Studios/Studioworks) then lease/rent their bits from them

The whole river facade between there and the London Eye is pretty tatty and a prime example of 60s/70s concrete brutalism. It's all pretty much unspoilable

Yet it's still a heck of a lot better than it was. A lot of the concrete went and the back of the Festival Hall was tarted up.

I remember when I had work experience at the London Studios as a teenager and the route from Waterloo was a mismatched, bitty above ground walkway that just ended in a smelly staircase on Upper Ground. All gone now and theres a nicer more direct route

Well, and I do it every weekday at present, coming out of Waterloo's main entrance you're still presented with a very grim street scene, and walking up the ramp to cross Waterloo Bridge you don't see anything appealing looking left or right.
Better to look straight forward, or towards the City.

Although I'm struggling to think of any other London rail terminus
that has an appealling scene immediately you exit the station. Kings Cross possibly?

That said Paris, Rome, Olso, Stockholm, or Brussels have nothing special either

IIRC ITV owns 60% of ITN. They are also very interconnected. With ITN making ITV News and many other programmes.

They own 40%.

And, if anything, they've been doing the opposite. There are a lot of tenants at GIR, more so than just ITN and one or two other companies.

That's not a route I ever took, and I did it for decades. But it was never a very attractive part of London, I imagine it's one of the reasons LWT was attracted to it - cheap land.

Much the same applies to W12, and TW7

I didn't know any better, first time working in London and although Waterloo was our terminus we normally went from there to somewhere touristy! Out of the arch and under the railway is much better than the old Shell building exit.

It's amazing how different it is now to how it was pre-London Eye

I always walked out of the station, straight down the steps into the subway, and through the middle of the roundabout, (where the IMAX cinema was built about 20 years ago)
It's not a terribly appealing experience either