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Broadcasting House, Salford Quays & TVC

(September 2010)

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AM
amosc100
I think if you asked all the license payers, "would you rather the BBC spend upwards of £900million moving departments to Salford to the detriment to the quality of output and with a majority of childen's programmes continuing to pretend they're based in London, OR reduce the cost of the license fee by a few quid", I'm sure I know what the public would choose.



I would love to see how you would defend, and quantify, that statement of lesser quality for moving to Salford.

Is the north deemed more inferior than the south in terms of presentation and technology?

Why would YOU consider it would be of lesser quality?

Remember Manchester/Salford is home to the worlds longest runnning scripted drama (well it will be when the US Drama ends this month) - being Coronation Street. Not bad considering northerns are considered far more inferior than southerners!!
MW
Mike W
Remember Manchester/Salford is home to the worlds longest runnning scripted drama (well it will be when the US Drama ends this month) - being Coronation Street. Not bad considering northerns are considered far more inferior than southerners!!

Umm, not quite. BBC Birmingham holds that honour, see The Archers - unless you mean TV drama, in which case you're right.
TR
trivialmatters
I would love to see how you would defend, and quantify, that statement of lesser quality for moving to Salford.

Is the north deemed more inferior than the south in terms of presentation and technology?

Why would YOU consider it would be of lesser quality?


Programmes are moving out of purpose built studios and into 'office media spaces'. It's been suggested that Blue Peter won't have a studio at all and will just broadcast its programme from the corners of an office in media city. Edit suites are gone, replaced with one-man 'edit pods'. Instant access to the BBC archive is elimiated. Access to many guests becomes restricted. Staff - some with 15+ years experience - are quitting left right and centre, which will result in a department staffed mainly be juniors from the University of Salford.

You can't suggest that won't affect the quality of what appears on screen.
SP
Steve in Pudsey
Instant access to the BBC archive is elimiated.


I thought the archive was at Windmill Road? Is access to it that instant now?
CH
chris
As mentioned in the Breakfast thread, is Media City to have any "proper" television studios, rather than office spaces?
TR
trivialmatters
Instant access to the BBC archive is elimiated.


I thought the archive was at Windmill Road? Is access to it that instant now?


If you call the archive, you can get a digi in your hand within two hours. If something has already gone to the broadcast centre for transmission, you can borrow it and return it within an hour.

This will mostly affect Breakfast who may need to call up clips or archive on a quick turnaround, but then I suppose they could have a London bureau with staff there to do that sort of thing, and have a small London studio to do interviews with politicians, and have a small team of people in London to capture any London based news stories such as matters of parliament, in fact, you could just make the programme in London... oh wait.
DE
deejay
chris posted:
As mentioned in the Breakfast thread, is Media City to have any "proper" television studios, rather than office spaces?


Yes, they're building three large sized production studios spookily similar in size to Quay Street's Studios (plus one huge studio that will be larger than TC1 but not quite as large as Fountain's double studio) along with three small studios for Childrens. There'll also be a studio for regional programmes. There is debate about where Breakfast will come from - I hear rumours of problems with the windows in North West Tonight's studios as far as Breakfast is concerned because of something called the sunrise... Smile BBC Sport doesn't have an official studio on it's floor plans however, so presumably they'll hire studio space from the main block as required.

They're all proper purpose built studios, with proper lighting and hoist systems, sound soaking/proofing and so-on. Apparently the main four studios will be 1080p/5.1/3D capable.

http://www.tvstudiohistory.co.uk/rest%20of%20britain.htm#mediacity
TR
TROGGLES
I thought that this had been explained a while ago. The studios are owned by Peel Media & there is a lease agreement for a fixed amount of use by the BBC over a number of years. Local news, Radio (inc 5 Live) & sport will be broadcast from production space within the BBC building, this is where (at the moment) Breakfast will be broadcast from. Almost all the studio subscription is for CBBC productions.

There aren't any issues with news/sport type programmes being broadcast from productions spaces after all News 24 came from a glorified office since it opened. Production standards are down to the management getting the right people to be creative enough to put the right thing on the screen so judge by what you see. As for the North South thing, I would suggest that you look at what the Bernstein's achieved in Manchester at Granada. Apart from the infamous Masonic edition of 'World in Action' It was far enough away from London to stop interference.
CH
chris
So it seems North West Tonight won't be coming from a 'real' studio. That's a shame, especially if the report they had on the move a couple of months ago is anything to go by - looks like they're being stuck in a corner.
IS
Inspector Sands
There aren't any issues with news/sport type programmes being broadcast from productions spaces after all News 24 came from a glorified office since it opened.

Indeed, there are loads of examples of news programmes using studios in modified office space rather than 'proper' studios: BBC World has been for many years, Newsroom Southeast and then BBC London News were for almost 20 years; Midlands Today, Look East, The One Show, London Tonight all do now as do channels like Al Jazeera English and CNN
NG
noggin Founding member
Instant access to the BBC archive is elimiated.


I thought the archive was at Windmill Road? Is access to it that instant now?


If you call the archive, you can get a digi in your hand within two hours. If something has already gone to the broadcast centre for transmission, you can borrow it and return it within an hour.

This will mostly affect Breakfast who may need to call up clips or archive on a quick turnaround, but then I suppose they could have a London bureau with staff there to do that sort of thing, and have a small London studio to do interviews with politicians, and have a small team of people in London to capture any London based news stories such as matters of parliament, in fact, you could just make the programme in London... oh wait.


Access to a lot of the Library should be via DMI within a few years though - which means that instead of tapes physically being moved around between locations, instead the archive content will be ingested digitally, and then available over a network, wherever in the BBC you are. All new content (and newly requested transfers) will be ingested routinely, as will archive requests where the material has yet to be requested or transferred as part of the project.

This should also improve access to the archive overnight and on Bank Holidays...

If it becomes a major issue - ignoring DMI - then presumably if it takes two hours to get a Digi in your hand it could be quicker to play it out down-the-line than wait two hours to get it on a van - or using DMI urgent requests could be ingested on demand. The useful thing about DMI is that you should be able to view the archive online, and then just select the clips you want to play-out, rather than having to request the entire tape, wait a couple of hours for it to arrive and then view it to select the bits you want, and then ingest. (Unless you use Redux for viewing and clip selection prior to the tape arriving)
Last edited by noggin on 13 September 2010 10:51am
IS
Inspector Sands
In my experience getting material from the BBC archives to some BBC offices in London could take longer than it would to get it to Manchester!

Having it digitally speeds up the process but when lots of departments move to Salford it'll be even easier as there'll be proper workflow to get material back and forwards rather than the occasional ad-hoc request now

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