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IS
Inspector Sands

Are you sure there are no larger cities without a TV studio? I'm not sure all of the larger European countries have regional or local TV.


There are twenty cities in the EU with one million inhabitants or more (at least according to Wikipedia). If you exclude the capital cities (who, one assumes, must all have fully fledged TV studios), that leaves Hamburg, Barcelona, Munich, Milan, Cologne, Birmingham and Naples. I know there are full service TV studios in most major German cities (at least those where an ARD member is headquartered), and they have at least one in Barcelona. Don't know about Milan or Naples, though.

It depends on what you term as a TV studio or even a 'full service TV studio' - what sort of size and facilities and of course it depends on what factor you determine as the size of a city

I think that Birmingham's problem is also it's strength - it's in the middle of the country. If the BBC and the single ITV want a centre to serve the 'North' then Manchester is the obvious place but Birmingham is too near to both London and Manchester to warrant having big studio centres in all 3.
MW
Mike W

Are you sure there are no larger cities without a TV studio? I'm not sure all of the larger European countries have regional or local TV.


There are twenty cities in the EU with one million inhabitants or more (at least according to Wikipedia). If you exclude the capital cities (who, one assumes, must all have fully fledged TV studios), that leaves Hamburg, Barcelona, Munich, Milan, Cologne, Birmingham and Naples. I know there are full service TV studios in most major German cities (at least those where an ARD member is headquartered), and they have at least one in Barcelona. Don't know about Milan or Naples, though.

It depends on what you term as a TV studio or even a 'full service TV studio' - what sort of size and facilities and of course it depends on what factor you determine as the size of a city

I think that Birmingham's problem is also it's strength - it's in the middle of the country. If the BBC and the single ITV want a centre to serve the 'North' then Manchester is the obvious place but Birmingham is too near to both London and Manchester to warrant having big studio centres in all 3.


Didn't stop them in the 1960s. Why should it now? The differences in culture, attitude and opinion, as well as style vary greatly between London, Birmingham and Manchester, it's only fair of the 'national' broadcaster to fairly represent this.
IS
Inspector Sands
Didn't stop them in the 1960s. Why should it now? The differences in culture, attitude and opinion, as well as style vary greatly between London, Birmingham and Manchester, it's only fair of the 'national' broadcaster to fairly represent this.

The big difference now is (and this has been discussed here many times) that there is less demand for TV studios these days, especially the traditional big ones like the ones all the old BBC and ITV centres had. With today's technology it's cheaper to make stuff on location and normally gives you a better end product. It's also easy to turn any space into a TV studio and for long term daily use cheaper than hiring one.

The other difference was that each ITV company used their own facilities exclusively, now it's all one company and they're making fewer studio programmes there's no justification for having big hirable studios in cities only 100 or so miles away
RI
Rijowhi

Birmingham, the biggest city in Europe without a major TV studio. Rolling Eyes The City Council don't seem to want to know either.

What do you want the City council to do about it? and at somewhere's got to be the biggest city in Europe without a major TV studio.

But yeah it is bad what's happening to BBC production outside of Manchester, Cardiff, Glasgow and London. But there doesn't need to be big studios for more production in Brum.


Yep my main issue is there is hardly any production in Birmingham or any of the Midlands these days, mind you I wouldn't want Crossroads to come back (again). lol.

Birmingham City Council just don't sell the city enough in my opinion, then again that's Brummies for you. Embarassed

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