BBC Midlands on the move!

Originally, way back at the dawn of BBC regional news, BBC Midlands was in Birmingham city centre, in Broad Street – but only for the first few years. Originally covering the whole Midlands, until the East Midlands broke away in early 1991 to receive their own news from Nottingham (meaning EMT is only just over 10 years old!)

For the past 3-4 decades or so, they have been in a building in Edgbaston, a leafy suburb on the outskirts of Greater Birmingham, so quite some distance from the city centre. The building is in Pebble Mill Road, and so has long-since become known as the “Pebble Mill” building. It was made famous by the daytime series that started out as “Pebble Mill at One”, which was briefly revived in the 1990s as just “Pebble Mill” (it was at 12:30 I think, just before the 1 o'clock News), with Ross King, Alan Titchmarsh and Judy Spiers amongst the presenters.

But, BBC Midlands is in the process of moving back to the city centre, into a spanking new building created from the remains of a former Royal Mail sorting office, just round the corner from their original Broad Street home! Imaginatively named “The Mailbox”, the already-functioning building houses shops, offices, apartments, and even a hotel or two! The BBC will have just one small part of the huge building. The size of the BBC Midlands operation has been scaled down in recent years, so long gone are the days of popular network shows like Telly Addicts being made in Birmingham.

All the large studios that the likes of Telly Addicts used to use in the Pebble Mill building lay unused, as BBC Midlands is essentially now a regional-news-only operation. The ageing, crumbling, asbestos-ridden building is destined to be demolished when the BBC finish moving out, to make way for residential development.

The newsroom has already relocated, and I have reason to believe that Midlands Today will move in October 2001. When they do move, it is rumoured that they will have a new BBC generic set, rather than reassembling the tiny current one. It may have a sofa area and will almost certainly have a bigger window, showing a view of the city centre's Centenary Square, rather than a skyline of the city centre from a great distance (i.e. the Pebble Mill rooftop camera in Edgbaston), as at present. Midlands Today experimented with the Centenary Square view in late 2000/early 2001. AFAIK They are still using the Centenary Square view at 22:25 only.

BBC Birmingham is also the home of local radio station BBC WM (that's West Midlands!), who make long-running radio soap, The Archers. I don't know if any aspect of the radio operation has relocated to The Mailbox yet. I believe that website maintenance (of http://www.bbc.co.uk/birmingham and http://www.bbc.co.uk/midlandstoday) is also already at The Mailbox.

Just a couple of things to add to the above.

East Midlands Today did indeed became a full programme in 1991, however it was a sub-opt out of Midlands Today for quite a while before this. It worked in a similar way to the current Cambridge sub-opt out of Look East.

BBC Midlands regional news operation is indeed housed in the BBC Birmingham production centre, and this will continue when BBC Birmingham moves from Pebble Mill to The Mailbox. However to describe BBC Birmingham as essentially a news-only operation is a little unfair. (BBC Birmingham is still more than just BBC Midlands!)

BBC Birmingham does still produce a large number of Network programmes, certainly in daytime. The reason that the Pebble Mill Network production studios have been closed is that the bulk of BBC Birmingham's productions are location based rather than studio. Thus only the BBC Midlands news studio continues, and will probably be the only studio in the new Mailbox building.
A similar decision was taken not to continue running BBC Manchesters studios (apart from one required for BBC North West local news, and a small digital studio), and the studio operation in Manchester was merged (and moved) to Granada studios and re-named 360Media (I think)

The new BBC Birmingham building will still need to have a large network production editing, dubbing and graphics operation to continue to support their network shows, as well as accommodation for network researchers, producers, directors etc. BBC Birmingham still produces a diverse range of programmes, from Drama (Mersey Beat?) to daytime DIY, from Countryfile, to Top Gear (though this has been recently axed)

Yes I laugh at that - Merseybeat is made in Birmingham! It would be better to have made it in Manchester!! BBC Manchester produces, obviously North West Today and North West Tonight, along with Wipeout, Big Strong Boys and a few other, which I have forgotten!!

BTW, is the small digital studio at BBC North West the one used for facts and figures on screen? It has the studio background, but ts definately computer generated. Here is a photo of it:

http://www.tvhome.f2s.com/ikonboard/upload/NW%20Studio%20Graphics.jpg

I also forgot to mention that the individual person(s) who is/are in charge of 'BBC English Regions' overall are based at BBC Birmingham. Whether their office is still one at Pebble Mill, or they've moved to The Mailbox, I don't know.

I would be surprised if BBC North West were able to easily use BBC Manchester studio facilities. I think that it is far more likely that the effect you show is a full-frame CSO in the normal NWT studio weather position (with a different backing)

Studio D - as I believe it was called - is the remaining non-regional studio at BBC Manchester. It was created for BBC Choice programmes, but is mainly used now for BBC Religion's 'Heaven and Earth' show - though this seems to be location based at the moment.

Yeap Noggin, you're right. Media360 is the joint BBC Manchester & Granada facilities group, who have taken on the role of Resources.

Sounded quite good on paper to all the staff...
They would 'leave' the BBC, but take with them all their benefits, pay scales, pensions, long service leave etc. They were under the impression that although they no longer worked for the BBC, they could do attachments & jump around as we all can.

But there's a snag which I know one person is really miffed about (like seriously miffed!) and wasn't really explained during the switch... He tried to go for a job elsewhere within the BBC, and found out that he would lose all the benefits and have to resign from Media360 and re-join the BBC from scratch, losing potential Redundancy payments and benefits.

He's not a happy man and feels incredibly trapped!


Err, sorry I've taken this off-topic a bit! Oops

(Edited by Techy Peep at 11:13 am on Sep. 4, 2001)

Being someone who works in English Regions They're still in Pebble Mill on the sixth floor ... due to move next year, I believe.

I remember when I was younger, pretty much all of BBC1's Daytime output came from Pebble Mill. There was Daytime Live (the BBC's answer at the time to This Morning, I think) which came from a ground-floor studio with windows looking out onto some grass/trees. I seem to remember this being relaunched later (was it called Daytime UK, or is that just my imagination?) but still coming from the same studio.

This was obviously later replaced by Good Morning with Anne & Nick (a proper answer to Richard and Judy!), which also had windows with a similar view, so I guess it came from the same studio. I'm pretty sure that this was followed by 'Pebble Mill', which obviously came from Birmingham too!

Good Morning with Anne and Nick - STILL the best daytime tv programme, came from the same studio that Pebble Mill at One came from (only the false living room walls covered the floor to celing glass windows) The re-launched Pebble Mill, came from Studio One - which was also used for Telly Addicts, - and I think now used as a set (until Pebble Mill is closed) for the daytime drama 'Doctors'

I have a friend who was an AFM on PM@1, and he says that no-one liked working in the foyer of PM, as the lights made it the temperature of a greenhouse within 10 minutes of the lights being switched on for a live transmission. However the fact that if the interview was boring you could look out of the window and watch the traffic trundle up and down Pebble Mill Road, made the programme the 70's icon that it was..

For more up to date information on this subject, go to the BBC Birmingham thread: http://www.tvforum.co.uk/cgi-bin/ikonboard/topic.cgi?forum=1&topic=286