Broadcasting House, Salford Quays & TVC

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/broadcasting/news/a293585/bbc-could-move-tv-channel-to-salford.html

Interesting, but if it did happen, wouldn't it just be for moving's sake rather than actually gaining anything?

Although a lot of this Salford move seems to be like that.

BBC Sports News Correspondent James Pearce has put up a picture on his twitter of the studio that will house MOTD from next year,

http://twitpic.com/3gfbnu

What does moving a television channel to Salford actually involve? Are we talking about moving the commissioning side of things?

It does seem very much like an exercise in futility. I'm all for out of London production, but it seems they're shifting things to Salford for moving's sake and there has been no 'tactical' thinking behind it.

Indeed, one of the things that is moving to Salford is Media Planning - the department that plans the trails, promos and everything else in the junctions. Of course the channel controllers and Red Bee's playout will still be in West London!

Case. Rest. My.

I think they need a rethink of operations. Instead of just taking departments out of hats.

Yes, it should be an organic thing - encourage the talent already there to create/make new programmes.

It's not a new thing of course, the 'Religious Affairs' department was shifted up to Manchester in the early 90's and various radio shows have been produced in places like Manchester and Birmingham just for quota-sake

Yup, no real creativity in the regions these days, sad state of affairs. Places like Manchester and Birmingham used to make high quality programming.

They have added a picture gallery to the story on Media Guardian,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/gallery/2010/dec/14/bbc-broadcasting-house#/?picture=369744984&index=5

The atrium area looks great.

The big problem is that they appear to have committed to moving a certain number of jobs to Salford to qualify for a wodge of funding from the North West Development Corporation or similar, and since the "efficiency savings" the departments that they were planning to move to Salford (which at the time added up to more than the number of jobs required) have been reduced in size such that they no longer add up to the required number. Therefore they need to find new departments (or bits of departments) they can move... (Breakfast being a prime example)

It would be great to encourage existing talent to make new shows - but without execs and senior producers based in those regional centres it can't happen. These are big ticket people so you don't want to duplicate them - so you move them...

A photo of one of the studios at MediaCity Salford which is available for hire courtesy of @jasonbradbury (off of the Gadget Show) where a new Saturday night BBC1 game show he is hosting will be made



(Spoiler tags to avoid throwing the page layout)

http://yfrog.com/h3klwpj

Are they going to 'do' a Sky News and a proper BARCO videowall at the back of the office - or not bother as it seems there isn't going to be much room for Barco's in that small studio area.