Broadcasting House, Salford Quays & TVC

No but you could spend £200 million renovating a corporations "cultural home" to modern standards, gutting the insides if needed, whilst renting studio space widely thought as the best in the industry and having production space, studio space and if needed transmission and central control of the myriad of channels operated.
Or.... you can spend £500million upwards moving half your workforce to Manchester whilst rebuilding an overly price very central London office with no externally rentable studio spaces, confined and generally disliked working environments which flood and have rat issues.
Or… you could make £200million by selling that building, branding it not fit for purpose and letting a property developers use the site to make £850+million…
All whilst striving to make the “best use” of public money…

Yeah, no TVCs closure was political not practical and that’s sad and wrong and no-one will ever be held to account. *gives evils to Michael Grade*

The only reason it will happen is if it's convenient and cost-effective. The fit out of the TVC studios is waiting for a decision to be made as to what technology to install, and that will depend largely on what the latest thing is at the time.

As mentioned it is being tried in TV and it is already happening in BBC Radio where it should save a lot of money

They did renovate the corporations "home" - BH!


It's a lot more complicated than that, TV Centre's closure had been on the cards for a long long while. It was a slow wind down and the opening of BH and Media City sped it up. I started working there in the late 90's and it was fairly obvious back then where things were going

The transmission part of your statement, is lost now. Now that is with an outside company, you'll never get that back.

My point being - again - is that yes, it's a shame that where once tv shows were churned out at a rate of knots for two channels, now there are tower cranes, and I went to see a Channel 4 gameshow being recorded in TC8 three weeks before the closure so I could say I went into TVC before it closed.

But, put simply the tv industry has simply moved on.
You do not need a site with 8 varying sized studios, huge wasted areas out the back for once busy props making, drapes stores, workshops, vt edit suites and production offices lying largely empty.

The rise of the indies, where you can put a programme together in your front room on a laptop, hire a cameraman who will do the lighting and sound, then an edit suite for 12 hours to knock the programme in to shape, proved you didn't need a site as big as Television Centre (or other similar facilities) to make a perfectly watchable tv show.

It's better to keep 3 studios, convert offices into modern workspaces, rent them out to programme production teams making the shows in either TC1 or TC3 (I still think it would have been better to knock TC2 down and keep TC4 though) and therefore, just like when it opened back in 1960 and was relevant to that eras tv production needs, when it re-opens next year, or 2018, Television Centre will be once more relevant to todays programme production environment.

It seems to me the biggest hang up around here, is the thought some people can't bear to even contemplate is that the letters 'B' 'B' & 'C' wont be as visible as previously seen around W12 7RJ. But at least when it re-opens, you'll be able to walk in off Wood Lane and into the complex, without the need to have a TV recording ticket, or a red BBC Visitor lanyard around your neck.

And before you go "ahh, but what about ITV London? That's a multi-studio complex that's still going".
Well it is, but none of the sets are actually made/constructed/built from scratch on site, and haven't they closed down the post prod side of the business last year?
So it's basically just a very conveniently located Central London studio recording facility. I suspect if ITV could find a better site, with more space for studios, they'd be out of Upper Ground like a shot.

TV centre also had been built for a lot of obsolete tech, which was added to over the years for colour, digital, Ethernet, HD, servers, there wasn't more room to install anything else without gutting anyway. And what can you do with wings dedicated to things that don't exist anymore... A dedicateed VT wing replaced by servers. AN unused scenery block. If the BBC had stayed, it would have required a total rebuild anyway. That said, the loss of TC8 and some of the other studios, and the need to keep what they've opened at Elstree, is crazy,

*as above!

and rumours keep rumbling on that they'll be doing that...



this is a picture looking up at a typical cable run in CAR:



It wouldn't surprise me if some of those were there when the place was built, and most of them were long-obsolete when I took the photo in 2011. Running anything new in (you can see a wee bit of purple and turquoise co-ax there) was a time-consuming process, and you could forget trying to trace a cable if it didn't match up with the documentation.

The studios themselves had been brought up to modern standards, but the building was undoubtedly tired, and full of bits like CAR. It would have been fantastic to see them do the kind of redevelopment it's currently undergoing, only for the BBC to move back in - but it was never gonna happen, because the only way you can afford to rip it up and start again (as they're doing) is to sell posh flats.

Yep and you don't even need to make a 'TV' show any more, the TV industry hasn't just moved on it's starting it's decline. Give it 20 years and TV as we know it will probably be mostly dead. The rise of YouTube was the start, BBC Three, Netflix and Amazon is the start of it going mainstream.


And that's the model that other TV studios use, and 3 studios is probably about the right number. Teddington, Riverside, TLS, Maidstone all have/had 3 or 4 (rentable) studios.

S&PP wanted 5 studio at TVC - plans were made and then the accountants got involved.

This is not an emotional argument its a practical long term planning argument. Patel & Thompson made a short term decision knowing they would be leaving the BBC.

It made sense to retain TVC and sell everything else exept BH. Elstree was slated to be sold with production of EastEnders & Holby split either between TVC & Cardiff or entirely at TVC or some possibly at the Olympic park all were considered (the latter turned out to cost far too much). The plan then changed again to selling off the periphery of buildings at TVC keeping the Donut, the studios & retaining the restaurant block.
Eventually it was whittled down to what we have today - or rather haven't got today.

After the licence fee settlement and if the government can be prevented from interfering more than it already has (such as appointing their lackys to the propsed editorial board) there are or were medium term plans to expand Elstree - Peter Salmon is no longer in situ so it could all change again.

Boris was very keen for EastEnders to move to the Olympic Park - apparently it's why it gained the E20 postcode, skipping over the (unused) E19.

A shame that the BBC is to end public tours of New Broadcasting House following a "security review":

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/mar/11/bbc-public-tours-london-hq-security-review

If they're going to cut tours what about the cafe or a gift shop that are open to the public? Those would seem to be security weak points as well.

Edit : I should ask do people going into the Media Cafe go through any sort of security screening? I assume it's cut off or restricted to the rest of the building or leads directly into the lobby.

Shame, thankful then that I went on one back in 2014 while I had the chance. I hope the cafe stays public at least.