Fountain Studios To Close

Thames' studio complexes were for News (Euston) and Productions (Teddington) though weren't they? Not unusual to have separate centres for news and everything else.

ATV Elstree was a legacy of the fact that originally they held the London Weekend franchise (as well as the Midlands weekday). When they lost London Weekend to ... er ... London Weekend Television (!) they kept it, along with Broad Street. The IBA criticised ATV for not being regional enough and forced them to restructure if they kept the Midlands franchise. The restructure led to the formation of Central, the sale of Elstree to the BBC and the construction of Nottingham Lenton Lane. Central also built a small news studio centre in Abingdon, so split their transmissions into three sub regions.

Not only that, but the granting of their franchises was on the condition of having multiple production bases.

Did Tyne Tees have a Middlesbrough facility ? (before the split news operation on Bilsdale )

HTV also had a small studio production facility in Mold during the 70s/80s (very NE corner of Wales)

Anglia broke the mould in 1988 by splitting their region for news, but presenting both progs from Norwich

Ah yes, Abingdon's first bulletin. Rather than laugh I felt very sorry for them. There but for the grace etc etc.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JPVTXwdHvXc

The presenters did very well under obviously difficult circumstances.

Yes - having a news base in Teddington would have been a bit of a non-starter, and building a large studio centre in the centre of town equally not a great idea (though LWT did it!)

I think Euston did a bit more than just News - but it was all 'small studio' stuff - and they had issues with pillars (which were structural and kept the building up) that caused problems in the studios (you never really want pillars in the middle of the studio floor...)

Kenny Everett's Thames stuff came from Euston, I think?

...or in the middle of st8 at tls, but there you go if needs must!

No, that's often quoted because in publicity shots he's shown leaning on Link 110 cameras, in the Euston studios.
However, most likely he'd nipped in there from Capital Radio next door for those shots. His shows were produced at Teddington (where they used EMI 2001 cameras)

It'd be interesting to see what would have happened had Crossroads worked. It's not helped the industry period to have such a huge hole in the Midlands.

Remember there were a few other shows being axed at the time like Peak Partise, never know why it was not moved to Sunday evening and become one of those type shows instead.

Went to Fountain or Associated Rediffusion as it was in those days in 1966 as an audience member of 5 O'clock Club.

They did one show live, had a short break and then recorded the week's second episode.

And of course for its first decade or so, Broadcasting House didn't come from Broadcasting House.