ITV theme park in London

What a sour Digital Spy style response this has received,I thought this forum was better than the, 'let's just slag off everything' response that you get on here, MDTAUK was a particularly poor post that could have been lifted straight from DS.



Obviously they did the Corrie tour, and following the success of that they decided to build the purpose built permanent Emmerdale attraction, which is also presumably doing well. An attraction in London is obviously the next step so I don't see why this received such a surprised implausible response?

I dunno about anyone else, but for me, the smell of BS in the original story is overpowering, the meter's reading 11 and it sounds more like pie in the sky than a workable business plan. I'm not slagging it off just because it's ITV, they've improved a lot since the worst days of ITV1, I'm slagging it off because it doesn't sound believeable from a broadcaster in this country.

I could be proved wrong and have them pull off the surprise of the century, but honestly, they closed the Granada Studios Tour, which would have been an ideal thing to keep running, much like the Universal Studios backlot became a theme park. Now they want to try something similar again? Something smells, and the whiff is very strong.

I'm looking forward to the Love Thy Neighbour 'experience'

Already open in America I believe.

The issue with comparing it to Granada Studios is that the current management at ITV had no say in that venture, and from what I've read the Granada studios tour closed due to lower visitor numbers following a lack of investment in the tour. I'd personally think that they would try other smaller ventures before risking the set up of a larger scale attraction.

I'll admit I looked at this and laughed but.... I can see what ITV are thinking here and I kind of praise them for it. It's about thinking outside the box (excuse the pun) and bringing television more into the social mainstream and that can only be a good thing. I'd much rather this idea than spending money on yet another cookery show or rubbish gameshow with the likes of Stephen Mulhern. Bringing shows to the people and being more interactive was just an additional novelty back when Blobbyland opened, nowadays, in this multi-channel, social media era, whatever way you look at it... it's a necessity!

Set tours, and studio/production tours have value in terms of showing you something in person, you normally only see on the screen. Years of history (well there would have been with the old Granada tours and old Corrie Set Tour, which I went to myself when I was young) from soap sets/locations etc.

The production tours are interesting to those who care about how programmes are made, but this attraction doesn't seem to be focused on that.

The problem is that television production has moved away from dedicated standing sets and facilities, and so there is less to show off. The old Television Centre tours were fascinating because of the historic perspective. Also things like the dedicated WHSmith they had, the small little Barbershop and post office facilities.

ITV's South Bank studios don't have as much history - and will soon be knocked down and replaced. So looking at ITV's output, I can't see what value it can have to be worth visiting, unless you like the idea of seeing a dressing room or two, where Ant and or Dec once sat in.