Is moving shows out of London good for the licence payer?

I think it's quite interesting that many of the shows specifically mentioned are independent productions already and don't use BBC facilities anyway. Question Time for example is a Mentorn Oxford prodiction and is always based in a town hall, theatre etc somewhere in the UK. There will probably be a decent rise in studio bookings for PQ, but I'm not sure what it will mean for Cardiff - Casualty is made in an entirely separate location to Whiteladies Road as it is, and is often considered, even by people who work at BBC Bristol, to be something of it's own little club.

Crimewatch is an interesting one. Whether the actual studio production moves to Cardiff from Television Centre will be quite an interesting one to watch. I suppose it's as hard for a far-flung regional police force to get to Llandaff as it is to White City to apear on the telly.

As I see it, the big loser in all this appears to be Bristol. Talk in the press release is of it only remaining to be a centre of excellence for Natural History programmes. This is a department that has already been hit hard by recent job cuts. Bristol hasn't had a TV network production studio since the early 1990s but currently also produces several daytime programmes and of course the majority of antiques offerings. What will become of them?

As for Birmingham, I suspect as a result of this, more and more people will bemoan the lack of studio facilities in the midlands when they get there and find there's not much left.

Yep - quite. They are talking of moving the production bases - not production locations. Weakest Link moving to Glasgow will, I presume, mean it no longer uses Pinewood (or is it Shepperton) and instead uses PQ?


Yep - as you say, Question Time is an independent, OB-based show, and currently is commissioned out of BBC Westminster (but is never broadcast from there) already produced outside the M25 (technically) as it is a Mentorn Oxford production.


Yep - though Cardiff now have a self-contained studio operation for drama at Upper Boat AIUI - having originally used some of the HTV Cardiff facilities for Doctor Who? AIUI Torchwood, Doctor Who and Sarah Jane Adventures all have standing sets at Upper Boat. Not sure if they built with more space than they need - and could accommodate Casualty there.

The Casualty move is less certain than the others - as it depends on value for money evaluation apparently...



Yep - and assuming Cardiff have the studio capacity - I wouldn't be surprised if that moved.



I think Bristol remains a general factual centre as well - but with a specialisation in Natural History, not JUST natural history. That said - Antiques and daytime could be a fit for Birmingham (though they're like sardines at the Mailbox already)



Hmm - well Manchester/Salford is the only English regional operation that will have nearby network-quality production studios I guess (though the Beeb won't own them)

There must be an element of pragmatism here. They're moving studio shows like Weakest Link and Crimewatch to nation centres which have large studios AND are BBC Nations-owned (not BBC Resources) It also means that there will be almost no non-Entertainment or non-Music shows made at TV Centre... Which they still want to sell.

Wonder how Elstree fits in with all this - they were talking of selling the site at one point (relocating EastEnders to Pinewood or Shepperton so that they could rebuild the Square in an HD-friendly manner) but the property market and drop in real-terms in licence-fee income means this is looking a bit less likely.

There ARE quite large studios at Elstree that could be equipped for good quality entertainment production - built in the ATV days. Elstree has been slightly "let go" but could have quite a future. (Some have suggested that one of the studios there could absorb some of the TC1/London Studios 1 work if properly re-equipped?)

Pinewood.

Mmmm.... take your furniture with you! And if someone decides they want to use moving house as an opportunity to refurnish their house, that should be at their expense, not ours.