Television Centre Tour

According to the new ours site www.bbc.co.uk/tours/ the tour of television centre now includes a visit to stage six. FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN


Must go there one day.

since the BBC are now doing tours to Stage 6, I would like to know which shows arew recorded there, and also what is the difference between a stage, and a studio

Paul

Are the BBC are the only broadcasting company that allow tours? I've never known ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 or Sky to organise tours round their studios!

Fanatical about tours say the BBC?! They must be, what with their BBC Experience and Shops in London.

stage six is the entire news complex build onto the side of TV Centre. I suppose there are six segments to the building

[quote] Ryan on 10:47 pm on Jan. 1, 2002
Are the BBC are the only broadcasting company that allow tours? I've never known ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 or Sky to organise tours round their studios!

No they don't Granada had a theme park next to it but it closed in 2000 and you could tour down Coronation Street , which I think you can still do.

If you got New York (Like I did) you can tour the NBC studios it's very intresting. You see (Well I saw)

The Dateline NBC studio
The NBA on NBC studio
You can overlook the Saturday Night Live studio.
You see a 10 minute DVD in the history of NBC.
An IMAX like screen with clips of NBC shows and Ruldolph Gilliani smashing the screen with a baseball bat (On Saturday Night Live).

Pretty good for $ 15.00 for a child and 10% id anything in the NBC Shop.

It was really cool.

Can you get tours to the BBC regional centres?
I wonder if you can appear in the area behind the desk in the N24 studio?

Stage 6 is simply the sixth part of TVC to be built. Stage V was built in the 1980's. Stage I was completed in 1960. Don't know about stages 2,3, and 4 though!

the BBC don't officially do tours around their regional centres, but if you know someone who works there, they might be able to give you a wee look around.  I recently visited Broadcasting House in Glasgow, and saw the TV continuity suites, a couple of Radio Scotland's studios, and the newsroom, which has two wee studios in it - one for Reporting Scotland, and one for News 24 links.  They're at opposite ends of the room, but face each other, so they can't really use both at once because of the lights.  Sensible bit of studio planning there!
(I think BBC Leeds or Hull might have a proper visitor centre, but I could be wrong)

Last summer, when I was in New York, we went to NBC's studios in the Rockefeller Centre.  The tickets are non-refundable, so if you're lucky, you can get the no-shows' tickets for free.  They do take you round real, live studios - we saw Saturday Night Live, and Nightly News.  The Rosie O'Donnell studio was closed, because George W Bush was coming in for an interview - so they took us to the Today studio instead.  I think the tour took around an hour, and it's probably worth the dosh too.

If you look at very early pictures of Television Centre from the front, the part that comes off the right of the centre circular bit (where Stages V and VI were later built on the end) is missing, and it does look rather odd! Stage II perhaps?

I went to Granada Studios in 1997! The part of the Coronation Street st which is now victoria street was a building site, and the 'Sooty and Co' Shop was just up the road from there! LOL!

I went to Granada in 1999 (I think!) it was really good.

Television Centre was built in Stages - and is shaped like a question mark! :

The central doughnut, the circular bit, and the East Tower (which is also on the same site) were parts of the first three stages.

Stage IV, V and VI are the three chunks of the vertical bit of the question mark.

Stage IV was the first stump to be built, and was known as Spur. It was opened in the late 60s, to house TV News after they moved from Alexandra Palace. There were three news studios on the 6th floor, and editing suites (film then video) in the rest of the Spur area, as well as telecine, then VT transmission, Spur CAR (aka SCAR) which dealt with News outside sources etc.

Stage V was built in the mid 80s to house post production for main BBC programmes - until then VT had been based under the 'fountain' in the basement of the doughnut.

Stage VI aka 'The News Centre' was built in the mid 90s to house TV and Radio News. It houses a studio for National news, and has a newsroom based set for BBC News 24 (not quite studios - but almost...) as well as studios for Radio news, TV editing, News graphics a new SCAR called SCAR VI etc.

Some of the top floor of Stage VI is used to house some main (non-news post production kit), and BBC World are not based in Stage VI, though they are as close as they can be to it, whilst not being in it!