Yorkshire vs Granada

It seems that Yorkshire Television has three centres in Leeds, one large production centre with 3 studios and two stand alone centres.
Calendar has its own production studio and offices away from the main centre and so does Emmerdale.
Can someone please tell me since all the mergers in ITV is Yorkshire Television now a bigger production base for ITV than Granada in Mancheser? I am sure i read somewhere that Granada wanted to close some of its opperations in Manchester.
Does anyone have any pictures of the Yorkshire Television Centre to upload?
Where are the bulk of ITVs programmes now made, London, Leeds or Manchester?

And finally one point to debate.................
If ITV went down the same road as the BBC (in my opinion its only a matter of time) and wanted to make their network programmes in London and from one production base in the north, would they close down the Yorkshire Television centre in Leeds or the Granada centre in Manchester. If one of them had to close which one would you choose and why?

Well they make Coronation Street in Granada Manchester and Emmerdale in Yorkshire in Leeds so I cant see them closing either studios down, if they were told they had to close one then im not sure which one it would be but they make more in Manchester I think?

Going by the end captions on programmes they make Corrie, Stars in their eyes, You've Been Framed, Tonight, 60 Minute Makeover as well as Granada's regional news and regional programmes in Manchester.

In Yorkshire they make Emmerdale, The Royal, Heartbeat, Countdown, A Touch of Frost?

Any other programmes ive missed?

They would be more likely to close the Manchester base - although this will never actually happen.

The area of Leeds that YTV is in, is industrial and surrounded by quite a few disused buildings. It would be very easy to relocate Weatherfield in one of the vacant areas near the present three buildings.

In addition to this.. some of the programmes you mentioned only have the production offices based in Manchester. Apart from Stars in their Eyes and Corrie - the rest are filmed elsewhere.
ITN in London produce Tonight with Trevor for Granada Manchester; YBF is Yorkshire; 60 Minute Makeover is on location so can be edited anywhere in the country...

Thast what I think! .....Oh and hi by the way!!

Also remember that Leeds has a big playout centre - all the ITV regions between Central and Border come from there - a big hurdle to closing down the centre.

As is the long term contract to produce Countdown

Countdown isn't unmoveable - they used Tyne Tees's studios for a short period whilst Kirkstall Road was too busy with things like the Wellbeing channel

Haven't Ofcom only just increased the amount of ITV production which now has to be outside of London to 50% ?

Closing down Yorkshire or Manchester isn't going to help that quota greatly, and I can't see it happening, never say never, but not in the near future.

The studios for Emmerdale would need to be in close proximity to the actual village. I assume that the Emmerdale village is closer to Leeds than Manchester ?

Yes the Emmerdale village is near Leeds I think. I cant see them closing down Manchester or Leeds studios unless either Corrie or Emmerdale were axed.

The Emmerdale sets now operate from two of the production studios at Kirkstall Road, the mega stage and one of the smaller ones.

Calendar and other regional programmes come from the Regional Production centre next door (it use to be an Ice Rink.)

The Mill at Farsley (West Leeds close to the border with Bradford) is where the Heartbeat and Royal sets ae located.

YTV also have a seperate post production facility in Leeds and several other buildings in the vicinity of Kirkstall Road. Granada did want to close most of TV Centre in Manchester and move into the old warehouse next door that use to provide a home for the Sherlock Holmes series and the TV Experience/tour.

Just to let you know, they are now being marketed as the Leeds Studios and The Manchester Studios (ala London Studios)

I am trying to find images of the YTV centre in Leeds can any one point me in the right direction? Thanks.

Yup, it was being planned too, I think it was for them to relocate the Granada News team, as the Granada Studios Tour are laying idle at the moment. Anyone who has been down Quay Street recently will notice that there has been a sudden expansion in the amount of new buildings, i.e a high valuable price if they chose to sell some of it off. The plan IIRC wasn't to close all of it, I think they were going to keep some of it open and demolish another bit.

But someone who co-ordinated the plan who was the MD of Granada Television quit last year, apparently Greg Dyke's departure at the BBC didn't help either as he was keen in the Manchester plans before Mark Thompson took over.

Though Granada isn't being used to full capicity, it is also being used for Editing facilties and it also makes programmes for other channels.

Though of course this was in the days when Tyne Tees still had network production facilities wasn't it? AIUI Tyne Tees are relocating, in the same way as Meridian, Grampian etc. have so that they are really only capable of local news production...

They haven't decided that though, The BBc have lots of network production bases - Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, Glasgow, Cardiff.

Although it does make a significantly higher proportion in London than ITV




Have they?
ITV does make a lot outside London as it is, although that depends what the definition is - where the production team is based or where the programme was recorded