In 1949, the architect of BBC Television Centre, Graham
Dawbarn, answered the question of how to arrange the world’s first
purpose-built centre for television production after drawing a question mark on
a used envelope: build the studios in a circle, leading to a central hub of
tape machines. An outside track would feed the sets built in the scenery block,
and rehearsal rooms and canteens were placed at the other end, with offices and
editing suites scattered throughout. It was literally a factory: wood, paint,
fabric and tape went in one side, and a finished programme was sent out.
When I have visited Shepherd’s Bush, I am aware how much of
the area was once employed by the BBC: the Shepherd’s Bush Empire was known as
the BBC Television Theatre from 1953 to 1991, hosting everything from “Bruce
Forsyth’s Generation Game” to Terry Wogan’s thrice-weekly chat show; the former
Gaumont-British studios in Lime Grove, used by Alfred Hitchcock to make the
original “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” “The 39 Steps” and “The Lady Vanishes,”
were bought in 1949 and operated as TV studios from 1950-91; in nearby
Hammersmith, the Riverside Studios were operated by the BBC from 1954-74,
making “Hancock’s Half Hour” and “Doctor Who,” well before their starring role
in Chris Evans’ Channel 4 show “TFI Friday”; and Ealing Studios were owned and
run from 1955-95 as a base for productions shot on film, including the bits
during sitcoms when action took place outside. Even the original TV studios at
Alexandra Palace in Haringey, where BBC Television began in 1936, remained in
use as a base for news bulletins.
The BBC needed so many studios, even as they built their own,
because the industry they were building for was unrecognisable by the time Television
Centre fully opened in June 1960. With no opportunity to extend Broadcasting
House in the centre of London, in 1949 the BBC bought thirteen acres of land at
one of the few available sites left in London that were suitable: the site of
the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition. Building began in 1951, with the Scenery
Block finished in 1953, and the canteen and rehearsal building in 1955, but
construction of the central ring of studios and offices did not begin until 1956,
owing to the Government not yet being able to afford, even a decade after the
war ended, to lend the investment necessary to continue building. The Scenery
Block, however, was already supplying sets and costumes to the other studios
nearby. By 1960, only one studio was ready to make programmes, with the others
being completed slowly – studio 1, the biggest of all, was not finished until
1964.
 |
| Television Centre today |
Officially, the brick-and-glass centre is built in the
Minimalist style, reduced to clean lines and only necessary elements. The front
of studio 1, the circular front windows and courtyard, alongside mosaics, the
Helios statue, and front lift shaft and clock, have listed status from English
Heritage, preserving both the architectural style and cultural history, despite
The Goodies having blown it up on screen, and Kenny Everett defacing the sign
with spray paint. A man named Arthur Hayes is responsible for the twenty-six
lights on the front of studio 1, known as the “atomic dots,” and was
responsible for choosing the uber-Sixties-defining Stymie font originally used
to spell out “BBC TELEVISION CENTRE,” later used on every other sign in the
building.
In 1950, BBC Television was broadcast for an average of only
four hours a day to London and the West Midlands, the latter area only starting
from 1949. By 1960, it was up to seven hours daily, with national coverage and,
in most areas, competition, with the ITV network starting to open from 1955.
The Conservative government elected to office in 1951, returning Winston
Churchill as Prime Minister, had written commercial television into its
manifesto to deliberately provide competition to the BBC, no matter how
perturbed people might be at the prospect of American-style advertising.
Whatever plans the BBC made at the start of the decade no longer applied,
especially when ITV took as much as seventy percent of their audience when it
began, but it was exactly the technical advances and forward planning
exemplified by Television Centre was what led to the 1962 Pilkington Report on
Broadcasting recommending a “BBC Two” in 1962, needing yet more studio space.
More programmes, more technically adventurous and superior
programmes, and more type of programme were all required, the BBC holding on to
all their studios long after Television Centre was finished. The Television
Theatre only became the Shepherd’s Bush Empire once again when Terry Wogan’s
chat show moved to Television Centre, but Lime Grove eventually closed when
current affairs and news became one department, sharing their studios. When I
visited in 2009, the BBC News Channel came from what was essentially converted
office space, improved technology negating the need for programmes to be made
in a specialist soundproofed room. It was already known that BBC Breakfast,
sport and children’s programmes, and Radio 5 Live would be moved to Salford in
coming years, but the BBC already had regional studios dotted around the
country, most famously at Pebble Mill in Birmingham, and at Oxford Road in
Manchester, themselves already replaced by newer studios. The BBC’s requirement
to take programmes from independent companies meant those could also be made
wherever they liked, which also put paid to the BBC’s need to maintain
departments specialising in wardrobe, hair and design.
 |
| 1960 |
I did not know Television Centre would be closed four years
after my visit, although it now appears that, apart from the studios, much of
it was not being used. The three studios that reopened in 2017 are still
operated by the BBC, but are ironically sub-let to ITV, after they decided they
no longer needed to own their own studios – the former London Weekend
Television studios on the South Bank are to be completely demolished.
The BBC’s television news, moved from Alexandra Palace to
Television Centre in 1969 when the BBC gave their original studios to the Open
University, now comes from Broadcasting House, having been extended in the way
not possible following World War II. However, due to terrorist attacks in
central London, you can no longer take tours of Broadcasting House, which is a
shame – much like the use of Television Centre in programmes, the continuous
glimpses of Broadcasting House confirms that TV is an industry where function
meets style starting from its production base... although if your base houses
the largest newsroom in the world, you would put that on screen as often as you
can.
I think what I have tried to do here is temper the nostalgia
of my visit to Television Centre, as a lot of what made me excited about it is
not there. The bold architecture and period details remain, but it was what
went on inside that got me. I wasn’t the only one – when it closed, one person
said, “I know it’s only a building. I know it’s an inanimate object and it
doesn’t have a heart. But it has a spirit. There are spirits here, of immensely
talented people who made some of the best television programmes ever seen and I
think it’s a shame. It’s a shame to close it down.” Sir Terry Wogan was right
then, and for all the discussions over bricks and mortar, British culture
shaped, and was shaped by, Television Centre.
No comments:
Post a comment