So the BBC are flogging Television Centre in Shepherd’s Bush and the great and the good of the media world are sobbing hot tears and spinning fond tales of this wonderful, vintage institution.
Bless.
However, truth be told, TV Centre is a rather ugly old pile with insufficient parking and the feel of a late 1960s hospital with budget problems. Most of the people who worked there had little good to say about the place and the nation’s favourite uncle, Terry Wogan, often called it ‘the deserted doughnut’. Now history is frantically being rewritten and the structure is presented as an emblem of an imaginary, golden era of broadcasting, long since abandoned to the garish vulgarity of reality shows and Sky 3.
So what’s really going on here? Well, principally something called Media City UK. Media City is a rather spectacular, purpose built complex, overlooking an attractive expanse of water and conveniently situated near some very amenable restaurants and shops. It has its own public transport station and regular services to and from the buildings. This is to be the new home of various BBC projects, some displaced by the sale of TV Centre. It’s an impressive development and most non-media folk would be delighted to work in such a modern, well-equipped facility.
But it’s in Manchester (or Salford Quays to be precise).
And that will never do.
Yes, incredibly in 2011, the ridiculous and wholly unnecessary snobbery of the north/south divide is
alive and thriving at the BBC.
When the idea to move a substantial mass of the Beeb to the former dockland area on the far side of Salford,
it was met with doubt, derision and denial. Many in the capital’s media cliques thought it would never really happen and scoffed at the notion that successful programming could be created anywhere that far north of Oxford. But the time for skepticism has passed. The project is happening and shows (mostly radio) are already being made at Media City. Before long BBC Breakfast, almost all of 5Live and all children’s shows will be created there.
Presenters, staff and unions have been up in arms. How can their employer seriously expect them to leave London and relocate? It is so unfair – they claim. To an extent I do have some sympathy with anyone who has been disrupted by changes within the organisation for which they work. It can be a huge upheaval and genuinely unwelcome. But guess what? Companies have taken decisions like these many times before. Either for strategic, financial or market reasons, they have relocated (sometimes to other countries) and insisted their employees move with them or move on. However unpleasant these instances have been, they have always gone largely unreported outside the business pages, because they are really little more than the cut and thrust of the fragile, commercial world of employment.
However, when a similar arrangement involves lifting myriad journalists, writers, presenters and producers out of the metropolis, it is deemed such a blow to their self-image and self-respect, it is tantamount to a national crisis. Even though covering the events and activities of a nation from one city in the south east clearly defies good sense and logic.
Of course, the media has always been particularly guilty of such regionalism. I don’t perceive engineering companies indulging in a pecking order based on their proximity to Trafalgar Square, nor construction firms or opticians. But the advertising, broadcasting, design and creative industries have persistently had a foolish hang up about their post codes. Despite some of the finest creative work being produced in the regions. - Aardman Animations (Wallace & Grommit) are in Bristol, director Shane Meadows is Nottingham based, award winning brand agency The Attik are in Huddersfield – there is still an enormous bias towards London. Indeed, in my time in the advertising business I have seen accounts and clients gravitate to the capital for no other reason than it is … well … the capital.
This attitude is not only tiresome, counter productive and a little silly – in a digital age, it is completely archaic.
Moving a swathe of the BBC to Salford Quays may inconvenience a few people, upset one or two egos and drive the more stubborn souls out of the corporation. But if it lifts the creative industries out of a single-city mentality and into a more inclusive frame of mind, I am all for it.
Bless.
However, truth be told, TV Centre is a rather ugly old pile with insufficient parking and the feel of a late 1960s hospital with budget problems. Most of the people who worked there had little good to say about the place and the nation’s favourite uncle, Terry Wogan, often called it ‘the deserted doughnut’. Now history is frantically being rewritten and the structure is presented as an emblem of an imaginary, golden era of broadcasting, long since abandoned to the garish vulgarity of reality shows and Sky 3.
So what’s really going on here? Well, principally something called Media City UK. Media City is a rather spectacular, purpose built complex, overlooking an attractive expanse of water and conveniently situated near some very amenable restaurants and shops. It has its own public transport station and regular services to and from the buildings. This is to be the new home of various BBC projects, some displaced by the sale of TV Centre. It’s an impressive development and most non-media folk would be delighted to work in such a modern, well-equipped facility.
But it’s in Manchester (or Salford Quays to be precise).
And that will never do.
Yes, incredibly in 2011, the ridiculous and wholly unnecessary snobbery of the north/south divide is
alive and thriving at the BBC.
When the idea to move a substantial mass of the Beeb to the former dockland area on the far side of Salford,
it was met with doubt, derision and denial. Many in the capital’s media cliques thought it would never really happen and scoffed at the notion that successful programming could be created anywhere that far north of Oxford. But the time for skepticism has passed. The project is happening and shows (mostly radio) are already being made at Media City. Before long BBC Breakfast, almost all of 5Live and all children’s shows will be created there.
Presenters, staff and unions have been up in arms. How can their employer seriously expect them to leave London and relocate? It is so unfair – they claim. To an extent I do have some sympathy with anyone who has been disrupted by changes within the organisation for which they work. It can be a huge upheaval and genuinely unwelcome. But guess what? Companies have taken decisions like these many times before. Either for strategic, financial or market reasons, they have relocated (sometimes to other countries) and insisted their employees move with them or move on. However unpleasant these instances have been, they have always gone largely unreported outside the business pages, because they are really little more than the cut and thrust of the fragile, commercial world of employment.
However, when a similar arrangement involves lifting myriad journalists, writers, presenters and producers out of the metropolis, it is deemed such a blow to their self-image and self-respect, it is tantamount to a national crisis. Even though covering the events and activities of a nation from one city in the south east clearly defies good sense and logic.
Of course, the media has always been particularly guilty of such regionalism. I don’t perceive engineering companies indulging in a pecking order based on their proximity to Trafalgar Square, nor construction firms or opticians. But the advertising, broadcasting, design and creative industries have persistently had a foolish hang up about their post codes. Despite some of the finest creative work being produced in the regions. - Aardman Animations (Wallace & Grommit) are in Bristol, director Shane Meadows is Nottingham based, award winning brand agency The Attik are in Huddersfield – there is still an enormous bias towards London. Indeed, in my time in the advertising business I have seen accounts and clients gravitate to the capital for no other reason than it is … well … the capital.
This attitude is not only tiresome, counter productive and a little silly – in a digital age, it is completely archaic.
Moving a swathe of the BBC to Salford Quays may inconvenience a few people, upset one or two egos and drive the more stubborn souls out of the corporation. But if it lifts the creative industries out of a single-city mentality and into a more inclusive frame of mind, I am all for it.
