Sigh. For some people of a certain age, Generation TV Cream if you will, BBC Television Centre was nothing short of a pop culture Mouseion of Alexandria, a place were creative people gathered to amuse and enlighten us in our formative years. It's difficult to really describe what it was like watching a single channel of television from breakfast time to bedtime knowing the majority of the programme were either made or broadcast from the same building and fantasizing what it must be like to wander the circular corridors and potentially drop into any of these shows in production, to do a Lenny Henry.
But I was in Liverpool, TVC was in London and it wasn't until year after it had closed and in the process of being turned into flats and freelance studios they are now that I was able to at least stand on the pavement outside. Even then it still felt like the end of a pilgrimage begun years before somewhere between Swap Shop and Blue Peter. What must it be like to live there now, with the ghosts of literal Christmas Record Breakers past indexed in the walls like The Stone Tape? Or going to see an ITV show recorded in the place which used to be the home of their rival?
BBC Television Centre Opens
"British Broadcasting Corporation's GBP12-million Television Centre at White City, London, will come into use in a few weeks - 4 years after building began, and a new, expansive age for British television - competing in foreign markets with American programmes - is hopefully predicted."
[Pathe]
"An industrial building - a factory - the largest, best equipped, and most carefully planned factory of its kind in the world." This was how the B.B.C.'s great television centre at the White City was described by Mr Gerald Beadle, director of B.B.C. television, in a speech yesterday when the press was taken on a tour of the centre, which will go into operation when Studio 3 gives its first production on June 29."
[The Guardian]
Massive archive of photos, plans and history. A staggering amount of material.
[TV Studio History]
"Television is an industry: and Television Centre is an example of industrial planning."
[Ariel via Transdiffusion]
"A short film showing the building of BBC Television Centre in the 1950s."
[Cheeseford]
"RTS London has commissioned a special programme looking at the origins and design of the building, and what it meant to BBC staff and viewers in the 1960s and beyond. The programme features archive footage, and contributions from Robert Seatter, the Head of BBC History; Phillip Schofield, TV Presenter past and present at TVC; and Roger Bunce*, TVC Studio Cameraman in the 1960s."
[Royal Television Society]
Archive
"What does it mean to be a young artist trying to break into the Art World, to live by painting?
Introduced and edited by Huw Wheldon."
[Anthony Whishaw RA]
"Playwright Dennis Potter returns to his home village near the Forest of Dean after three years as a student at Oxford. Here he describes the changes he finds in the village and his relationships with family and friends."
[BBC Rewind]
"The men in the BBC documentary Borrowed Pasture, Eugeniusz Okołowicz, photographer, and Włodzimierz Bułaj, electrician, were in the Polish Army during September 1939 campaign of WWII, then crossed into Lithuania where they were interned, to avoid capture by either Germans or Russians. Soviets occupied Lithuania in Spring 1940 and transferred the interned Poles to Russian camps. My wife’s grandfather Aleksander Głuchowski was also among them."
[Lech S. Borkowski, Małgorzata Głuchowska: Critical Narrative Analysis]
People
"In July 2011 Leah Panos and myself had the good fortune to interview veteran television director Darrol Blake in his Barnes Bridge home. In a career that spans fifty years, Darrol started as a Design Assistant at the BBC in the 1950s, going on to become a Production Designer and then direct for the BBC, before becoming a freelance director for both the BBC and a range of ITV companies from the 1970s onwards."
[Spaces of Television]
Places
"Written and Produced by Richard Cawston. This film, which won a British Film Academy Award, is being repeated as a result of numerous requests. It tells the story of an imaginary day in the life of the BBC. The film takes viewers behind the scenes of both sound radio and television to show the BBC's huge organisation at work-engineers, planners, producers, artists, musicians, personalities - a cast of 1,200 in all."
[bifilm][BBC Programme Index]
Programmes
"6 February 1960: Those expecting a series of rehearsed interviews with BBC worthies and a lushly reverent narrative will be disappointed."
[The Guardian]
"Peter Dimmick explains the BBC's preparations for filming Princess Margaret's wedding, including camera positions in Westminster Abbey and along the parade route."
[BBC Clips]
"Tony Hart gives young viewers a sneak preview of some of the BBC television shows that will be airing over the Christmas period. Originally broadcast 20 December, 1960."
[BBC Archive]
"This film - date unknown but presumed to be late 1960s as the example programmes are still in black and white although the film itself is in colour - was produced to train staff on the physical splicing and cutting of 2" Quadruplex videotape."
[Nigel B]
"BBC Wales prepares for its sound and TV coverage of the National Eisteddfod Genedlaethol in Cardiff."
[BBC Rewind]
Politics
"Developments in broadcasting have followed each other rapidly ever since the beginnings some forty years ago."
[World Radio History]
"The future of broadcasting presents a challenging prospect at the present time."
[hathitrust]
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