Posted:  Monday 11 May 2009

South East Associates
tour the BBC TV Centre
- Twice - in both February & March -

As there was such an interest in this event, two separate tours were arranged in February and March to take a guided tour around the BBC TV Centre at White City.

If you listen to Terry Wogan's Radio 2 programme he often refers to this building as "the concrete doughnut" referring to the space in the middle where employees can spend time in the open air.  The building is shaped like a huge question mark as the architect had to design a building to fit into a confined space of 13 acres, reputedly it was drawn on a beer mat in a pub.

8,000 people work here, 2,000 in the News.

This is the area we first visited and which is the biggest news broadcaster in the world, one-third larger than CNN.

The World Service alone reaches 274 million listeners.

The BBC website, with its 9 million pages, has 35 million hits monthly.

We sat in a glass fronted conference room to watch the News people at work - this is a secure area since, if you remember, some years ago Sue Lawley was reading the TV news, when protestors broke in and one chained himself to her desk.
This incident is still available on YouTube.

The BBC studios are hired out to the commercial channels and from a gallery we viewed the Alan Titchmarsh show rehearsal.  This particular floor space costs up to £60,000 per day.  The studio ceiling was covered with lights, each generating 3,000 watts, making the studio extremely hot.  With the cameras and lenses costing £40,000 and £7,000 respectively, to keep them cool, and stop them burning out, the air conditioning is kept on full time, and in the height of summer the workers wear their jackets.

Weather forecasts are read in an empty room with a static camera.  Each presenter types their ID into a computer and the camera adjusts to their height and complexion.  The backdrop is a blue screen therefore the presenters cannot wear blue/green clothing or the screen image breaks up.  Weather map and forecast symbols have already been fed into the computer, and the forecaster talks into the camera and his image is superimposed.  One of our number, Margaret Burnip, gave an impressive demonstration of a weather forecast.

Margaret's moment of fame.  Pity about the weather, though.

Kevin Williams volunteered to be a news broadcaster, reading from the autocue, and acquitted himself admirably.

In case of technical breakdown when on air broadcasters also have an autocue screen set into their desk, and also paper backup.

To close our visit we had a quiz "Remember this Tune" recalling tunes associated with TV programmes, and our winner was Peter Nel, who took home a BBC mug.

Freda Drost

(ph  10/05/2009)

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