Well, the new series of W1A is being filmed at the moment, and the office and meeting room parts of White City stunt doubled for NBH last time around - so wonder if its being pressed back into use at the mo?
25 year FRI lease from 1st April 2015, which has already been granted, benefiting from uncapped upwards only annual RPI increases Low passing rent of £2,650,000 per annum, reflecting £28.19 per sq ft overall Prime Rents in Hammersmith are already circa £50 per sq ft,
offering excellent potential for reversion on lease expiry
(shakes head)
So, Mr Schofield, obviously you have an agenda because you spent so many happy years working there, before your agent got you a better paid deal over at ITV, and you were soon off, but...
Imagine for a moment and say you were leading a world class publicly funded broadcaster, who was being starved of income, by the major party in the coalition government who want to see the organization killed off by stealth.
You have a television broadcasting base, and due to political pressure made several years ago, you are being forced to make more programmes outside London.
This television facility, (ignoring the last three months before closure when everyone wanted to make programmes in it's studios before it closed) for the past few years was underused for its size, with in one week, a live and pre-recorded weekend dancing show, a weeknight fanzine of the dancing show, television and BBC Radio 4 news output, and 8 out of 10 cats for Channel 4.
A property developer comes to you and says "Hi Phil, heres £350 million - can you sell us Television Centre so we can develop it, keep some of the studios, upgrade the offices, so like when it first opened, Television Centre will again be come relivent again to today's television production needs - oh, and we'll build some flats where the scenery construction workshops used to be?"
After consulting with building experts and recovering the colour in your cheeks when you hear the cost of renovating the building back to it's former glory - with no real chance of at least 1 or all 8 studios producing programmes 7 days a week at a time - just like the 1970's and 1980's..
..if you were really honest with yourself, you'd take the money.
I have no anti-tvc agenda here. I can still remember the sleepless night before I went into the building for the first time, so excited to go to a place I'd only seen on the television screen. Even now in London, on my day trips to the capital, if I can find the time I will hop on the tube to stand on the raised pavement on the other side of Wood Lane next to the new Underground station - just to look at the concrete doughnut and TC1 outer wall.
I attended a gameshow 2 weeks before it closed down, so I could say I'd been in it before it closed - at that time walking from the audience reception to TC8, it resembled a place that had been evacuated when the Nuclear bomb sirens went off - and yes it's sad - but you can't keep an 8 studio centre open because of what was made there in history, and try and ignore the fact that in comparison to those days, not that much was being made in the couple of years before it closed down.
The harsh reality of that was brought home when I did a BBC TV Centre Tour in the August of 2011, and not one of the main studios were being used to record a programme on that day - couple of sets were being struck, but that was it. When seeing Huw Edwards walking into the newsroom from buying a coffee and a sandwich was the highlight - something was wrong.
Law and Legislation, New broadcasting technology, and the TV industry itself closed TVC down. Not Mark Thompson.
Whilst there is little point in repeating the arguments here, Martin Kempton's website has roger Bunce's well thought through arguments as well as dispelling the smoke and mirror misnomers about the costs of selling up as to staying put.
Only £200 million was raised from the sale not £350 million. All of that money was swallowed up by moving everything re-equipping and having to rent other facilities. If the BBC didn't need TVC's studios why is Elstree full to bursting with bookings? Elstrees studios are far inferior to the ones at TVC.
Mark Thompson sold the BBC and us the owners down the river to the Tories and then cleared off to America. Selling off a nationally owned asset for peanuts to developers is something to be expected of the Tories. The DG is supposed to be the buffer between the Government and the defender of the BBC - Its in his contract.
BBC 'sold Television Centre to group that was clearly a tax avoidance scheme'
Margaret Hodge, chair of parliament’s public spending watchdog, criticises corporation for sale to consortium whose structure was designed to avoid tax
BBC Television Centre was sold in 2012 to a consortium of investors and developers.
The BBC has been criticised by the chair of the parliamentary public spending watchdog for the “shocking” sale of Television Centre in west London to a consortium that she claimed was “clearly a tax avoidance scheme”.
Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP and chair of the Commons public accounts committee (PAC), criticised the BBC for “selling knowingly to a consortium that deliberately sets up a very, very complex structure … the purpose of which is to avoid tax”.
In a PAC hearing on Wednesday about the BBC’s property estate and the issues raised in the recent National Audit Office report into how the corporation has managed it, Hodge asked director general, Tony Hall, trustee Nicholas Prettejohn and managing director of finance and operations, Anne Bulford, “what on earth” the BBC had done signing up to a property deal with something that she claimed was “clearly a tax avoidance scheme”.
Whilst there is little point in repeating the arguments here, Martin Kempton's website has roger Bunce's well thought through arguments as well as dispelling the smoke and mirror misnomers about the costs of selling up as to staying put.
Only £200 million was raised from the sale not £350 million. All of that money was swallowed up by moving everything re-equipping and having to rent other facilities. If the BBC didn't need TVC's studios why is Elstree full to bursting with bookings? Elstrees studios are far inferior to the ones at TVC.
Mark Thompson sold the BBC and us the owners down the river to the Tories and then cleared off to America. Selling off a nationally owned asset for peanuts to developers is something to be expected of the Tories. The DG is supposed to be the buffer between the Government and the defender of the BBC - Its in his contract.
(shakes head)
So, Mr Schofield, obviously you have an agenda because you spent so many happy years working there, before your agent got you a better paid deal over at ITV, and you were soon off, but...
Imagine for a moment and say you were leading a world class publicly funded broadcaster, who was being starved of income, by the major party in the coalition government who want to see the organization killed off by stealth.
You have a television broadcasting base, and due to political pressure made several years ago, you are being forced to make more programmes outside London.
This television facility, (ignoring the last three months before closure when everyone wanted to make programmes in it's studios before it closed) for the past few years was underused for its size, with in one week, a live and pre-recorded weekend dancing show, a weeknight fanzine of the dancing show, television and BBC Radio 4 news output, and 8 out of 10 cats for Channel 4.
A property developer comes to you and says "Hi Phil, heres £350 million - can you sell us Television Centre so we can develop it, keep some of the studios, upgrade the offices, so like when it first opened, Television Centre will again be come relivent again to today's television production needs - oh, and we'll build some flats where the scenery construction workshops used to be?"
After consulting with building experts and recovering the colour in your cheeks when you hear the cost of renovating the building back to it's former glory - with no real chance of at least 1 or all 8 studios producing programmes 7 days a week at a time - just like the 1970's and 1980's..
..if you were really honest with yourself, you'd take the money.
I have no anti-tvc agenda here. I can still remember the sleepless night before I went into the building for the first time, so excited to go to a place I'd only seen on the television screen. Even now in London, on my day trips to the capital, if I can find the time I will hop on the tube to stand on the raised pavement on the other side of Wood Lane next to the new Underground station - just to look at the concrete doughnut and TC1 outer wall.
I attended a gameshow 2 weeks before it closed down, so I could say I'd been in it before it closed - at that time walking from the audience reception to TC8, it resembled a place that had been evacuated when the Nuclear bomb sirens went off - and yes it's sad - but you can't keep an 8 studio centre open because of what was made there in history, and try and ignore the fact that in comparison to those days, not that much was being made in the couple of years before it closed down.
The harsh reality of that was brought home when I did a BBC TV Centre Tour in the August of 2011, and not one of the main studios were being used to record a programme on that day - couple of sets were being struck, but that was it. When seeing Huw Edwards walking into the newsroom from buying a coffee and a sandwich was the highlight - something was wrong.
Law and Legislation, New broadcasting technology, and the TV industry itself closed TVC down. Not Mark Thompson.
Good post. Sadly you might as well be pissing in the wind when it comes to Troggles.
I am sure the BBC didn't need all of TVC. But I am also sure the BBC (and the industry as a whole) will find it needs more than one medium sized production studio when it moves back in. Everyone in the industry has bemoaned the destruction of TC4, 6 and 8. These were the busiest studios of all, they're perfectly sized for the kind of shows that need to be in studios. They were all busy right up to the end, yet the BBC has elected to keep studios 1 and 2 (along with 3 which most people think will be booked solid). 1 is too big, 2 is too small for most tv studio productions in today's market.
And I don't think it's fair to say that Elstree's studios are vastly inferior to TC. The converted stages at the film studios contain a lot of kit from TC in the first place and Studio D at Elstree has actually improved Children in Need IMO. It's been long overlooked as a decent audience LE studio in the South East for many years and it's great to see it being used again. Built by ATV in the 60s, it's a centre with almost as much heritage as TC!