Central West and BBC Midlands Thread

well, its only a matter of hours before the midlands politcs show goes to air. i know it will be NOWHERE near as good as the fab old days of midlands at west minster - peter hobday, david davies, richard uridge, stuart linell, mike collie, pat burns.

http://www.tvmercia.co.uk/pages/content/images/bbc2/matw90-21.jpg

even viewpoint midlands had its redeeming features. john hess forced to answer phones in nottingham to proove how much the east midlands audience was valued.

anyway, the politics show MIGHT be good - looking at the article in tonights birmingham evening mail - it could be promising. i hope the pebble mill set designers are allowed to express themselves.

http://www.tvmercia.co.uk/upload/thepoliticsshow01.gif

http://www.tvmercia.co.uk/upload/thepoliticsshow.gif

the pebble mill conervatory sounds fab!! shame patrick is demoted to reporter though. i cant wait to see how they use the conservatory, and how much they have dared to stray away from the orders sent up from london.

There was a preview of the Pebble Mill conservatory (as well as the main London studio) on the Midlands based trailer.

Here it is:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jamesison/dtt/caps5/cap411.jpg

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jamesison/dtt/caps5/cap412.jpg

Minimalistic comes to mind.

It was good. The Watchdog man was extremely annoying though. I think Regional Politics works better as a discussion than as series of Reports like it is now. The man at the China New Year (Older one, Patrick Burns?) should be the main anchor.

yeah - i think they ought to swap pat and adrian around. patrick is far better at that sort of thing, or even better would be if mike collie fronted it - he always excelled when he filled-in on viewpoint midlands/midlands at westminster - and hes not what you'd call 'stuffy'. even ed doolan from radio wm would suit such a programme - i cant see him taking any nonesense from politicans.

all in all a nice effort from pebble mill - it would have been all-to-easy to tinker with the main studio upstairs as in the past- but no, they went to the effort of rigging up the conservatory - 10/10 for effort!!

lets hope it gets a good airing on other shows - we have the local elections coming up, so it'd be nice to see it get used for that.

it was very nice of adrian to introduce the show with a big fanfare about it coming from pebble mill - with a look at the recenption etc.

in terms of format - it doesnt work for me. fair enough the beeb want "real issues" to dominate. but im afraid the agendas of the national and local programmes conflict in my eyes. i also felt all very rushed to me - i would certainly like them to seperate the national and local programmes from each other, giving each 30 mins and perhaps putting the local programmes on first.

it may the case that they would resent politics taking up too much time on a sunday - but then thats the price they pay for not retaining regional bbc two.

The only other factor that would make it much better is WIDESCREEN!!!!!!! I buy a digital box, thinking that programs are in widescreen, and not all are, and none of the Midlands programs are. Damn Them. With Adrian it did look like he was going to ask one of the guests why their Washing Machines were faulty.

It will be interesting to watch next week though - if not for the presentation, but for the politics.

News just in: David Gregory is joining BBC 3 as one of their on-screen "faces". Not a tremendous surprise, there's always been soemthing quite cute and endearing about him.

AND it looks like Central's Joel Hills has joined Sky News. Saw him for the second time today. I have to guess this piece of news is supposition, last time I saw him on Central though was just before Christmas. Can anyone confirm this is true. : : :

Joel Hills has been at Central News (East) for a while now. Read the threads properly and you'd know.

awww shame to let david go from midlands today - he was rather good at technofiles - and the new conservatory would have been perfect for recording one of those in! still, good luck to him - hes certainly got the right charecter about him to make it big!

perhaps joel is freelancing at sky - alot of the central crowd seem to pop up elsewhere at the weekend and then mysteriously re-appear back on central. jo malin doing over nights on sky news, robin powel on ITN and bob hall on ITN sport. i suppose only time will tell if hes moved on or not.


what an angry child you are - even i cant stomache your central news east thread in which you feel the need to reply to yourself. and hence, we did not know joel was on east, fool.

It's great to see PM's Conservatory being used again! I well remember Hot Chefs - and the first Countryfile after PM's main studios were closed actually came live from in there (I think it was during the foot and mouth crisis - the planned recorded Countryfile was canned). Ironically though, as PM's studio A & B galleries had been decommissioned that week, in order for the live countryfile to be produced, they had to hire an OB truk and set it up in the car park !

I still cannot believe that the Beeb sees fit not to have any Network Production studios in the UKs second city. The Mailbox will only have a news studio AFAIK. At least Pacific Quay (the new site for BBC Scotland) will have a full size studio...

You can choose what you read, but there is a lot of useful information to be had in many of the current threads, despite some being more 'universally' appealing.

No thread belongs exclusively to me, as I try to invite everyone to talk about the subject. If you disagree with some comments, it's up to you. Maybe you've been missing more gossip in the Central News thread...

PS. I'm not a child. And, considering you don't even know me, you're not in the position to start taking nasty tones with me.

Danke, tvmercia.

I thought they used one of the studios now for 'Doctors' ! (WM's Julie Mayer was 'roving reporting' in the make up area one day last week for WM 95.6 FM Brekky show.

So what is actually used now at Pebble Mill ? (Both TV & Radio, Network & Regional/Local ?)

Back to WM, Doolan did have the producer of the Midlands bit in, for a preview, 'cos Goldberg was busy.

Talking of Doolan, his Sunday morning segment, 'The Other Side Of ...', starts a repeat run on Friday evenings between 8 & 9, & the repeats kick off with Jasper Carrott, then presumbly the repeats will continue with various local polititions/businessmen that Doolan & the listeners are familiar with, eg former Tory leader for Walsall (or the People's Republic of Walsall, as we were refered to a few years back!), Mike Bird !

AFAIK, one of the old network production studios has been stripped and is used as "four walls" for Doctors - filmed on handheld cams.

I guess radio is still the big thing for Pebble Mill - and I believe there will still be a few network radio studios at the Mailbox. IIRC Radio 2 and Five Live do their weekend 'overnights' (possibly more!) from Pebble Mill and then of course The Archers is recorded there. As well as WM of course.

As for TV - there are no studio based programmes (apart from Doctors - but many don't count that as studio based) - any programme Pebble Mill make these days are all 'OBs' - these being Mersey Beat, Countryfile and recently The Afternoon Play which got a pilot run on BBC1 last week.

Probably lots more - but if there are I can't think!