Stuart Pinfold

RIP TVC

Part of the BBC's restructuring plans announced 9 days ago included selling off its west London headquarters, Television Centre. I've already posted my thoughts about the building in an earlier blog post.

So, it is with sadness that many BBC staff will see the building go in 2013. A group on Facebook called "You CAN'T sell BBC Television Centre - WE WON'T LET YOU" have been debating the decision. Some staffers are happy as 'the (ugly) White City building has better (read: even more expensive) places to eat' or 'the Media Centre has (boringly) easy corridors and a (monotonous) good system of room numbers' (my brackets on both). I've been lost a few times in the depths of TVC's corridors (it's very easy to, given that you have to enter some offices numbered as the 'second floor' via the third floor; the 5th and 7th floor doesn't exist in some lifts but do in others, and that some floors suddenly become the next floor without having to go up or down any steps). But isn't that part of the charm of older buildings which have been changed, added to and merged together over the years?

The best part of the group is the material which has been posted onto it. This video shows Television Centre in action in the early 1960s, just a few years after the building opened:

And here's a document given to all staff working in the new centre (PDF), describing the building and its capabilities. I love the photo on the very last page, which shows Television Centre without its front extension (what now makes up the News Centre and main reception), and the cars parked around the 'doughnut' part of the Main Block.

Finally, here's a video of Television Centre being built:

Hopefully, in 5 years' time, I won't be posting another video on the destruction of the world's first building designed for television production; but I rather suspect that we will see this, while chanting RIP, Television Centre. We'll miss you.

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