Quote:
Originally Posted by Will21st
I think it's rather you who needs to extract his head from your bottom,dear boy. 
A someone who works in Film and Tv and knows lots of people to me and other's this was nothing but a Labour vanity project... get people up North to feel the love as well.... whatever that is worth (votes,I guess).
To say a quick drive up North is nothing is complete ignorance,sorry Chris. To people in the media,or celebrities,VIP's or whatever time is EVERYTHING. The schedules can be so packed that the difference between agreeing to a flying visit or a talk show can very much hinge on accessibility. In and out is the name of the game,in an 18 hour day a few hours do matter a lot.
London is one of four Alpha world cities and that's where the BBC belongs,not in bleeding Salford,sorry.... what a pit to put the studio in. This move is/was unpopular within the BBC and I'm not the only one to think it was a mistake. |
Well, if we're having a p*ing contest ... I know a number of people in film & TV myself. At least three of them have had national TV or radio credits in the last 6 months. One of them has a Bafta on his bookshelf.
It's nothing to do with who we know and what we do for a living though, is it? The BBC is part of the national infrastructure, and as such the issues at play are not confined to the business of TV and radio production.
ITV moved This Morning out of its original studio in Liverpool because of the well-understood difficulties of getting slebs out of London on a weekday morning. Oddly enough, however, the industry does not seem to have a comparable problem in the USA, where the traditional centres of film and TV production are separated by almost 2,500 miles and three time zones.
The issue of people not wanting to travel out of London is a cultural one, caused by the issue you identify - London is a world city, which unfortunately means it eclipses everywhere else in the UK by some degree. What the move to Salford challenges is the notion that just because London is a world city, everything of importance must take place in it, or as near it as possible (in fact, Salford *is* very near it - have you looked at a map of the British Isles lately, and preferably not the BBC weather map which skews the view so the southeast looks about twice the size as the north?).
As a publicly-funded broadcaster, and one of the biggest broadcasters in the entire world, the BBC is in a position to challenge this metropolitan media laziness. The BBC is bigger than any of them, and it provides an unbeatable platform for their opinions, projects, vanity, whatever. Build it, and they'll come. They have no choice. It may take a while, but thanks to the licence fee the BBC has the luxury of time. Our whole economy needs rebalancing away from the southeast, and moving chunks of the BBC a stone's throw further up the island is an important contribution to that.