An unreliable and wholly unofficial history
of BBC Television Centre...
...with grateful thanks to several current and ex BBC staffers who have passed some fascinating documents and other information to me.
contents of this web page...
stage 2 (restaurant block and TC9)
puppet studio/video effects workshop
(a potted history of early colour cameras)
stage 4 (the spur including TC8, TC10, TC11)
stage 5 (including TC0 and TC12)
stage 6 (including the studio that never was)
An Overview
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The original plan for TVC dated around 1960. TC8 was the only one of the planned three studios along the spur that was eventually constructed. |
Of all the TV studio centres in the UK, Television Centre (TVC) is by far the largest. With eight medium to large production studios, five small ones and a further number of news and weather studios it continues to dominate the industry. The building itself is huge; it is only seven stories high, apart from the tall East Tower, but the area it covers is considerable. As well as the studios, scenery block and restaurant block there are countless hundreds of offices. When they ran out of space in the 1980s they built even more offices on the roof of the scenery runway that encircles the main block. Thousands of people work there every day - most not having a clue what everyone else does. The waitress service restaurant is no more but there are still two cafeterias and many snack bars, coffee bars, delis and tea bars all over the building, not to mention the BBC Club. The Centre contains a travel agent, a hairdresser, a dry cleaner, a florist (called 'Auntie's Blooms') and even a branch of WH Smith.
Its statistics are pretty extraordinary. The main block is 500 feet in diameter and at basement level covers three and a half acres. In the studios nearest the railway line the walls are 2ft 3ins thick to provide sound insulation. When opened, the building contained 85 dressing rooms, sufficient for 613 artists. There were originally 43 lifts plus 2 escalators to the basement level. (These have not worked for at least the past two decades, apart from a very brief period in the '90s when the new offices for 'TSPR' opened in the hub.) The ventilation system was the largest non-industrial system in Europe with 19 air-conditioning plants, 22 ventilating plants, 8 extract plants and 2 'absorbtion refrigerating machines'. Gosh.
It was originally supplied with 2 separate feeds from the national grid, in case one went down. Later, one of these was withdrawn by the electricity supplier when Battersea Power Station was closed and the one remaining feed has indeed failed on at least three occasions to my knowledge. To cope with this, emergency generators have been installed and the power plant that originally only heated the water was some years ago replaced with two gas turbines that can generate electricity as well as providing hot water and cooled air as a by-product. This system is known as 'combined heat and power' or CHP. (Their rumoured history of unreliability, however, is probably the subject of another book to be told elsewhere!) On this very subject I have been contacted by Andrew Prince...