BBC Television Centre: Difference between revisions

{{real world}}

'''BBC Television Centre''' was a television production facility in Shepherd's Bush in the [[London]] borough of [[Hammersmith]] and Fulham. It was located within walking distance of the former site of [[Lime Grove Studios]] and close to [[Riverside Studios]]. It is one of the oldest buildings in the world specially built for television production, officially opened on 29 June 1960. It closed as a BBC facility on 31 March 2013, more than 50 years after its opening.<ref name=closure>[http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/bbc-television-centre-closes-its-doors-for-the-last-time-8555435.html "BBC Television Centre closes its doors for the last time" ''London Evening Standard''. 31 March 2013.]</ref>

== Site history ==

Building commenced on Television Centre almost at the dawn of the television age in Britain.  Groundbreaking was in 1951, and the building was officially opened in 1960. At the time it was possessed of a highly innovative design that allowed all its studios to be essentially interchangeable. Even the exterior was remarkable, as it deliberately formed the shape of a question mark.<ref>The "question mark" design is readily apparent in this satellite imagery: <center><googlemap lat=51.5104 lon=-0.2262 type=hybrid zoom=17 width= height=400 controls=none selector=no scale=yes></googlemap></center></ref>

The first ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episodes to be recorded in Television Centre's studio space were "The Warriors of Death" and "The Bride of Sacrifice", the second and third episodes of the [[First Doctor]] serial ''[[The Aztecs (TV story)|The Aztecs]]'', which were shot in Studio TC3 in May 1964.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/serials/f.html |title=Serial F: The Aztecs |date of source= |website name=A Brief History of Time (Travel) |accessdate=8 September 2017 }}</ref> After principally taping at [[Lime Grove Studios|Lime Grove]] and [[Riverside Studios|Riverside]] in the show's early years, Television Centre became the new primary home of ''Doctor Who''{{'}}s studio recording beginning with the second episode of the [[Second Doctor]] serial ''[[The Space Pirates (TV story)|The Space Pirates]]'', shot in February 1969, although episode 2 was unusually shot on [[35mm]] film, rather than on videotape, which was how the remaining episodes of the serial were recorded that March.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/serials/yy.html |title=Serial YY: The Space Pirates |date of source= |website name=A Brief History of Time (Travel) |accessdate=8 September 2017}}</ref> The final ''Doctor Who'' story to contain major studio recording at Television Centre was the [[Seventh Doctor]] serial ''[[Ghost Light (TV story)|Ghost Light]]'', taped in Studio TC3 in July and August 1989.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/serials/7q.html |title=Serial 7Q: Ghost Light |date of source= |website name=A Brief History of Time (Travel) |accessdate=8 September 2017}}</ref>

Numerous upgrades to the site allowed it to maintain its utility as a producer of drama into the 1990s. However, as the whole basis of the design had assumed multi-camera, video recording, TV Centre suddenly became useless when most dramas switched to single camera set-ups. The [[BBC Wales]] version of ''Doctor Who'', for instance, simply could not be filmed at Television Centre due to this inherent design element. In the mid-1990s, it switched its focus from drama to news and other forms of non-fictional entertainment that still use multiple cameras.