Wednesday 18 September 2013

THE LAST DAYS OF BBC TV CENTRE - PART FOURTEEN

Here's a little close-up detail from my farewell tour of BBC TELEVISION CENTRE: the branded South Hall doors leading out into the 'doughnut' courtyard at the heart of the site.

I must admit, I was very disappointed to see these.  Let me elaborate.  These doors retained similar "push" signage featuring an older, slanted, version of the BBC logo for years and it always struck me as a quaint nod to the past.  When I came to look around this last time, I found that some bright spark had belatedly embraced modernity by slapping these new ones over the top.

If you look behind, you'll see one of my lasting memories of the Centre: cables trailing everywhere.  Despite being a purpose-built TV factory, the boffins always seemed to be reduced to trailing hefty cables out of windows.

And - as an aside - there always seemed to be corridors around the building with the false ceilings removed and more boffin-types, up ladders, adding more cables to already packed cable holders.  It's no wonder that no-one knew what any of the cables did anymore... but didn't dare remove them in case it inadvertently pulled some broadcast-critical piece of gubbins off-air.  Or... so the legend goes...


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