If you ask any of my colleagues, they will tell you I have a probably unhealthy obsession with old TV and film facilities, be it Pinewood, The London Studios or TV Centre, I am never happier than when I come across a rack of old Component patch panels or Bantam jack fields. I love the engineering that went in to television, and I have to confess that I am gutted I never got the opportunity to partake in any BBC, Thames, LWT, Granada et al engineering training. 

Because of this, when I heard that TV Centre was up for sale by the Beeb, my initial reaction was one of annoyance. For whatever the BBC has become in recent years, it can be held responsible for some of the greatest advances in broadcast technology, and TV Centre is one of the few facilities built from the ground up with engineering at its heart. Its very shape was produced by needing to ensure that all the cabling in the building ran the same length, so in times of live TV before digital, the delay produced by running analogue signals through lengths of copper, was the same from all the studios. How dare the corporation deem it appropriate to mothball this facility and move a large part of its operation to a new high tech media centre in Salford. 

However as time went on I began to think more on the subject, thinking that coincided with being involved in a large OB rig where we effectively had a hand in building a full scale HD Broadcast facility in a muddy field in Somerset. It struck me one evening as I listened to the servers spin up to take the load of that evenings edit, that as much as the geek in me will miss TV Centre, Broadcast technology does not need large facilities anymore. The equipment required is now comparatively cheap and small, compared to the heydays of the 1980’s and 90’s. The 100 thousand pound edit suite is a thing of the past and something I have to admit was before my time. Whereas in the past it was a challenge to get colour TV pictures on the air from a dedicated facility, we now have the capability to capture, edit and broadcast full HD with 5.1 surround from a field, in the rain, surrounded by sheep, and we at Hyperactive have done so very successfully several times this year.

I think what I am trying to say is, whilst it is a shame that the BBC is planning on selling off a broadcasting landmark, we should look at what our current crop of broadcast engineering professionals are achieving, on ever tightening budgets, in ever more difficult locations and in far shorter time constraints. The physical landmarks of yesterdays broadcasters may be disappearing, but they are being replaced with phenomenal landmark broadcasting output, which lets face it, at the end of the day is what this business is really all about.