On Simon Mayo's Five Live show yesterday talking about the future for record shops in the light of the feature in the current issue of Word. Usually Simon broadcasts from Shepherd's Bush but on certain days (such as Prime Minister's Question Time) the show is done from the BBC's very busy studio in Millbank, just across the road from Parliament. Now today, in the light of the licence fee settlement, I hear Mark Thompson talking on Simon's programme and insisting that the BBC's planned move to Salford will go ahead. Paul Fox popped up to point out that since the Olympics is coming to London and politics is based in London, this seems like a funny time to be moving everything to Manchester. Broadcasters are always talking big about the need to decentralise. It's a good way to drum up backing from government. Everybody approves in principle but nobody approves in practice apart from the people who happen to live at the new location. Ask Malcolm Gerrie how hard it was to get acts to travel to Newcastle to appear on The Tube. Given that and the fact that the senior management and top talent at the BBC will simply find a way to avoid going, I don't believe it will ever happen. If the BBC has to move a studio across London in order to be nearer to a power centre, how much sense does it make to move so much of its operations two hundred miles away from the hub of finance, the media, government and show business? And I know it's not fair but this country is too small to decentralise and too crowded to cross.
Well, I know what you mean, but as a Northern separatist, I have to support it. The alternative is the growing concentration of everything in London until the whole place grinds to a halt. You are going to have to have work shifts soon if the transport is to work.
ReplyDeleteOK, Salford is fairly ropey, but most people would say the BBC are going to Manchester which is only 2hours from central London by train. And it can take 2 hours to cross London anyhow, so how real are the difficulties?
As a Five Live employee I have no problem with the idea of moving to the north - what bugs me is that in Salford we're going to be neighbours with Hazel Blears.
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