New Broadcasting House, Manchester

New Broadcasting House
New Broadcasting House
BBC Manchester Studios; NBH
General information
Type	Television and radio studios
Architectural style	Precast concrete panels, with bronze-tinted solar-heat-rejecting glass
Address	Oxford Road, Manchester, M60 1SJ
Coordinates	53°28′23″N2°14′21″W / 53.47312°N 2.23925°W
Completed	July 1975
Inaugurated	18 June 1976
Demolished	2012
Landlord	BBC
Dimensions
Other dimensions	5.4 acres (1.66 ha)
Technical details
Structural system	Reinforced concrete structure
Floor count	6
Floor area	30,400 m (99,738 ft)
Design and construction
Architect(s)	R. A. Sparks
Architecture firm	BBC Architectural and Civil Engineering Department
Structural engineer	Ove Arup
Services engineer	Haden Young
Civil engineer	D. G. Nimmy
Other designers	Acousticians – Sandy Brown Associates; Mechanical Services – Building Design Partnership
Quantity surveyor	Bare, Leaning, and Bare
Main contractor	Higgs and Hill

Last updated November 21, 2024

New Broadcasting House (NBH) was the BBC's North West England headquarters on Oxford Road in Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester. The studios housed BBC Manchester, BBC North West, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and the BBC Religion and Ethics department. It was known as a Network Production Centre, the others being in Birmingham (the now also demolished Pebble Mill Studios) and Broadcasting House, Bristol.

Architecture and construction

New Broadcasting House was built on a site bounded by Oxford Road, Charles Street, Princess Street and Brancaster Road. To the rear of the building was the River Medlock. A compulsory purchase order for the site was approved by the Minister of Housing and Local Government on 21 July 1967 and planning began the same year. Planning permission was granted in December 1968. Designs by an external architect were abandoned in February 1970 in favour of plans by R. A. Sparks from the BBC's Architectural and Civil Engineering Department. New planning permission was granted in March 1971, and construction began in December 1971 and was completed in 1975.

Construction was in three stages – the network production centre for local radio and outside broadcasts, a rehearsal studio for the Northern Symphony Orchestra and the regional television centre. Radio Manchester was built on the upper ground floor in the west of the office block with a 754 square metre area. Studio A, a 453 square metre television studio, was built in the single-storey building behind the office block. The central technical area was next to the TV and radio studios. A 180-seat restaurant was built on the second floor. The view from the top of the building was of the Mancunian Way.

The building was supported on 214 piles, bored to a maximum depth of around 13 metres. The building frame was made of reinforced concrete infilled with flat soffit slabs and 2,100 square metres of windows. Its architecture has been ridiculed as 'drab' and unfit for the 21st century.^[4]

History

Before New Broadcasting House opened, the BBC's Manchester base was at Broadcasting House in Piccadilly, and from 1958 it occupied four floors of Peter House in St Peter's Square. Dickenson Road Studios, the former studio of Mancunian Films in Rusholme, was bought in 1954 and Milton Hall on Deansgate was the home of the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra which became the BBC Philharmonic in 1982. The BBC also bought The Playhouse in Hulme in 1955 for use as a TV and radio recording studio, then as a studio for radio and music rehearsals only from the mid-1960s. The last broadcast was in 1986 and it was sold in 1989. The BBC studio was based in the smaller of two theatres in the same building known as Hulme Hippodrome, the entire building having been opened in two phases in 1901 and 1902. Before buying its smaller twin, the BBC had rented the larger theatre for studio use on Sundays with live audiences from 1950 to 1956 and installed a wooden control room in the Circle seating area.

Staff moved into the building on the weekend of 12–13 July 1975, and it was fully operational by September 1975 and officially inaugurated as the headquarters of BBC North on 18 June 1976. A second television studio was opened in May 1981 for regional TV news, leading to the closure of Broadcasting House in Piccadilly after 52 years. About 800 staff worked at the site.

New Broadcasting House was home to BBC Manchester, BBC Radio Manchester, BBC North West, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and the BBC Religion and Ethics Department.^[5] On opening, the radio station was named BBC Radio Manchester; it changed its name to BBC GMR (and briefly, GMR Talk) before reverting to its original name in April 2006.

In 2010, the building was offered for sale as the BBC's move to MediaCityUK rendered it surplus to requirements^[6] and it was sold for £10 million in April 2011.^[7]^[8] The BBC sign from the front of the building was removed in November 2011 shortly after the last department, regional TV, moved to MediaCityUK ending 35 years of broadcasting from the studios on Sunday 27 November 2011.^[9]

Related Research Articles

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England, which had an estimated population of 568,996 in 2022. It contributes to the third-most populous metropolitan area in the United Kingdom as a part of Greater Manchester, which has a population of approximately 2.92 million. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The city borders the boroughs of Trafford, Stockport, Tameside, Oldham, Rochdale, Bury and Salford.

Rusholme is an area of Manchester, in Greater Manchester, England, two miles south of the city centre. The population of the ward at the 2011 census was 13,643. Rusholme is bounded by Chorlton-on-Medlock to the north, Victoria Park and Longsight to the east, Fallowfield to the south and Moss Side to the west. It has a large student population, with several student halls and many students renting terraced houses, and suburban houses towards Victoria Park.

Wilmslow Road is a major road in Manchester, England, running from Parrs Wood northwards to Rusholme where it becomes the Oxford Road. The name of the road changes again to Oxford Street when it crosses the River Medlock before reaching Manchester city centre.

Chorlton-on-Medlock is an inner city area of Manchester, in the county of Greater Manchester, England.

BBC Cymru Wales is a division of the BBC and the main public broadcaster in Wales.

Hulme is an inner city area and electoral ward of Manchester, in Greater Manchester, England, immediately south of Manchester city centre. It has a significant industrial heritage.

Manchester's music scene produced successful bands in the 1960s including the Hollies, the Bee Gees and Herman's Hermits. After the punk rock era, Manchester produced popular bands including Joy Division, New Order, The Smiths and Simply Red. In the late 1980s, the ecstasy-fuelled dance club scene played a part in the rise of Madchester with bands like the Stone Roses, Inspiral Carpets and Happy Mondays. In the 1990s, Manchester saw the rise of Britpop bands, notably Oasis.

The Daily Service is a short Christian service broadcast every weekday morning between 09:45 and 10:00 on BBC Radio 4 Extra. It was also broadcast on BBC Radio 4's FM frequencies until 13 September 1991 and its LW frequencies until 29th March 2024 which was Good Friday that year.

Mancunian Films was a British film production company first organised in 1933. From 1947 it was based in Rusholme, a suburb of Manchester, and produced a number of comedy films, mostly aimed at audiences in the North of England.

BBC North (Group) is an operational business division of the BBC.

BBC Radio Manchester is the BBC's local radio station serving Greater Manchester.

The A5103 is a major road in England. It runs from Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester city centre to junction 3 of the M56 motorway and is one of Manchester's principal radial routes.

BBC North West is the BBC English Region serving Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside, as well as parts of North Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire (Biddulph), Cumbria and the Isle of Man.

MediaCityUK is a 200-acre (81 ha) mixed-use property development on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal in Salford, Greater Manchester, England. The project was developed by Peel Media; its principal tenants are media organisations and the Quayside MediaCityUK shopping centre. The land occupied by the development was part of the Port of Manchester and Manchester docks.

BBC Manchester is the BBC's regional headquarters for the north west of England, the largest BBC region in the UK. BBC Manchester is a department of the BBC North Group division. The BBC considers the Manchester department as one of its three main national bases alongside London and Bristol, and has had a presence in the city since launching the 2ZY radio station in 1922. The BBC had its first studio outside London in 1954 when the corporation leased the Dickenson Road Studios. In 1967, the decision was taken to build a purpose-built BBC building in Manchester on Oxford Road which opened in 1976.

Media in Manchester has been an integral part of Manchester's culture and economy for many generations and has been described as the only other British city to rival to London in terms of television broadcasting. Today, Manchester is the second largest centre of the creative and digital industries in Europe.

The Hulme Hippodrome in Manchester, England, is a shuttered Grade II listed building, a proscenium arch theatre with two galleries and a side hall. It was originally known as the Grand Junction Theatre and Floral Hall, and opened on 7 October 1901 on the former main road of Preston Street, Hulme, and stage access is from Warwick Street. The Hulme Hippodrome theatre is located in the same building and shares a party wall with its small sibling theatre, The Playhouse. The Hippodrome was a music hall and variety theatre, a repertory theatre in the 1940s, and hired on Sundays for recording BBC programmes with live audiences between 1950 and 1956. In the 1960s and 1970s it was a bingo hall, and from 2003 used by a disgraced church. The theatre has been closed since 2018 and a campaign group exists to bring it back into use as a community resource, where the current owner is seeking permission to build apartments. Its local name in memoirs and records is 'Hulme Hipp'. Its national heritage significance includes being the venue for live recording the first three series of BBC programmes by Morecambe and Wise comedians.

Granada Studios was a television studio complex and events venue on Quay Street in Manchester, England, with the facility to broadcast live and recorded television programmes. The studios were the headquarters of Granada Television from 1956 to 2013. After a period of closure, five of the six studio spaces reopened in 2018. The studios are the oldest operating purpose-built television studios in the United Kingdom pre-dating BBC Television Centre by five years.

Dickenson Road Studios was a film and television studio in Rusholme, Manchester, in north-west England. It was originally set up in 1947 in a former Wesleyan Methodist Chapel by the film production company Mancunian Films and was acquired by BBC Television in 1954. The studio was used for early editions of the music chart show Top of the Pops between 1964 and 1966.

References

↑ BBC Engineering March 1976 Number 102
↑ Acoustics
↑ Your Manchester; August 2013, p. 22
↑ "BBC Oxford Road site sold". Manchester Confidential. 5 April 2011. Archived from the original on 1 October 2011. If Tishbi is the winner Confidential hopes only the highest grade architecture is given planning permission here. The vast impermeable frontage of the BBC is a shockingly drab barrier on the land.
↑ BBC Religion and Ethics "BBC Religion and Ethics". BBC.{{cite news}}: Check |url= value (help)
↑ "BBC Manchester HQ building put up for sale". BBC News. 8 September 2010. Retrieved 28 November 2011.
↑ "BBC sells Manchester base ahead of move to Salford". BBC News. 5 April 2011.
↑ "BBC's Oxford Road home sold for £10m". Manchester Evening News. 5 April 2011.
↑ "Iconic BBC sign taken off Oxford Road building after 35 years". Manchester Evening News. 29 November 2011. Archived from the original on 1 January 2012. Retrieved 29 November 2011.

External links

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] BBC Engineering March 1976 Number 102

[2] Acoustics

[3] Your Manchester; August 2013, p. 22

[4] "BBC Oxford Road site sold". Manchester Confidential. 5 April 2011. Archived from the original on 1 October 2011. If Tishbi is the winner Confidential hopes only the highest grade architecture is given planning permission here. The vast impermeable frontage of the BBC is a shockingly drab barrier on the land.

[5] BBC Religion and Ethics "BBC Religion and Ethics". BBC.{{cite news}}: Check |url= value (help)

[6] "BBC Manchester HQ building put up for sale". BBC News. 8 September 2010. Retrieved 28 November 2011.

[7] "BBC sells Manchester base ahead of move to Salford". BBC News. 5 April 2011.

[8] "BBC's Oxford Road home sold for £10m". Manchester Evening News. 5 April 2011.

[9] "Iconic BBC sign taken off Oxford Road building after 35 years". Manchester Evening News. 29 November 2011. Archived from the original on 1 January 2012. Retrieved 29 November 2011.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]