Short post today because I have been feeling very under the weather.
We left Liverpool and headed towards Manchester/Salford today. We met first with Dr. Annabel Waller. She took us on a tour of the facilities on the Salford campus located in BBC Media City.
It is impressive the number of TV and radio studios that they have… but considering they have 4200 arts/media students (and 24k at university of Salford), I would expect that they would have something of this size!
They said that there is some crossover where people from the BBC use their studios, since the BBC Media City is right there. The professionals will often come and give master classes or use the facilities and allow students to be involved their productions.
We also heard from James, he works in children’s TV for the BBC. He currently works on a show called Blue Peter, it is the longest running children show in Britain. His path to his current position was quite interesting, especially since he did not study anything Communication related!
After a quick break for lunch, we took a tour of the BBC facilities. It was a standard tourist type tour, but our presenters, Hannah and Leigh, did an amazing job. Once they realized we were in a related field, they really personalized the presentation.
We even had a little fun with Donna who was working the auto cue (teleprompter) in the one studio.
What I found most interesting is that Peele owns all of the facilities and the BBC merely rents everything that they use. They actually save a lot of money because they are not responsible for updating and maintaining equipment. Everything from the paint on the floor to the cameras and sets are built for a show and then removed when they are done. This saves the BBC a lot of money because they are not paying for a space or studio that is sitting empty. It also would save them a ton of money on equipment.
What I would love to see is when they remove the floor paint. Apparently they just “Hoover it right up“ according to our guide Hannah!
We then checked into our airport located hotel and will be ready to head to Edinburgh, Scotland tomorrow!