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Broadcasting House is the
headquarters of the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
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...
, in
Portland Place and
Langham Place, London
Langham Place is a short street in Westminster, central London, England. Just north of Oxford Circus, it connects Portland Place to the north with Regent Street to the south in London's West End. It is, or was, the location of many significant ...
. The first radio broadcast from the building was made on 15 March 1932, and the building was officially opened two months later, on 15 May. The main building is in
Art Deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...
style, with a facing of
Portland stone over a
steel frame
Steel frame is a building technique with a "skeleton frame" of vertical steel columns and horizontal I-beams, constructed in a rectangular grid to support the floors, roof and walls of a building which are all attached to the frame. The developm ...
. It is a
Grade II* listed building
In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Ir ...
and includes the BBC Radio Theatre, where music and speech programmes are recorded in front of a studio audience.
As part of a major consolidation of the BBC's property portfolio in London, Broadcasting House has been extensively renovated and extended. This involved the demolition of post-war extensions on the eastern side of the building, replaced by a new wing completed in 2005. The wing was named the "
John Peel Wing" in 2012, after the disc jockey.
BBC London
BBC London is the BBC English Region producing local radio, television, teletext and online services in London and parts of the surrounding area. Its output includes the daily ''BBC London News'' and weekly '' Sunday Politics'' on television, ...
,
BBC Arabic Television
BBC News Arabic ( ar, بي بي سي نيوز عربي), formerly BBC Arabic Television, is a television news channel broadcast to the Arab World by the BBC. It was launched on 11 March 2008. It is run by the BBC World Service and funded from th ...
and
BBC Persian Television
BBC Persian Television ( fa, تلویزیون فارسی بیبیسی) is the BBC's Persian language news channel that was launched on 14 January 2009. The service is broadcast by satellite and is also available online. It is aimed at the ...
are housed in the new wing, which also contains the reception area for
BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It specialises in modern popular music and current chart hits throughout the day. The station provides alternative genres at night, including electronica, dance, ...
and
BBC Radio 1Xtra (the studios themselves are in the new extension to the main building).
The main building was refurbished, and an extension built to the rear. The radio stations
BBC Radio 3,
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
,
BBC Radio 4 Extra and the
BBC World Service transferred to refurbished studios within the building. The extension links the old building with the John Peel Wing, and includes a new combined newsroom for
BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...
, with studios for the
BBC News channel
BBC News (also known as the BBC News Channel) is a British free-to-air public broadcast television news channel for BBC News. It was launched as BBC News 24 on 9 November 1997 at 5:30 pm as part of the BBC's foray into digital domestic telev ...
,
BBC World News
BBC World News is an international English-language pay television network, operated under the ''BBC Global News Limited'' division of the BBC, which is a public corporation of the UK government's Department for Digital, Culture, Media and ...
and other news programming. The move of news operations from
BBC Television Centre
Television Centre (TVC) is a building complex in White City, West London, that was the headquarters of BBC Television between 1960 and 2013. After a refurbishment, the complex reopened in 2017 with three studios in use for TV production, opera ...
was completed in March 2013.
The official name of the building is ''Broadcasting House'' but the BBC now also uses the term ''new Broadcasting House'' (with a small 'n') in its publicity referring to the new extension rather than the whole building, with the original building known as old Broadcasting House.
Construction
Construction of Broadcasting House began in 1928. Programmes transferred gradually to the building. On 15 March 1932, the first musical programme was given by the
bandleader Henry Hall and the BBC Dance Orchestra. Hall also wrote and performed, with his dance band, ''
Radio Times'', the name of the BBC's schedule publication.
The first news bulletin was read by
Stuart Hibberd on 18 March. The last transmission from
Savoy Hill
Savoy Place is a large red brick building on the north bank of the River Thames in London. It is on a street called Savoy Place; Savoy Hill and Savoy Street run along the sides of the building up to the Strand. In front is the Victoria Embankmen ...
was on 14 May, and Broadcasting House officially opened on 15 May 1932.
George Val Myer designed the building in collaboration with the BBC's civil engineer, M. T. Tudsbery. The interiors were the work of
Raymond McGrath, an Australian-Irish architect. He directed a team that included
Serge Chermayeff
Serge Ivan Chermayeff (born Sergei Ivanovich Issakovich; russian: link=no, Сергей Ива́нович Иссако́вич; 8 October 1900 – 8 May 1996) was a Russian-born British architect, industrial designer, writer, and co-founder of ...
and
Wells Coates and designed the vaudeville studio, the associated green and dressing rooms, and the dance and chamber music studios in a flowing
Art Deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...
style.
The building is built in two parts. Dispensing with the oft-found central light-well of contemporary buildings this size, the central core containing the recording studios was a windowless structure built of brick. (Structural brick rather than steel framing was used in order to reduce noise transmission both from without and between studios.) The surrounding outer portion, designed for offices and ancillary spaces, is steel framed and faced using Portland stone.
While the outer portion had plenty of windows, the inner core required special sound-dampened ventilation systems.
There were two areas where
right of ancient lights would cause height restrictions. While the rights on the southern side ceased to be a problem after the owners of those rights gave concessions, the rights on the eastern side were dealt with by sloping the roof away from the street from the fourth floor up, which affected not only the floorplan of the structure but meant that the interior recording tower could not be continued up to the top floor. (Thus, one studio on the top floor was actually outside the central studio core structure.)
Underground structures, including a hundred-year-old sewer, also presented problems during construction. The building is above the
Bakerloo line of the
London Underground
The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or by its nickname the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England.
The ...
: the
Victoria line
The Victoria line is a London Underground line that runs between in south London and in the north-east, via the West End. It is printed in light blue on the Tube map and is one of the only two lines on the network to run completely underg ...
was tunnelled beneath in the 1960s, and presented problems for construction of the Egton Wing (see below). Noise from passing trains is audible within the radio theatre, but generally imperceptible in recordings. The ground floor was fitted with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the street, as the BBC believed that to finance such a project (costing £25 million in today's money) they would need to let the ground floor as a retail unit. The rapid expansion of the BBC meant this never occurred.
The original building is a
Grade II* listed building
In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Ir ...
.
Renovation
Beginning in 2003, Broadcasting House underwent a major renovation during the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
's W1 Programme, with the aim of refurbishing the building and combining a number of the BBC's operations in a new extension. This houses the television and radio operations of