BBC studios

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Television Centre
New Broadcasting House (Manchester)
MediaCityUK
Broadcasting House (London)

Television Centre, Wood Lane, London W12 7RJ
Known as The Television Factory, the doughnut, or simply TVC, BBC Television Centre is one of the world’s most iconic television centres and was used by the BBC from 1960 to 2013. Despite the sale of the site to a private developer, Studios 1 to 3 are still managed by the BBC, with studio space leased to the likes of ITV, Channel 4 and Sky by BBC Studioworks.

NOTE: The following photos have been taken by third parties undertaking photographic surveys. They are not the property of HARDCORE SETS and have been compiled here for reference only.

The above photos have been sourced from the following photographic surveys:
– BBC TVC Photographic and Video Survey – 2014 – Goodman Mann Broomhall
– Television Centre Photographic Survey – 2013 – Tavernor Consultancy
– Television Centre – 2013 – BBC/Manuel Vazquez
– BBC Television Centre – 2013 – Google Street View
– BBC Television Centre – 2011 – Peter Sumpter (BBC Photo Archive).

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New Broadcasting House, Oxford Road, Manchester M60 1SJ
Broadcasting House at 33-35 Piccadilly was home to BBC North West (now BBC North) and stayed in use until 1981 when it was fully replaced by New Broadcasting House (NBH) which was used by the BBC from 1975 to 2011. More history can be found in this BBC document.

The above photos have been sourced from post-closure site environmental reports, except for Russell Brand exposing his nipple in Studio 5 (the Palace of Glittering Delights), which I personally took sometime around 2006 or 2007.

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MediaCityUK, Salford
Following the closure of New Broadcasting House, BBC North migrated its Manchester operations to the newly-constructed MediaCityUK in 2011, where it also relocated its Children’s, Learning, Sport, Breakfast, and Religion/Ethics departments from Television Centre – as well as Radio 5 Live and some of 6Music – plus parts of R&D, Drama and Comedy. Bridge House, Dock House and Quay House are office buildings with small studios used exclusively by the BBC, and the dock10 studio complex (pictured below) is shared with ITV & Channel 4.

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Broadcasting House, Portland Place, London W1A 1AA
Despite being bombed twice during World War II, the iconic Broadcasting House has straddled Portland Place and Langham Street since 1931 (opened May 1932), where its presence has dominated thanks to its location on a kink along an otherwise perfectly straight London street.

But it wasn’t until a £1 billion redevelopment at the dawn of the new millennium that the building finally realised its full potential, with the mammoth ‘West One’ project significantly expanding the BBC’s Marylebone footprint.

Phase 1 (2003-2005) saw extensive renovations to the original Broadcasting House, as well as construction of the new Egton Wing (aka East Wing and since renamed the Peel Wing) replacing the Egton House and 16 Langham Street (aka Langham House) buildings in 2005 following their 2003 demolition. Phase 1 was officially opened by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in April 2006.

Following this, Phase 2 (2006-2012) commenced with the construction of a major new extension to Broadcasting House called ‘New Broadcasting House’. This was completed in 2012 and officially opened in 2013 to replace the 1961 ‘BHX’ and 1994 ‘BHXX’ extensions to what is today known as Old Broadcasting House – the original building built between 1928 and 1931.

As part of this work, the Egton Bridge was added to connect the Peel Wing with New Broadcasting House. A broadcasting bunker known as the Stronghold (marked ★ on the above map) was also removed and replaced by a 12m deep (three-storey) basement news facility featuring resilient ‘floating’ studios (to prevent noise from the Tube lines running below), a newsroom, welfare facilities, and technical areas such as production galleries and control/apparatus rooms.

In total, Broadcasting House now contains 36 radio studios, 6 main TV studios and at least 5 auxiliary TV studios – an impressive expansion from its original 22 radio studios while still managing to streamline the 130+ BBC studios that were previously scattered across London.

Today, the buildings on site are collectively known as Broadcasting House (or ‘BH London’, internally) given that they are all connected, with the exception of Wogan House which was vacated by the BBC in 2024. Broadcasting House uses the famous postcode of W1A 1AA, or W1B 1DJ for BBC Radio 1.

Broadcasting House:

Wogan House:

NOTE: These photos have been taken from X, compiled here for historical reference purposes (with the photographer’s username shown beside each). They are not the property of HARDCORE SETS.

^{Studio 6B – @amsterdammed:}

^{Studio 6B – @TashBandara:}

^{Green room – @see75:}

^Others:

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