#broadcasting house

[richardarmitagefanpage]

New photo of Richard at the BBC Radio 4 - Broadcasting House.

📷: ij_pr

[notwiselybuttoowell]

“Scarborough cancelled its fireworks display so the walrus could sleep” A+ sentence. Succinct and bafflingly vague at the same time, with a much needed element of charm.

[tealin]

There’s a roaring trade in trying to predict World Cup outcomes.  A Radio 4 news magazine show tried to do this by having a journalist from the adversary team’s country, and a British journalist, answer trivia questions about each other’s countries: whoever got the most questions right indicated which country would win, and if it was a draw, the game would go to penalties.  They had an astonishingly successful number of correct predictions.

[vintage-london-images]

BBC Broadcasting House Langham  Place, seen photographed on 30th May 1961 and in 1930 whilst under construction.

Designed by George Val Myer and built between 1928 and 1932, Broadcasting House was the BBC's first purpose-built home for radio broadcasting. It is situated in central London between Oxford Street and Regents Park, adjacent to Nash's All Souls' church and is now Grade II listed.

Built of Portland stone, with 9 floors above ground and 3 below, its central heavy masonry tower originally contained all the studios. A lighter steel-framed shell provided acoustic buffering. The Architectural Review of 1932 described it as the 'new Tower of London'. It is strangely asymmetrical, because Val Myer had to adapt his first plan when local residents complained about the shadow the building would cast on houses in Langham Street, and their loss of natural light.

Programmes transferred gradually to the building, and on 15th March 1932 the first musical programme was given by the bandleader Henry Hall and the BBC Dance Orchestra.

Broadcasting House was restored after being damaged twice during the Second World War, and has recently undergone further extensive renovation and extension. New Broadcasting House is now open, and is one of the largest live broadcast centres in the world, with facilities including 36 radio studios, six TV studios and 60 edit/graphic suites. It houses BBC Radio, News and World Service.

[famousornotbuthot]

[ x ]

[theroyalhistory]

King George VI, Princess Margaret and Queen Elizabeth (Queen Mother) at Broadcasting House, London, 1947

[hellyeahgeorgeorwell]

Well it shows how little I pay attention. The George Orwell statue that I’ve been vaguely following for a few years, I realized, was unveiled on November 7, 2017. It was sculpted by Martin Jennings and I was fascinated by it not only for the obvious reasons but because another favorite of mine, Rowan Atkinson, was one of the people who campaigned and donated money to get the statue made. Obviously right-wing people at the BBC didn’t want it put up, so it was up in the air for a while. I stumbled across the photo of the statue by accident and it has made my day. I think it’s brilliant! It’s very easy to mess up a statue. Like the horrifying Lucille Ball statue that was made.

The words on the wall says:

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear"

[branda]

Atrium, Broadcasting House, Berlin | Historical Architecture | Reinhard Görner