Leaving London: The BBC, Channel 4 and the Symbolic Diversity of Location

Evans, Elizabeth

Abstract

In April 2012, the BBC relocated a portion of its television production from London’s Television Centre, its home since 1960, to MediaCity in Salford, just outside Manchester. In March 2018, Channel 4 announced similar plans to move its headquarters to Leeds, with regional hubs planned for Bristol and Glasgow. Both moves came at a time when the broadcasters were facing political pressure over their funding and a perceived content bias that neglected the UK nations and regions beyond London. This chapter uses the BBC and Channel 4’s moves to interrogate the role that location plays within television policy. Although financially and politically motivated, political and industrial discourses framed the BBC and Channel 4 moving to ‘the north’ as improving the broadcasters’ ‘regional diversity’. However, while ‘regional diversity’ was wielded discursively, it was also symbolic in a way that obscured the assumptions, political motivations and limitations that lay underneath both moves.

Citation

Evans, E. (2023). Leaving London: The BBC, Channel 4 and the Symbolic Diversity of Location. In E. Evans, & M. Guha (Eds.), London as Screen Gateway. Routledge

• Online Publication Date: Jul 26, 2023
• Publication Date: Jul 26, 2023
• Deposit Date: May 17, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 27, 2025
• Publisher: Routledge
• Book Title: London as Screen Gateway
• Chapter Number: 11
• ISBN: 9781032168937
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/20834744
• Related Public URLs: https://www.routledge.com/London-as-Screen-Gateway/Evans-Guha/p/book/9781032168937
• Contract Date: May 15, 2023