BBC selling television centre

[Brian Drysdale]

The BBC is selling television centre, the iconic building of British Television. It even featured in an episode of "Family Guy".

BBC News - For the love of Television Centre

It's a more fun looking building than their other building in the area:

BBC White City - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Gary Nattrass]

Yes but if you read the small print they may also consider a partnership, so no doubt this is creative accounting at its best where the sell it to a company and then lease parts of it back like they are with media city salford.

It makes it all very tax efficient as you don't own the asset and therefore it isn't on your books and the money goes into the spending pot to fund yet more layers of management and stoopid noo media jobs with wacky descriptions !

[Brian Drysdale]

yes, the partnership aspect has been well flagged and the BBC needs to do some clever working with the numbers. Possibly some of the studios and office space will be retained by the BBC, while other studios will be used by businesses (possibly retail) that need that sort of space.

Yes, got to keep those strange beeb job titles going. Of course, the BBC isn't unique in that respect, but they've a tradition of long job titles.

[Paul R Johnson]

Trouble is, they also auction off the kit - which 'we' paid for, then buy new for Salford. The equipment never makes it's real value, and so much would still be perfectly usable, but they'll want the latest.

Have they ever solved the problem of contributors to the various programmes being in London? Or will we see a huge increase in 'virtual' interviews, and special news sets where people in London, will appear to be in Salford?

[Brian Drysdale]

In case people are wondering about this Salford reference:

MediaCityUK

I guess they'll still need loads of little studios in London for those interviews. Although, "Top of the Pops" did start out in Manchester, but with the modern time pressures I can't see people having time in their London centred schedules to travel up that often.

Yes, there's a lot of kit in television centre. The studios are also used for productions on the other UK channels, not just the BBC.

[Paul R Johnson]

I get the notifications of the BBC auctions - and being a greedy devil, put a few bids in last year for some items being sold off from TV centre. I didn't get them, bar one - I got a Denon MD recorder for £50. I was happy. Got the email explaining it had to be removed from the site before a certain date or I'd be charged storage. Collect your item from Studio 3 BBC TV Centre GLASGOW! Missed that bit!

I got a friend to collect it and send it to me in the post. I asked him afterwards how much I owed him? Nothing was the reply. When he collected it, the security man ticked it off and said that was the last item from the cubicle - if he saw anything else in the room, hew was welcome to take it as it was going in the skip tomorrow. He filled his van with the contents of the racks, the racks themselves, the studio red lights, the sound treatment on the walls (some lovely diffusers) and even the mains wiring in the racks. 2 CD players and a few bits of outboard. Bantam patch panels and some musa ones too, plus a load of U links. A bucket load of BNC cables and some bantam patch cables. Sold much of it on ebay! Damn.

[Brian Drysdale]

Yes, that pro kit can last for years, some Nagras had a working life of 20 years. I know people who used to keep an eye on those BBC skips.

[Gary Nattrass]

Peel media and SIS are providing most of the technical facilities at Salford so no doubt this is the new business model for the BBC accountants.

[Brian Drysdale]

Also, it ticks the 50% of network production being made outside London by 2016 box.

[Gary Nattrass]

And as London gets more expensive will it be 100% by 2020?

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Gary Nattrass

.........no doubt this is creative accounting at its best where the sell it to a company and then lease parts of it back ..........

It makes it all very tax efficient as you don't own the asset ..........

Now where have I heard this business model before recently - sell off your property assets, then rent them back to "save money"?

Ah yes...... Southern Cross.......

(BBC News - Southern Cross care homes: Landlords offer last hope - for those not in the UK)

[Gary Nattrass]

Yup David and no doubt some bright spark accountant thought that up in the 90's, my other industry that is on it's knees the Pub business is also suffering the fall out from this as Punch taverns are in a similar situation where they owe £3.5 billion and don't even get enough rental income to cover the interest payments on the money they borrowed to buy the real estate.

[Steve Game]

It seems that PFI is also coming in for some well-deserved criticism. It's all part of the 'mortgaging the future' culture that we are led to believe is 'good for free enterprise'.

Sorry, we're getting a bit OT here, but it''s all part of the same problem.

Steve

[Gary Nattrass]

I would bet that the so called "landlord" that is being quoted in the southern cross story is very familiar to us in the UK as it is probably the royal bank of scotland!

Certainly in the pub industry they dumped all the pubs they owned two years ago, and as banker for my own pub business they advised me to close it down!

I think punch taverns also owe RBS the £3.5billion, so if they go bust it is even more of our money down the pan!

[Steve Game]

On Today this morning, the problem was navigating a web of Holding companies that (conveniently) obscured who actually did own what.

Steve