Achi news desk-
The corporation also had its eye on a dilapidated nursery garden next to the bowling green, but had dragged its feet, allowing housebuilder Wimpey to get in ahead of it and buy the garden for £10,000, with the aim of building multi-storey flats there.
The Beeb, recognizing his delay, began talks with Glasgow Corporation about the garden site. They dragged on for two years – and that’s when Panorama intervened.
On Monday, November 18, 1963, the current affairs program broadcast a special edition from Glasgow, on the back of the government’s White Paper on public investment in the UK. Its presenters included Richard Dimbleby and Robin Day, while journalist Michael Barratt presented a film report about the youth of Glasgow. Barratt, who had attended Paisley Grammar School, knew Glasgow well, having started his journalistic career on a popular Sunday tabloid there.
The following day’s headlines showed how badly his report had been received in the city. “The Lord Provost’s protests to the BBC”, ran the splash headline in the Evening Times.
The Lord Provost, Peter Meldrum, said he had received a number of complaints by phone and letter about the “unbalanced nature” of the programme. He added that he had good reason to believe that young people had been paid to play the role of vandals in scenes that showed bus windows and other windows being smashed.
“I’m not one to say Glasgow is perfect in every way”, says Meldrum. “We have black and white – but 90 per cent of our youth are fine”.
The paper’s report summed it up: “Shots of loafers throwing stones through windows, interviews in a billiard saloon with unemployed teenage drifters who stay in bed all morning, run-down slums and courtyards a muddy back near, and an idle horizon. of smoke and ugliness without relief. We were told this is the Glasgow of today”.
The BBC “almost unwittingly torpedoed the whole operation” – the discussions over the nursery garden – with the episode, said the late David Pat Walker, a former BBC Scotland executive, in his book, The BBC in Scotland.
‘Transmitted live from a location on the banks of the Clyde’, he writes, “the program has not only painted the worst kind of picture of conditions in Glasgow, but has also chosen to depict some of its points by using footage that was quickly proven to be counterfeit. The city was outraged.”
The Beeb offered a formal statement of remorse, but Meldrum was still far from happy. The story was soon overtaken – above all by attention to the assassination of President Kennedy later that month – and the relationship between the two corporations cooled somewhat before harmony was restored. The BBC bought the site from Wimpey for £18,000 and work on the extension continues apace.
In any case, the plans for the new television wing at Broadcasting House, Glasgow, had taken a long time to come to fruition – back in early 1953 the BBC Civil Engineer had given the go-ahead for the development to begin. planned. As Walker notes, local residents had fiercely opposed the change of use of the bowling green and the tennis club, and it took almost three years before a public inquiry, held in early 1956, ruled in favor of the BBC. The poor state of the BBC’s finances also played a part.
It was on 10 June 1964 that the coverings were removed from phase one of the extension in Queen Margaret Drive.
READ MORE
obituary of Peter Kelly: actor and key figure in the Citizens
There’s more to Scottish films than Trainspotting: 10 forgotten gems
Big Banana Feet was Billy Connolly at his funny and fearless best
It was, Walker said, “a great deal of progress” for Scotland, with the centerpiece of the new building being a well-equipped TV studio capable of hosting most drama programs and large audiences.
The new studio, in Hamilton Drive, replaced the BBC’s temporary studio in the old Black Cat cinema three miles away on Springfield Road, Parkhead. And opening the new initiative was none other than Peter Meldrum, the Lord Provost.
It was the first major television production studio outside London to be equipped by the BBC for dual standard operation – either 405 or 625 lines.
Various issues had to be addressed during construction – particularly the noise of aircraft passing overhead as they approached Renfrew airport. The roof and external walls were acoustically treated to keep outside noise out, while two huge doors leading to an adjacent viewing dock also shut out noise.
The studio floor also had to withstand the weight of unusually heavy equipment. One calculation, probably theoretical, used by the architects was that it could bear the weight of an elephant standing on one foot.
BBC2 had been launched to acclaim in April 1964. Now, opening a new studio in Glasgow, Television Manager Kenneth Adam said that praise for the new channel had been so “generous and sympathetic” that plans were being made to extend them. his attention beyond London as soon as possible.
In his book David Pat Walker records that the new studio, with its advanced facilities, was quickly pressed into service for making classic series for BBC2 – among them adaptations of John Buchan’s Witchwood and The Heart of Midlothian by Sir Walter Scott.
The Broadcasting Centre, in Queen Margaret Drive, served BBC Scotland extremely well for decades. Before the location was chosen by the BBC in 1935, it was one of a number of possible sites, all of which were close to the BBC’s current buildings on Blythswood Square. Walker’s book records that others included the Locarno ballroom on Sauchiehall Street, the Lanarkshire Bus Company building on Pitt Street, and a block of buildings bordering West George Street and Blythswood Square. It won the West End site, home to Glasgow University’s Queen Margaret College, and in November 1938 began a brand new chapter as Broadcasting House.
Eventually, however, as staff numbers increased and the demands of modern broadcasting grew exponentially, the building began to show its age and limitations.
By August 1998 it was reported in Yr Herald that the old building was “hopelessly inadequate”, with little room for expansion, and that a new, purpose-built headquarters looked likely to be built at Pacific Quay.
The following January, the Herald reported that Queen Margaret Drive had no future beyond the millennium, its configuration making it impossible to cope with the massive structural changes required to continue its core function of broadcasting.
In October 2005, it was announced that the 5.3 acre site in the West End was being put up for sale, before BBC Scotland moved to Pacific Quay.
Ken MacQuarrie, manager of BBC Scotland at the time, said: “This is a significant day in the history of the BBC in Scotland. We all have a fond attachment to Queen Margaret Drive and the surrounding community, and the building has served us well for almost 70 years. However, the accommodation is no longer suitable for the purpose of broadcasting in the digital age.”
