engineering

New Broadcasting House, Manchester

New Broadcasting House, Manchester is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand New Broadcasting House, Manchester rather than just read about it. In short: New Broadcasting House (NBH) was the BBC's North West England headquarters on Oxford Road in Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester. The studios housed BBC Manchester, BBC North West, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and the BBC Religion and Ethics department.

Key takeaways

New Broadcasting House, Manchester belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect New Broadcasting House, Manchester to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of New Broadcasting House, Manchester from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

New Broadcasting House (NBH) was the BBC's North West England headquarters on Oxford Road in Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester. The studios housed BBC Manchester, BBC North West, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and the BBC Religion and Ethics department. It was known as a Network Production Centre, the others being in Birmingham (the now also demolished Pebble Mill Studios) and Broadcasting House, Bristol. New Broadcasting House was vacated during autumn 2011 when the departments were relocated to MediaCityUK outside of central Manchester in Salford Quays. The building was demolished in 2012.

Architecture and construction

New Broadcasting House was built on a site bounded by Oxford Road, Charles Street, Princess Street and Brancaster Road. To the rear of the building was the River Medlock. A compulsory purchase order for the site was approved by the Minister of Housing and Local Government on 21 July 1967 and planning began the same year. Planning permission was granted in December 1968. Designs by an external architect were abandoned in February 1970 in favour of plans by R. A. Sparks from the BBC's Architectural and Civil Engineering Department. New planning permission was granted in March 1971, and construction began in December 1971 and was completed in 1975. Construction was in three stages – the network production centre for local radio and outside broadcasts, a rehearsal studio for the Northern Symphony Orchestra and the regional television centre. Radio Manchester was built on the upper ground floor in the west of the office block with a 754 square metre area. Studio A, a 453 square metre television studio, was built in the single-storey building behind the office block. The central technical area was next to the TV and radio studios. A 180-seat restaurant was built on the second floor. The view from the top of the building was of the Mancunian Way. The building was supported on 214 piles, bored to a maximum depth of around 13 metres. The building frame was made of reinforced concrete infilled with flat soffit slabs and 2,100 square metres of windows. Its architecture has been ridiculed as 'drab' and unfit for the 21st century.

History

Before New Broadcasting House opened, the BBC's Manchester base was at Broadcasting House in Piccadilly, and from 1958 it occupied four floors of Peter House in St Peter's Square. Dickenson Road Studios, the former studio of Mancunian Films in Rusholme, was bought in 1954 and Milton Hall on Deansgate was the home of the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra which became the BBC Philharmonic in 1982. The BBC also bought The Playhouse in Hulme in 1955 for use as a TV and radio recording studio, then as a studio for radio and music rehearsals only from the mid-1960s. The last broadcast was in 1986 and it was sold in 1989. The BBC studio was based in the smaller of two theatres in the same building known as Hulme Hippodrome, the entire building having been opened in two phases in 1901 and 1902. Before buying its smaller twin, the BBC had rented the larger theatre for studio use on Sundays with live audiences from 1950 to 1956 and installed a wooden control room in the Circle seating area. Staff moved into the building on the weekend of 12–13 July 1975, and it was fully operational by September 1975 and officially inaugurated as the headquarters of BBC North on 18 June 1976. A second television studio was opened in May 1981 for regional TV news, leading to the closure of Broadcasting House in Piccadilly after 52 years. About 800 staff worked at the site. New Broadcasting House was home to BBC Manchester, BBC Radio Manchester, BBC North West, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and the BBC Religion and Ethics Department. On opening, the radio station was named BBC Radio Manchester; it changed its name to BBC GMR (and briefly, GMR Talk) before reverting to its original name in April 2006. In 2010, the building was offered for sale as the BBC's move to MediaCityUK rendered it surplus to requirements and it was sold for £10 million in April 2011. The BBC sign from the front of the building was removed in November 2011 shortly after the last department, regional TV, moved to MediaCityUK ending 35 years of broadcasting from the studios on Sunday 27 November 2011.

See also Circle Square Manchester Granada Studios – ITV Granada's base in Manchester 3SixtyMedia – BBC Manchester and Granada joint venture

References

External links

Tours of the building (from archive.org) TV Ark

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with New Broadcasting House, Manchester

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what New Broadcasting House, Manchester claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to New Broadcasting House, Manchester before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about New Broadcasting House, Manchester ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of New Broadcasting House, Manchester

In research: New Broadcasting House, Manchester appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses New Broadcasting House, Manchester in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: New Broadcasting House, Manchester is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1976 establishments in England, BBC offices, studios and buildings, Buildings and structures completed in 1976, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for New Broadcasting House, Manchester outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study New Broadcasting House, Manchester in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what New Broadcasting House, Manchester means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain New Broadcasting House, Manchester out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is New Broadcasting House, Manchester in simple terms?

Why does New Broadcasting House, Manchester matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study New Broadcasting House, Manchester?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on New Broadcasting House, Manchester.