In an interview with the Telegraph Ant and Dec have criticised the media being centered around London, stating they only got the opportunities they did thanks to Byker Grove and Tyne Tees being based in Newcastle.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2021/05/0...nt-change/
(Article was free for me)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-56993225
Quote:“When we were growing up we had shows like Auf Wiedersehen Pet and Jossy’s Giants on TV,” Anthony McPartlin recalls with wide-eyed enthusiasm. “Catherine Cooksons were being filmed up the road in Northumberland, you had Tyne Tees down the road where they filmed The Tube. You read the stories of the bands going up from London on the train, getting absolutely trolleyed, and giving some of the best performances. It felt like TV was an accessible place for two lads from Newcastle. These days that seems to have gone by the wayside.”
“TV got very London centric in the 1990s/early Noughties,” agrees his lifelong sparring partner Declan Donnelly. “The energy it brings to a city if you’ve got a good media hub - when we were growing up it was all around us. I think that stopped and we’d like to try and bring a bit of that back.”
They're not saying anything we haven't for years. The interview seems to be about a touring training scheme rather than them establishing a production house based in Newcastle. As much as ITV needed to streamline it's still such a shame the creative side of the industry was largely shut down in many regions when they were cut back to solely news operations.
Would be nice next year perhaps for them to do the SNT Finale from Newcastle rather than a US theme park - think that would probably make for a better 90 minutes of TV.
Hell has more chance of freezing over than SNT taking place in Newcastle.
They are correct. The industry narrative, particularly in the BBC over the past 10 years is that everything's being moved out of London but in a lot of cases it's just counteracting the trend from the decade before when everything moved to London.
At one point the TV schedules every day were full of programmes made all over the country then gradually regional centres closed and it all moved to London. Daytime is a good example - the BBC and ITV schedules all came live from Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham
Inspector Sands post_id=10774 time=1620214693 user_id=1003 Wrote:They are correct. The industry narrative, particularly in the BBC over the past 10 years is that everything's being moved out of London but in a lot of cases it's just counteracting the trend from the decade before when everything moved to London.
At one point the TV schedules every day were full of programmes made all over the country then gradually regional centres closed and it all moved to London. Daytime is a good example - the BBC and ITV schedules all came live from Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham
There does seem to be this thing not just in television but in politics of trying to spread the wealth to the rest of the country. There does to need be a balance of moving things out of London but not abandon London entirely which I admit isn't likely since it's still is and always will be a key part of the overall UK economy.
London is the capital, while it is possible to relocate a lot of stuff out and water down the dependence on London, it's never going to change completely because London is the capital. Unless the capital is moved and the BBC etc move their newsroom etc with it. London is always going to be the core, no spin will change that.
XIII post_id=10775 time=1620214981 user_id=894 Wrote:Inspector Sands post_id=10774 time=1620214693 user_id=1003 Wrote:They are correct. The industry narrative, particularly in the BBC over the past 10 years is that everything's being moved out of London but in a lot of cases it's just counteracting the trend from the decade before when everything moved to London.
At one point the TV schedules every day were full of programmes made all over the country then gradually regional centres closed and it all moved to London. Daytime is a good example - the BBC and ITV schedules all came live from Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham
There does seem to be this thing not just in television but in politics of trying to spread the wealth to the rest of the country. There does to need be a balance of moving things out of London but not abandon London entirely which I admit isn't likely since it's still is and always will be a key part of the overall UK economy.
There's an EXTREMELY long way to go before London is abandoned. The UK is incredibly centralised in all kinds of ways.
They could in part change that surely with where they record parts of all of their Saturday night programme surely? Their comedy sketch thing in the last series was filmed on a site near Watford
They have a point. They owe a lot to regional broadcasting for BBC North East commissioning Byker Grove and even for Tyne Tees commissioning Gimme 5 which gave them their first break at becoming presenters with Jenny Powell and Nobby the Sheep.
But they can criticise all they want, their ‘baby’ Saturday Night Takeaway could easily come from MediaCityUK if they felt that strongly towards regional Northern broadcasting. But I should imagine they wouldn’t want the commute to Salford from their homes in London. And so that’s case closed really.
You used to see a lot of daytime TV coming from the regions. Trisha from Norwich, This Morning from Liverpool, Good Morning with Anne & Nick from Birmingham, Take The High Road from Scotland.
Alas no more. Birmingham especially has become extremely underrepresented on Television since productions from Pebble Mill started to dwindle in the late 90’s. It’s a shame to see how it’s become.
RDJ post_id=10792 time=1620222742 user_id=831 Wrote:Alas no more. Birmingham especially has become extremely underrepresented on Television since productions from Pebble Mill started to dwindle in the late 90’s. It’s a shame to see how it’s become.
There is going to be more TV production in Birmingham as there are new studios being built or planning to be built.
I agree with what they are saying but they are in a better position than us to try and change that.
Take SNT to a different location each week, or set location for a series. Hire more talent from around the UK. Get the Tyne Tees weather man to do the competitions rather than Andi Peters.
The issue with the suggestions of taking SNT on tour is that there are very limited studio spaces to take on a show of its size plus it would cost a lot of money to keeping moving the show to a different location each week.
Auf Weidersehen Pet was mostly filmed at ATV Elstree not the North East.
The first series anyway. The second was filmed in Nottingham... though that's not the north east either. But is also somewhere that was a production powerhouse in the 80s and 90s, but no longer has any studios.
I can't think of a big enough studio space in Newcastle that would accommodate SNT. It would have to be in a space that was then transformed into a studio.
They're on The One Show tonight.