Well, it finally happened!

On Tuesday 5th August, Debbie Shore kindly spent an hour and a half talking to Lee Bannister about what ATV and Central meant to her.

From her being crowned Miss ATV back in March 1979, through to Children's ITV, parts in Brookside, Coronation Street, Emmerdale Farm, the Carlton version of Crossroads, her time in panto, the Zippy love story, her current stint on shopping television, plus much more!

Interviewer Lee Bannister, cameramen Stephen Thwaites and Peter Raven, and of course the rest of the ATVLAND Productions crew would just like to say a big thanks to Debbie for giving up her valuable time to talk to us.

Debbie definitely had a few stories to share and was great to listen to. Thanks must also go to Dan Baker (Steves work colleague) and Lorna Moore for helping us get in contact with Debbie in the first place.

A true professional. Many thanks again. 

Rearching moves on apace!

Recently some members of the production team went to the Birmingham Central Library to do some further research. It's amazing what you can find!

We always knew that the Birmingham Post had produced a special edition on the day of the official opening of the centre in 1970. Indeed, a number of sections of this special edition have been published online over the years, but we wanted to actually go back to the original newspaper. This we did and we discovered that it really is an eyeopening piece. It includes excellent articles on the reasons behind the centre being built, the construction process, as well as a great deal of trumpet-blowing from ATV too (it really was a big thing at the time you know). You'll hopefully be able to see bits of this special edition, as well as the original report of Princess Alexandra's visit to the studios (published in the following day's edition) within the final programme.

Peter Thomas concentrated on looking into the Geography of the area around the ATV Centre. He was able to look back to the 19th Century when the area was very different indeed. Pete managed to trace what happened on the site over the course of 100 years, and much of what he discovered can be found on the ATV Forums: Click Here

Did you know that if you take the train into Birmingham from the direction of Wolverhampton, you'll pass directly underneath the exact spot where "Central House" used to stand?

Peter Raven and Stephen Thwaites managed to get hold of some great information and photographs of the area to illustrate just how the Centre came into being, and what the "Broad Street Corner" looked like all those years ago.

While we were there, we also took the opportunity to look up the best way to make a TV programme. We found a number of nice picture books such as "The Complete Guide To Making a Video". I seem to remember reading it when I was at school aged 8. An invaluable tome indeed! Must keep it handy at all times...

Finally a trawl through many old copies of TV Times has revealed a number of interesting features on both ATV and Central during their time at the Centre.

All very useful information, and the whole thing's shaping up nicely.

By the way, there are some very interesting things in the pipeline too at the moment. Watch this space...