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...
2 comments:
I must stress that those 'How To Make A Video' books are indeed very cheesy and quite outdated these days! We were only looking through them for a laugh. Or at least, I was!
I also helped to
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