Leaving London
Year: 2023
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: In April 2012, the BBC relocated a portion of its television production from London’s Television Centre, its home since 1960, to MediaCity in Salford, just outside Manchester. In March 2018, Channel 4 announced similar plans to move its headquarters to Leeds, with regional hubs planned for Bristol and Glasgow. Both moves came at a time when the broadcasters were facing political pressure over their funding and a perceived content bias that neglected the UK nations and regions beyond London. This chapter uses the BBC and Channel 4’s moves to interrogate the role that location plays within television policy. Although financially and politically motivated, political and industrial discourses framed the BBC and Channel 4 moving to ‘the north’ as improving the broadcasters’ ‘regional diversity’. However, while ‘regional diversity’ was wielded discursively, it was also symbolic in a way that obscured the assumptions, political motivations and limitations that lay underneath both moves.
Source: Routledge eBooks
Author: Elizabeth Evans
Language: English
Subfield: Communication
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4383820336