BBC North is a brand used by the BBC to mean any of the following.
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The first BBC North was a large region, starting in Radio and supplemented by Television, based in Manchester and containing the areas now served by BBC North West, BBC North East and Cumbria, BBC Yorkshire and BBC Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. It broadcast from the BBC's very first regional TV studio – Studio A at Dickenson Road – which it had bought from Mancunian Films in 1954.[1]
Following the formation of other regional news services from island operations, and from the report Broadcasting in the Seventies, the BBC North region was split into BBC North West from Manchester and BBC North from Leeds (BBC North East from Newcastle having been formed in 1962 as a response to Tyne Tees Television which had gone on air in 1959).
Based at the Broadcasting Centre in Woodhouse Lane, Leeds it was the production centre for the regional news programme Look North and BBC Local Radio station BBC Radio Leeds.
The Leeds island site went on air on 25 March 1968 as a response to the imminent opening of Yorkshire Television, the new ITV contractor based in Leeds serving the area east of the Pennines, formerly part of the Granada Television area. And in a similar manner to the impending ITV east-west Granada-Yorkshire split, the BBC divided the old North Region (based in Manchester) into BBC North-West (Manchester) and the new BBC North (Leeds).
This enabled a separate edition of Look North to be produced, initially from All Souls in Blackman Lane - a church hall near Woodhouse Lane - using equipment from a redundant OB scanner plus "mobile" telecine and film processing vans (the latter obtained from BBC TV News in London). Until this time, BBC viewers here had only the Manchester edition of the regional opt-out to watch, just as on ITV, Granada had been the only choice of regional news magazine programme for the entire Lancashire & Yorkshire viewing area.
Leeds was to have the third incarnation of the BBC programme called Look North; the others continued to be produced in Newcastle, another island site, and in Manchester, which was also the BBC Network Production Centre (NPC) in the north of England.
In 1974[2] the programme moved into a new colour studio equipped with EMI 2001 cameras in the newly built Broadcasting Centre adjacent to Broadcasting House, in Woodhouse Lane, where it then stayed for thirty years until the studio was demolished in 2004.[3]
Following the success of the opt-out for the south east of the region, this region was given its own specialist news programme, also called Look North. As a result, in June 2004, BBC North was split to form BBC Yorkshire and BBC Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. BBC Yorkshire is based in new premises in St. Peter's Square, Leeds, transmitting from Emley Moor (and satellite channel 976) to a population of around 4 million, with BBC Yorkshire and Lincolnshire in Queen's Court in Hull transmitting from Belmont (and satellite channel 977) to around 1.7 million.
Between 1990 and 1996, the three northern regions of BBC North West, BBC North East and BBC North merged their administration and managerial departments as a cost saving measure. The new service was centred on New Broadcasting House in Manchester. The new service produced all of the regional programming, and all the regions used BBC North on-screen branding, but still retained the unique identity of the regional news programmes. The operation also became head of the Network Production Centre at Manchester, making BBC North one of the biggest producers of network television outside London. The regions were separated in 1996 in a drive to serve the regions better, which could not be done from Manchester alone.
BBC North Group is the name of the group of BBC departments that will soon be located at MediaCityUK, as part of the "BBC North Project", also called "Out of London". This group is then directly answerable to the Director General's Office and the BBC Trust. The group contains the BBC Sport department, along with CBBC, CBeebies, BBC Learning, BBC Breakfast, BBC Radio 5 Live, the BBC Philharmonic and parts of BBC Future Media. Also making the move is BBC Manchester Network Production Centre and BBC North West, but it is unclear as to whether these will become part of this group or not.[4][5]
The project began in 2006 when Salford was named as the chosen location by the Board of Governors[6] and in 2007 the go-ahead was given to the project by the BBC Trust.[7]
The operation at MediaCityUK is now operated as BBC North by the BBC.
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