All part of my plan to make use of my car to get out and about a bit more during my free time, I travelled up to Birmingham yesterday, in order to visit the BBC studios there.
It was for one of those guided tours the BBC offers to the public via its website – something different to do besides work and attempting run a community radio station.
BBC Birmingham is home to BBC Midlands Today – the regional news service for the West Midlands… the programme we get at Granny’s house. The Midlands Today studio was the first stop on the tour, along with the gallery, where I’m not sure the tour guide was expecting anyone to be able to correctly identify the vision mixer…
We spoke a lot about radio – Birmingham being home to shows such as the Archers, Home Front, some Asian Network shows as well as some of Radio 2’s specialist shows.
The building is also home to BBC WM, the local radio station for Birmingham. We paid a brief visit to one of their studios, where I was pleased to see they do still have a record player – identical to the one in my bedroom – connected to the studio equipment.
The tour guides were very informative, and talked a lot about the network programmes the BBC makes there – it’s not just local radio and TV based there, there’s much more going on which I hadn’t appreciated until now.
I must get back in to doing radio properly soon. It’s been too long…
FH.
