Newcastle Local History Group: Happy New Year

Happy New year to all our readers and the Local History Group. Although we have only been going since the spring of 2015 we had regular meetings at the Hancock Museum with some interesting and educational discussions along with trips out and about and some fascinating articles published by our members. The latest one included in this blog is from Peter who has written a review of our trip to The BBC at Barrack road which he successfully organised, along with his review are some splendid photographs of our members in the studios. We had a great time and would like to thank Peter for all his efforts.
One of our main concerns last year was the change in funding to Local Adult Education in Newcastle. It was through the efforts of our group and Michael's class that we obtained a reversal of the current funding back to its original price. We should give ourselves a good pat on the back for achieving this. However we should still be vigilant and try and address some of the inequalities that the current funding has on people who are on benefits.
Working together as a group dedicated to Local History has been very rewarding and we have benefited form the collective knowledge of our friends and our mentor Michael. Let us see the New Year as an opportunity to explore and gain knowledge of our rich and unique local history and contribute to this rich tapestry of knowledge so that every one benefits.

Next Meeting of the Local History Group

Our next meeting will be held on Wednesday January 6, 10:30 at the upstairs cafe in the Hancock Museum, if you have any interesting new finds or some old material on local history you want to discuss please bring it along.

Newcastle Local History Group - Visit to BBC Newcastle by Peter Sutherland

Ten members of our group attended a tour of BBC Newcastle (the pink palace) on 9th December 2015. We congregated at Greys Monument and took the number 63 bus along to Barrack Road.

The early birds Maureen and Ann turned up at the BBC and Peter took the photograph

We were given a warm welcome by our guides Mark and Carol who were very informative and entertaining throughout. They began by giving us a brief history of the BBC in Newcastle - its first radio broadcast took place in 1923 from their original premises at the former ‘Lying-In’ hospital in New Bridge Street in the centre of Newcastle. The 18th century part of these original studios is a listed building and is now used by an insurance company. A later sixties extension was demolished to make way for offices in 1987.

We visited the BBC archive where material is stored for posterity. The formats in use range from large old-fashioned metal-cased tape spools down to VHS size, to cassette size and now to SD card sized storage methods. Carol advised us that there is an even larger archive on Tees side which contains material from both the BBC and Tyne Tees Television and which can be accessed for a fee.

We moved on to the TV studio which contains the furniture and backgrounds familiar to us from ‘Look North’. Although they vary the furniture and backgrounds for particular shows, the physical space used is exactly the same. We all enjoyed having our photographs taken on the set. Whilst there, we were visited by Colin Briggs who regaled us with 20 minutes of interesting anecdotes about his life as a TV journalist and gave us some insights into how news bulletins are pulled together.

Next was the Media Control suite where we were warned not to touch anything. This dimly lit room is the nerve-centre of the operation where the Producers and Directors make real-time decisions about what to broadcast and when. A monitor, linked to the national BBC network, is displayed so that switching between national and local output is performed accurately to the exact second.

Finally, we were given the opportunity to participate in simulated radio and television recordings. For the radio, some were given speaking parts reading from a script, some were given control of pre-recorded sound effects and some had to perform physical sound effects. The television element was easier because the participants had the benefit of an auto-cue. The general news and sports news went reasonably smoothly but our weather girl (in fairness, without the benefit of the auto-cue) became a little flustered and didn’t seem to know her isobars from her elbow.