Inside City Road 

15 January 2016 tbs.pm/8302

For the launch of Tyne Tees Television in 15 January 1959, The Viewer, TTT’s listings magazine, gave the region a quick look around the new TTT studios on City Road in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. We reprint the feature in full below.

 

 

From derelict warehouses to one of the finest TV studios in the country in less than six months – that is the story of the new TV centre in City Road, Newcastle.

Two warehouses divided by a wooden shed were stripped to a shell to leave 400,000 sq ft (37,160m²) of space for the building.

Not an inch of that space has been wasted. TTT chiefs, led by Director George Black and Programme Controller Bill Lyon-Shaw, knew exactly what was wanted and proceeded to make their dreams of the ideal TV studio a concrete fact.

“Planned economy” is the result. Everything is streamlined to side-step hitches.

Programmes will reach your fireside from three studios – big shows from No 1, smaller shows and advertising magazines from 2 and news and interviews from 3.

In the middle of the group of studios and control-rooms is the Master Control – centre of the web – including Ampex equipment, which records both sound and vision and can be played back almost instantaneously.

Played a leading part
A man who has played a leading part in creating the new TV centre is Tyne Tees managing director Anthony Jelly. Aged 37, Mr Jelly has had extensive television experience in Scotland and London/ He is married, with two children, and lives lives at Humshaugh, near Hexham.

No other studio in the country has had the advantage of beginning with this equipment.

Looking like a Hammond electric organ, the huge lighting control unit acts as nerve centre for 102 different circuits.

A mains electricity sub-station ensures that power cuts do not affect the studio.

No effort has been spared to make the TTT Television Centre a studio of which the North-East can be justly proud.

 

You Say

2 responses to this article

Alexander Punton 16 January 2016 at 3:09 am

Six months to convert, but only three months to be demolished and the site to be cleared.

Mark 17 January 2016 at 7:15 pm

Not sure the author of the piece had a full grip on the role of a floor manager – “directing camera operations during a show”!

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