What is a TV Centre?
A play, perhaps, or a comedy show, or a current affairs programme, brought to your screen ‘from the North’, by Granada.
How does it get there? How is it produced? Where does it come from?
This booklet tells you about Granada’s TV Centre: how it works; how Granada programmes are devised, produced, and transmitted; how they are developed from an idea to become the picture on your screen.
In 1955 Granada bought a derelict five acre site in the heart of Manchester. The bulldozers moved in, the builders followed, then came the electronic engineers. Between them they created what is today one of the most up-to-the-minute television centres in the world — the Granada TV Centre, Manchester.
It was designed by Ralph Tubbs, the architect who designed the Dome of Discovery at the Festival of Britain in 1951.
From the North Granada presents
Weeks, perhaps months, of hard work have now come to a climax as millions of viewers switch on to watch the result.
Every year Granada produces about 1500 separate studio programmes. They are of all sorts: entertainment, education, information. They include plays, drama series, current affairs and documentaries, comedy shows, music, opera and ballet, question and answer quizzes, children’s programmes, adult education, schools programmes, news and magazine programmes.
These, and the next two pages, illustrate a few of them.