Broadcasting House
Broadcasting House is the headquarters of the BBC, in Portland Place and Langham Place, London. The first radio broadcast from the building was made on 15 March 1932, and the building was officially opened two months later, on 15 May. The main building is in Art Deco style, with a facing of Portland stone over a steel frame. It is a Grade II* listed building and includes the BBC Radio Theatre, where music and speech programmes are recorded in front of a studio audience.
This article is about the BBC's headquarters. For the BBC's former facilities in Manchester, see New Broadcasting House, Manchester.BBC Broadcasting House
NBH, OBH, BH, BBC Broadcasting House
Portland Place
London[2]
United Kingdom
21 November 1928
15 March 1932
British Broadcasting Corporation
34 m (112 ft)
9 above ground, 3 below ground
Marmaduke T. Tudsbery
Broadcasting House
16 January 1981
As part of a major consolidation of the BBC's property portfolio in London, Broadcasting House has been extensively renovated and extended. This involved the demolition of post-war extensions on the eastern side of the building, replaced by a new wing completed in 2005. The wing was named the "John Peel Wing" in 2012, after the disc jockey. BBC London, BBC Arabic Television and BBC Persian Television are housed in the new wing, which also contains the reception area for BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 1Xtra (the studios themselves are in the new extension to the main building). Since February 2024 BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 6 Music have moved in, opposite the BBC Radio 1 studios on the 8th floor. This was created by converting office space, after the decision to move out of Wogan House was made.
The main building was refurbished, and an extension built to the rear. The radio stations BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 4 Extra and the BBC World Service transferred to refurbished studios within the building. The extension links the old building with the John Peel Wing, and includes a new combined newsroom for BBC News, with studios for the BBC News channel, BBC World News and other news programming. The move of news operations from BBC Television Centre was completed in March 2013.[3]
The official name of the building is Broadcasting House but the BBC now also uses the term “new Broadcasting House” (with a lowercase 'n') in its publicity referring to the new extension rather than the whole building, with the original building known as “old Broadcasting House”.[4]
Studios[edit]
Original[edit]
When built, Broadcasting House contained 22 radio studios[23][24] for all programme genres, in the art-deco style with an emphasis on both looks and practicality. The practicality of the studios diminished rapidly as a result of the changing nature of broadcasting and changes in the required uses of the studios. These studios and their original intended roles were:
Broadcasting House in literature[edit]
The earliest use of Broadcasting House as a setting in fiction would seem to be in the 1934 detective novel Death at Broadcasting House by Val Gielgud and Holt Marvell (Eric Maschwitz), where an actor is found strangled in Studio 7C. Broadcasting House is a central feature in Penelope Fitzgerald's novel Human Voices, published in 1980, where the lead characters work for the BBC during the Second World War.[51] It is also the work place of Alexander Wedderburn in A. S. Byatt's 1995 novel Still Life,[52] and Sam Bell in Ben Elton's 1999 novel Inconceivable,[53] and also that of the evil nazi-sympathiser Ezzy Pound in Michael Paraskos's 2016 novel In Search of Sixpence.[54] The building is well realised as a setting in Nicola Upson's 2015 mystery novel London Rain.
MI5 involvement[edit]
In 1985 it was revealed by The Observer that MI5 had had a special office in the building from 1937[57] for the purpose of vetting BBC employees for national security purposes.[58]