"BBC Transmission - Aiming at the Future"  -  The Movie!

Return to Transmitter Projects or Transmitter Operations

In 1987 the Transmission Engineering and Transmission Operations departments merged to become "BBC Transmission" and a new headquarters building was established at Warwick.  In the run up to this, Transmission Engineering had been formed from Transmitter Capital Projects Department and the Projects part of Communications Department.  Also Transmission Operations had been formed from Transmitter Operations and the Operations part of Communications Department (although the latter subsequently moved to another part of the BBC).

In 1988 the possibility of privatisation emerged as indicated in this cutting from Ariel, the BBC Staff newspaper, dated 9 November 1988:

In this context, it was decided that a video should be made to help people appreciate the scale and diversity of activities carried out by BBC Transmission.  The budget was tight and the video needed to be produced by people with a good appreciation of broadcast engineering.  Fortunately two BBC Transmission engineers based at Lerwick had the necessary professional experience, expertise and equipment, so they were commissioned to make the video.  John Waters and Andy Long visited representative sites around the UK and the result, with narration by John Fergusson, can be seen below.

The video was made in 1990 and as a result of privatisation in 1997 the copyright was transferred.
It is now owned by: VT Communications and National Grid Wireless.
Their permission for publication on www.bbceng.info in 2007 is gratefully acknowledged.

The book "On Air - A History of BBC Transmission" provides more information on the period up to 1997.  One day, perhaps someone will write about the privatisation and beyond.