The Haçienda
The Haçienda was a nightclub and music venue in Manchester, which became famous in the Madchester years of the 1980s and early 1990s. The Haçienda opened in 1982, despite considerable and persistent financial troubles survived until 1997—the club was supported by record sales from New Order; the Haçienda is associated with the rise of acid rave music. The former warehouse occupied by the club was at 11-13, Whitworth Street West on the south side of the Rochdale Canal: the frontage was curved and built of red brick. Before it was turned into a club, The Haçienda was a yacht builder's warehouse. Conceived by Rob Gretton, it was financed by the record label Factory Records and the band New Order along with label boss Tony Wilson, it was on the corner of Whitworth Street West and Albion Street, close to Castlefield, in the centre of the city. FAC 51 was its official designation in the Factory catalogue. New Order and Tony Wilson were directors of the club. Designed by Ben Kelly, upon recommendation by Factory graphic designer Peter Saville, upstairs consisted of a stage, dance area, cloakroom, cafeteria area and balcony with a DJ booth.
Downstairs was a cocktail bar called The Gay Traitor, which referred to Anthony Blunt, a British art historian who spied for the Soviet Union. The two other bars, The Kim Philby and Hicks, were named after Blunt's fellow spies. From 1995 onwards, the lower cellar areas of the venue were converted to create the 5th Man, a smaller music venue; the name comes from a slogan of the radical group Situationist International: "The Hacienda Must Be Built", from Formulary for a New Urbanism by Ivan Chtcheglov. A hacienda is a large homestead in a ranch or estate in places where Colonial Spanish culture has had architectural influence. Though the cedilla is not used in Spanish, the spelling "Haçienda" was decided on for the club because the cedilla makes the "çi" resemble "51", the club's catalogue number; the Haçienda was opened on 21 May 1982, when the comedian Bernard Manning remarked to the audience, "I've played some shit-holes during my time, but this is something." His jokes did not go down well with the crowd and he returned his fee.
A wide range of musical acts appeared at the club. One of the earliest was the German EBM band Liaisons Dangereuses, which played there on 7 July 1982; the Smiths performed there three times in 1983. It served as a venue for Madonna on her first performance in the United Kingdom, on 27 January 1984, she was invited to appear as part of a one-off, live television broadcast by Channel 4 music programme The Tube. Madonna performed "Holiday" whilst at The Haçienda and the performance was described by Norman Cook as one that "mesmerised the crowd". At one time, the venue included a hairdressing salon; as well as club nights there were regular concerts, including one in which Einstürzende Neubauten drilled into the walls that surrounded the stage. In 1986, it became one of the first British clubs to start playing house music, with DJs Mike Pickering and Little Martin hosting the visionary "Nude" night on Fridays; this night became legendary, helped to turn around the reputation and fortunes of The Haçienda, which went from making a consistent loss to being full every night of the week by early 1987.
The growth of the'Madchester' scene had little to do with the healthy house music scene in Manchester at the time but it was boosted by the success of The Haçienda's pioneering Ibiza night, "Hot", an acid house night hosted by Pickering and Jon DaSilva in July 1988. However, drug use became a problem. On 14 July 1989, the UK's first ecstasy-related death occurred at the club; the police clampdown that followed was opposed by Manchester City Council, which argued that the club contributed to an "active use of the city centre core" in line with the government's policy of regenerating urban areas. The resulting problems caused the club to close for a short period in early 1991, before reopening with increased security the same year. Haçienda DJs made regular and guest appearances on radio and TV shows like Granada TV's Juice, Sunset 102 and BBC Radio 1. Between 1994 and 1997 Hacienda FM was a weekly show on Manchester dance station Kiss 102. Security was a problem in the club's latter years. There were several shootings inside and outside the club, relations with the police and licensing authorities became troubled.
When local magistrates and police visited the club in 1997, they witnessed a near-fatal assault on a man in the streets outside when 18-year-old Andrew Delahunty was hit over the head from behind with what looked like a metal bar before being pushed into the path of an on-coming car. Although security failures at the club were one of the contributing factors to the club closing, the most cause was its finances; the club did not make enough money from the sale of alcohol, this was because many patrons instead turned to drug use. As a result, the club broke as alcohol sales are the main source of income for nightclubs; the club's long-term future was crippled and, with spiralling debts, The Haçienda closed definitively in the summer of 1997. Peter Hook stated in 2009; the Haçienda lost its entertainments licence in June 1997. The last night of the club was 28 June 1997, a club night called "Freak" featuring DJs Elliot Eastwick and Dave Haslam; the club remained open for a short period as an art gallery before going bankrupt and
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters are at Broadcasting House in Westminster, it is the world's oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees, it employs over 20,950 staff in total. The total number of staff is 35,402 when part-time and fixed-contract staff are included; the BBC is established under a Royal Charter and operates under its Agreement with the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture and Sport. Its work is funded principally by an annual television licence fee, charged to all British households and organisations using any type of equipment to receive or record live television broadcasts and iPlayer catch-up; the fee is set by the British Government, agreed by Parliament, used to fund the BBC's radio, TV, online services covering the nations and regions of the UK. Since 1 April 2014, it has funded the BBC World Service, which broadcasts in 28 languages and provides comprehensive TV, online services in Arabic and Persian.
Around a quarter of BBC revenues come from its commercial arm BBC Studios Ltd, which sells BBC programmes and services internationally and distributes the BBC's international 24-hour English-language news services BBC World News, from BBC.com, provided by BBC Global News Ltd. From its inception, through the Second World War, to the 21st century, the BBC has played a prominent role in British culture, it is known colloquially as "The Beeb", "Auntie", or a combination of both. Britain's first live public broadcast from the Marconi factory in Chelmsford took place in June 1920, it was sponsored by the Daily Mail's Lord Northcliffe and featured the famous Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba. The Melba broadcast caught the people's imagination and marked a turning point in the British public's attitude to radio. However, this public enthusiasm was not shared in official circles where such broadcasts were held to interfere with important military and civil communications. By late 1920, pressure from these quarters and uneasiness among the staff of the licensing authority, the General Post Office, was sufficient to lead to a ban on further Chelmsford broadcasts.
But by 1922, the GPO had received nearly 100 broadcast licence requests and moved to rescind its ban in the wake of a petition by 63 wireless societies with over 3,000 members. Anxious to avoid the same chaotic expansion experienced in the United States, the GPO proposed that it would issue a single broadcasting licence to a company jointly owned by a consortium of leading wireless receiver manufactures, to be known as the British Broadcasting Company Ltd. John Reith, a Scottish Calvinist, was appointed its General Manager in December 1922 a few weeks after the company made its first official broadcast; the company was to be financed by a royalty on the sale of BBC wireless receiving sets from approved domestic manufacturers. To this day, the BBC aims to follow the Reithian directive to "inform and entertain"; the financial arrangements soon proved inadequate. Set sales were disappointing as amateurs made their own receivers and listeners bought rival unlicensed sets. By mid-1923, discussions between the GPO and the BBC had become deadlocked and the Postmaster-General commissioned a review of broadcasting by the Sykes Committee.
The Committee recommended a short term reorganisation of licence fees with improved enforcement in order to address the BBC's immediate financial distress, an increased share of the licence revenue split between it and the GPO. This was to be followed by a simple 10 shillings licence fee with no royalty once the wireless manufactures protection expired; the BBC's broadcasting monopoly was made explicit for the duration of its current broadcast licence, as was the prohibition on advertising. The BBC was banned from presenting news bulletins before 19.00 and was required to source all news from external wire services. Mid-1925 found the future of broadcasting under further consideration, this time by the Crawford committee. By now, the BBC, under Reith's leadership, had forged a consensus favouring a continuation of the unified broadcasting service, but more money was still required to finance rapid expansion. Wireless manufacturers were anxious to exit the loss making consortium with Reith keen that the BBC be seen as a public service rather than a commercial enterprise.
The recommendations of the Crawford Committee were published in March the following year and were still under consideration by the GPO when the 1926 general strike broke out in May. The strike temporarily interrupted newspaper production, with restrictions on news bulletins waived, the BBC became the primary source of news for the duration of the crisis; the crisis placed the BBC in a delicate position. On one hand Reith was acutely aware that the Government might exercise its right to commandeer the BBC at any time as a mouthpiece of the Government if the BBC were to step out of line, but on the other he was anxious to maintain public trust by appearing to be acting independently; the Government was divided on how to handle the BBC but ended up trusting Reith, whose opposition to the strike mirrored the PM's own. Thus the BBC was granted sufficient leeway to pursue the Government's objectives in a manner of its own choosing; the resulting coverage of both striker and government viewpoints impressed millions of listeners who were unaware that the PM had broadcast to the nation from Reith's home, using one of Reith's sound bites inserted at the last moment
Deyan Sudjic
Deyan Sudjic, is a British writer and broadcaster, specializing in the fields of design and architecture. He is the director of the Design London. Sudjic was educated at Latymer Upper School, at the time a Direct Grant Grammar School, based in Hammersmith in West London, he attended the University of Edinburgh. He grew up in London, his father worked for the BBC World Service. In 1970, as a teen, he contributed to Schoolkids OZ, the subject of an obscenity trial the following year. Sudjic was the design and architecture critic for The Observer, the Dean of the Faculty of Art and Architecture at Kingston University, visiting professor at the Royal College of Art, co-chair of the Urban Age Advisory Board. In 1983, he co-founded, with Peter Murray and Simon Esterson, Blueprint, a monthly architecture magazine and went on to be the magazine's editor and its editorial director. From 2000-04, he was the editor of Domus. In 2000, he was made OBE, he was the director of Glasgow's UK City of Architecture and Design program in 1999, the director of the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2002.
He was a juror for the design of London Aquatics Centre, designed and built for the 2012 Olympics by architect Dame Zaha Hadid. Sudjic became director of the Design Museum in 2006. In 2012, Sudjic was awarded an honorary degree from the University for the Creative Arts. Sudjic has contributed to The Guardian, the London Review of Books, other publications. Cult Objects. Paladin Books. 1985. ISBN 0-586-08483-5. Cult Heroes: How To Be Famous For More Than Fifteen Minutes. Andre Deutsch. 1989. ISBN 0-233-98355-4; the 100 Mile City. Harcourt. 1993. ISBN 0-15-642357-X. Ron Arad. Laurence King Publishing. 2001. ISBN 1-85669-258-2. Norman Foster and the British Museum. Prestel Verlag. 2001. ISBN 3-7913-2541-8. John Pawson Themes and Projects. Phaidon. 2004. ISBN 0-7148-4452-7. Future Systems. Phaidon. 2006. ISBN 0-7148-4469-1; the Edifice Complex: How the Powerful Shape the World. Penguin. 2006. ISBN 0-14-101672-8; the Language of Things: Understanding the World of Desirable Objects. W. W. Norton. 2009. ISBN 978-0-393-07081-1. Norman Foster: A Life in Architecture.
Weidenfeld. 2010. ISBN 978-0-297-85868-3. B is for Bauhaus. Particular Books. 2014. ISBN 9780140515930. Ettore Sottsass and the Poetry of Things. Phaidon. 2015. ISBN 9780714869537. Studio Banana TV interview Deyan Sudjic Deyan Sudjic on modernism Book Review by Amanda Levete "Deyan Sudjic OBE: Doctor of Letters". University of Brighton. Retrieved 7 September 2015
The Guardian
The Guardian is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as The Manchester Guardian, changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers The Observer and The Guardian Weekly, the Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust; the trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of the Guardian free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for The Guardian the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to shareholders; the current editor is Katharine Viner: she succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. Since 2018, the paper's main newsprint sections have been published in tabloid format; as of November that year, its print edition had a daily circulation of 136,834.
The newspaper has an online edition, TheGuardian.com, as well as two international websites, Guardian Australia and Guardian US. The paper's readership is on the mainstream left of British political opinion, its reputation as a platform for liberal and left-wing editorial has led to the use of the "Guardian reader" and "Guardianista" as often-pejorative epithets for those of left-leaning or "politically correct" tendencies. Frequent typographical errors in the paper led Private Eye magazine to dub it the "Grauniad" in the 1960s, a nickname still used today. In an Ipsos MORI research poll in September 2018 designed to interrogate the public's trust of specific titles online, The Guardian scored highest for digital-content news, with 84% of readers agreeing that they "trust what see in it". A December 2018 report of a poll by the Publishers Audience Measurement Company stated that the paper's print edition was found to be the most trusted in the UK in the period from October 2017 to September 2018.
It was reported to be the most-read of the UK's "quality newsbrands", including digital editions. While The Guardian's print circulation is in decline, the report indicated that news from The Guardian, including that reported online, reaches more than 23 million UK adults each month. Chief among the notable "scoops" obtained by the paper was the 2011 News International phone-hacking scandal—and in particular the hacking of the murdered English teenager Milly Dowler's phone; the investigation led to the closure of the News of the World, the UK's best-selling Sunday newspaper and one of the highest-circulation newspapers in history. In June 2013, The Guardian broke news of the secret collection by the Obama administration of Verizon telephone records, subsequently revealed the existence of the surveillance program PRISM after knowledge of it was leaked to the paper by the whistleblower and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. In 2016, The Guardian led an investigation into the Panama Papers, exposing then-Prime Minister David Cameron's links to offshore bank accounts.
It has been named "newspaper of the year" four times at the annual British Press Awards: most in 2014, for its reporting on government surveillance. The Manchester Guardian was founded in Manchester in 1821 by cotton merchant John Edward Taylor with backing from the Little Circle, a group of non-conformist businessmen, they launched their paper after the police closure of the more radical Manchester Observer, a paper that had championed the cause of the Peterloo Massacre protesters. Taylor had been hostile to the radical reformers, writing: "They have appealed not to the reason but the passions and the suffering of their abused and credulous fellow-countrymen, from whose ill-requited industry they extort for themselves the means of a plentiful and comfortable existence, they do not toil, neither do they spin, but they live better than those that do." When the government closed down the Manchester Observer, the mill-owners' champions had the upper hand. The influential journalist Jeremiah Garnett joined Taylor during the establishment of the paper, all of the Little Circle wrote articles for the new paper.
The prospectus announcing the new publication proclaimed that it would "zealously enforce the principles of civil and religious Liberty warmly advocate the cause of Reform endeavour to assist in the diffusion of just principles of Political Economy and support, without reference to the party from which they emanate, all serviceable measures". In 1825 the paper merged with the British Volunteer and was known as The Manchester Guardian and British Volunteer until 1828; the working-class Manchester and Salford Advertiser called the Manchester Guardian "the foul prostitute and dirty parasite of the worst portion of the mill-owners". The Manchester Guardian was hostile to labour's claims. Of the 1832 Ten Hours Bill, the paper doubted whether in view of the foreign competition "the passing of a law positively enacting a gradual destruction of the cotton manufacture in this kingdom would be a much less rational procedure." The Manchester Guardian dismissed strikes as the work of outside agitators: " if an accommodation can be effected, the occupation of the agents of the Union is gone.
They live on strife "The Manchester Guardian was critical of US President Abraham Lincoln's conduct during the US Civil War, writing on the news that Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated: "Of his rule, we can never speak except as a series of acts abhorrent to every true notion of constitutional right and human liberty " C. P. Scott ma
Lancashire
Lancashire is a ceremonial county in North West England. The administrative centre is Preston; the county has an area of 1,189 square miles. People from Lancashire are known as Lancastrians; the history of Lancashire begins with its founding in the 12th century. In the Domesday Book of 1086, some of its lands were treated as part of Yorkshire; the land that lay between the Ribble and Mersey, Inter Ripam et Mersam, was included in the returns for Cheshire. When its boundaries were established, it bordered Cumberland, Westmorland and Cheshire. Lancashire emerged as a major industrial region during the Industrial Revolution. Liverpool and Manchester grew into its largest cities, with economies built around the docks and the cotton mills respectively; these cities dominated the birth of modern industrial capitalism. The county contained the collieries of the Lancashire Coalfield. By the 1830s 85% of all cotton manufactured worldwide was processed in Lancashire. Accrington, Bolton, Bury, Colne, Manchester, Oldham, Preston and Wigan were major cotton mill towns during this time.
Blackpool was a centre for tourism for the inhabitants of Lancashire's mill towns during wakes week. The historic county was subject to a significant boundary reform in 1974 which created the current ceremonial county and removed Liverpool and Manchester, most of their surrounding conurbations to form the metropolitan and ceremonial counties of Merseyside and Greater Manchester; the detached northern part of Lancashire in the Lake District, including the Furness Peninsula and Cartmel, was merged with Cumberland and Westmorland to form Cumbria. Lancashire lost 709 square miles of land to other counties, about two fifths of its original area, although it did gain some land from the West Riding of Yorkshire. Today the ceremonial county borders Cumbria to the north, Greater Manchester and Merseyside to the south, North and West Yorkshire to the east; the county palatine boundaries remain the same as those of the pre-1974 county with Lancaster serving as the county town, the Duke of Lancaster exercising sovereignty rights, including the appointment of lords lieutenant in Greater Manchester and Merseyside..
The county was established in 1182 than many other counties. During Roman times the area was part of the Brigantes tribal area in the military zone of Roman Britain; the towns of Manchester, Ribchester, Burrow and Castleshaw grew around Roman forts. In the centuries after the Roman withdrawal in 410AD the northern parts of the county formed part of the Brythonic kingdom of Rheged, a successor entity to the Brigantes tribe. During the mid-8th century, the area was incorporated into the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria, which became a part of England in the 10th century. In the Domesday Book, land between the Ribble and Mersey were known as "Inter Ripam et Mersam" and included in the returns for Cheshire. Although some historians consider this to mean south Lancashire was part of Cheshire, it is by no means certain, it is claimed that the territory to the north formed part of the West Riding of Yorkshire. It bordered on Cumberland, Westmorland and Cheshire; the county was divided into hundreds, Blackburn, Lonsdale and West Derby.
Lonsdale was further partitioned into Lonsdale North, the detached part north of the sands of Morecambe Bay including Furness and Cartmel, Lonsdale South. Lancashire is smaller than its historical extent following a major reform of local government. In 1889, the administrative county of Lancashire was created, covering the historic county except for the county boroughs such as Blackburn, Barrow-in-Furness, Wigan and Manchester; the area served by the Lord-Lieutenant covered the entirety of the administrative county and the county boroughs, was expanded whenever boroughs annexed areas in neighbouring counties such as Wythenshawe in Manchester south of the River Mersey and in Cheshire, southern Warrington. It did not cover the western part of Todmorden, where the ancient border between Lancashire and Yorkshire passes through the middle of the town. During the 20th century, the county became urbanised the southern part. To the existing county boroughs of Barrow-in-Furness, Bolton, Burnley, Liverpool, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, St. Helens and Wigan were added Warrington and Southport.
The county boroughs had many boundary extensions. The borders around the Manchester area were complicated, with narrow protrusions of the administrative county between the county boroughs – Lees urban district formed a detached part of the administrative county, between Oldham county borough and the West Riding of Yorkshire. By the census of 1971, the population of Lancashire and its county boroughs had reached 5,129,416, making it the most populous geographic county in the UK; the administrative county was the most populous of its type outside London, with a population of 2,280,359 in 1961. On 1 April 1974, under the Local Government Act 1972, the administrative county was abolished, as were the county boroughs; the urbanised southern part became part of two metropolitan counties and Greater Manchester. The new county of Cumbria incorporates the Furness exclave; the boroughs of Liverpool, Knowsley, St. Helens and Sefton were included in Merseyside. In Greater Manchester the successor boroughs were
The Lowry
The Lowry is a theatre and gallery complex at Salford Quays, Greater Manchester, England. It is named after the early 20th century painter L. S. Lowry, known for his paintings of industrial scenes in North West England; the complex was opened on 12 October 2000 by Queen Elizabeth II. To redevelop the derelict Salford docks, Salford City Council developed a regeneration plan in 1988 for the brownfield site highlighting the leisure and tourism potential of the area, included a flagship development that would involve the creation of a performing arts centre; the initial proposals were for two theatres and an art gallery on a prominent site on Pier 8. Between 1990 and 1991 a competition was launched and architects James Stirling Michael Wilford Associates was selected. After the death of James Stirling in June 1992 Michael Wilford continued the project; the city council bid for Millennium and other British and European funds and private sector finance to progress the project. Funding was secured in 1996 and The Lowry Trust became responsible for the project which comprised The Lowry Centre, the plaza, a footbridge, a retail outlet shopping mall and Digital World Centre.
The National Lottery provided over £21 million of funding towards its construction. The project was completed in 1999 at a cost of £106 million; the Lowry name was adopted in honour of L. S. Lowry. In 2002, a nearby shopping centre, named after Lowry was opened; the complex is close to the Old Trafford football stadium. It is served by the MediaCityUK stop on the Metrolink tram network. In 2010 and 2011 it was Greater Manchester's most visited tourist attraction. A sting operation by the Salford Star in 2006 attempted to demonstrate intolerance towards unaccompanied teenagers in hoodies entering the complex; the complex was designed by Michael Wilford with structural engineer Buro Happold and constructed by Bovis Construction. Groundbreaking took place on 19 June 1997; the Lowry has a triangular plan. A promenade encircling the building provides views of the Manchester Ship Canal, MediaCityUK and the Salford Quays developments; the foyer faces the public plaza, where there is a large aerofoil canopy at the entrance clad with perforated steel and illuminated from inside at night.
Much of the building is clad in stainless glass. The Lowry was described as "not quite'Salford's Guggenheim'... It is too small and too well behaved... although there are obvious shared aims", a reference to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, built for similar reasons. The Lowry footbridge spanning the ship canal was designed and project managed by Parkman, with design support from Carlos Fernandez Casado, it is a lift bridge with a clear span of 100 metres, which lifts vertically to provide a 26-metre clearance for shipping using the canal. The bridge span is a tied arch and the towers are constructed in tubular steelwork to provide an open aspect to view the lifting counterweight and sheaves. In November 2015, the Lowry opened a new bar and restaurant, called Pier 8, after a 12-week closure on the original bar and restaurant; the new space cost £3m to develop and is part of an ongoing £5m investment programme to improve facilities and reduce the environmental footprint of the complex. The new features include.
The bar has a feature tree with leaves made from cotton, to commemorate Salford Quays’ history at the centre of the cotton shipping industry. The new restaurant contains seven private booths, a newly designed open kitchen, a second large room at the rear which can be opened up to accommodate more diners or private functions. Major structural changes have taken place in the building for the design, including the removal of a large staircase and the addition of an external entrance to the bar and restaurant, as well as added areas made to look like shipping containers; the complex contains 2,000 square metres m² of gallery space displaying the L. S. Lowry and other collections; the Lowry collection includes about 400 works in oil and watercolours from all periods of his career. It was collected by Art Gallery from the 1930s; the Artworks Creativity Gallery and implemented by architects Reich-Petch, uses multimedia to encourage visitor participation and interaction with exhibits to transform gallery space.
Between October 2011 and January 2012 the gallery hosted an exhibition of about 100 works by Lowry's teacher, Pierre Adolphe Valette, including paintings of Manchester from Manchester Art Gallery and loans from private owners. An Archive Room houses material related to the artist including books, catalogues of his exhibitions and auctions, press cuttings, tapes of interviews with Lowry and others and ephemera; the archive is open by appointment. At the core of the complex are two theatres and a drama studio; the Lyric Theatre has 1,730 seats while the Quays has 466. The theatres host touring plays and musical events and Opera North; the Lyric Theatre has the largest stage in the United Kingdom outside London's West End. It played host to the 2011 Royal Variety Performance; the Daughter-in-Law by D. H. Lawrence, a play in Nottingham dialect, neither published nor performed in Lawrence's lifetime was revived at the Lyric Theatre in 2012; the Lowry was the venue for the grand final of the BBC quiz show Mastermind in 2003.
The Lyric Theatre has housed the first and only televised recording of the radio show I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, which Humphrey Lyttelton chaired just 19 days before his death in April 2008. An
MediaCityUK
MediaCityUK is a 200-acre mixed-use property development on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal in Salford and Trafford, Greater Manchester, England. The project was developed by Peel Media; the land occupied by the development was part of the Port of Manchester Docks. The BBC signalled its intention to move jobs to Manchester in 2004, the Salford Quays site was chosen in 2006; the Peel Group was granted planning permission to develop the site in 2007, construction of the development, with its own energy generation plant and communications network, began the same year. Based in Quay House, the principal tenant is the BBC, whose move marks a large-scale decentralisation from London. ITV Granada completed the first phase of its move to MediaCityUK on 25 March 2013, followed in two stages by the northern arm of ITV Studios: the second stage involved Coronation Street being moved to a new production facility on Trafford Wharf next to the Imperial War Museum North at the end of 2013; the Studios on Broadway houses seven high-definition studios, claimed to be the largest such facility in Europe.
MediaCityUK is to be developed in two phases. The 36-acre first phase was completed in 2011, the second is dependent on its success. Metrolink, Greater Manchester's light-rail system, was extended to MediaCityUK with the opening of the MediaCityUK tram stop on 20 September 2010 and further extensions are planned. Road access was improved by the construction of the Broadway Link Road. Salford Quays, at the eastern end of the Manchester Ship Canal on the site of the former Manchester Docks, became one of the first and largest urban regeneration projects in the United Kingdom after the closure of the dockyards in 1982. MediacityUK, an area on both banks of the ship canal, is part of a joint tourism initiative between Salford City Council and Trafford Borough Council encompassing The Quays, Trafford Wharf and parts of Old Trafford; the Quays development includes the Imperial War Museum North. A total of 200 acres of land was earmarked for the development of MediaCityUK; the first phase of its development was focused on a 36-acre site at Pier 9 on Salford Quays.
In 2010 it was announced that the ITV production centre would be built on Trafford Wharf in the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford. In 2003 reports emerged that, as part of the plans for the renewal of its Royal Charter, the BBC was considering moving whole channels or strands of production from London to Manchester. Early discussions involved a plan where the BBC would move to a new media village proposed by Granada Television at its Bonded Warehouse site at Granada Studios in the city. Proposals to relocate 1,800 jobs to Manchester were unveiled by BBC Director General, Mark Thompson, in December 2004; the BBC justified the move as its spending per head was low in northern England where it had low approval ratings and its facilities at New Broadcasting House in Manchester needed replacing. An initial list of 18 sites was narrowed to a short-list of four during 2005, two in Manchester – one at Quay Street, close to Granada Studios, one on Whitworth Street and two in Salford – one close to the Manchester Arena and one at Pier 9 on Salford Quays.
The site at Salford Quays was chosen in June 2006 and the move north was conditional on a satisfactory licence fee settlement from the government. The chosen site was the last undeveloped site at Manchester Docks, an area, subject to considerable investment and was emerging as a tourist destination and commercial centre; the vision of the developers Peel Group, Salford City Council, the Central Salford Urban Regeneration Company and the Northwest Regional Development Agency was to create a significant new media city capable of competing on a global scale with developments in Copenhagen and Singapore. Salford City Council granted planning consent for an outline application for a multi-use development on the site involving residential and studio and office space in October 2006 and consent for a detailed planning application followed in May 2007. In the same month the BBC Trust approved moving five London-based departments to the development; the departments to be moved were Sport, Children's, Future Media and Technology and Radio Five Live.
Construction started in 2007 with the site owner, Peel Group as developer and Bovis Lend Lease as contractor. The media facilities opened in stages from 2007, it featured three large sound stages suitable for drama commercials. In January 2011 Peel Media received planning permission to convert on-site offices used by Bovis Lend Lease during the construction of the first phase into the Greenhouse; the first trial show took place in November 2010 in Studio HQ2. The half-hour test show featured a power failure and a fire drill, which involved a full evacuation of the audience and crew; the first programme filmed at MediaCityUK was Don't Scare the Hare in February 2011, the first to transfer was A Question of Sport, the same month. BBC employees started transferring to the development in May 2011, a process. BBC Director General Mark Thompson confirmed that up to a further 1,000 jobs could be created or transferred to the site. In January 2012 the BBC was accused of not supporting the community by MP, Hazel Blears, after it was reported that only 26 of 680 jobs created at the development had gone to residents of Salford.
Channel 4 has expressed an interest in moving some activities to MediaCityUK. The BBC had stated that either BBC One or BBC Two could move to MediaCityUK by 2015 if the confirmed moves were successful however this is yet to happen. Traditiona
