Central House – Broad Street, Birmingham

In readiness of colour television, ATV built a large ‘state of the art’ television studio called “ATV Centre” on Broad Street near the centre of Birmingham, which replaced the older studio complex jointly owned by ABC and ATV under the banner of Alpha Television. Originally called “Paradise Centre” ATV Centre was built to ITA specifications and designed by architects R.Seifert & Partners of London. The studios opened in 1969, with Crossroads being the first programme produced in Studio One.

In 1981 the building was completely refurbished in prepraction for the transfer of staff from Elstree, which included the new Central House building which was adjacent to the complex. Central house was built in the 1920s for the Freemasons and later as Birmingham School of Engineering. A new side entrance was also opened around the same time. The Broad Street studios which were rented came under Central’s ownership in November 1991, by which time, its network and large scale programming capability had been transferred to Nottingham, scaling down the Birmingham operation to providing Central News West, regional programming and presentation operations, including those for CITV. Plans were already underway to move the operations to a smaller complex and redeveloped the site for other uses before Carlton took full control of the company in 1994.