Tag: Coast

Factual and Learning – We are BBC Birmingham

We are BBC Bham Factual & LearningCopyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission.

This sheet about the Factual & Learning department, was part of a booklet given to all staff when BBC Birmingham moved from Pebble Mill to the Mailbox in 2004.

The sheet lists various recent and current programmes made by the department, including: £1 Million Pound Property Experiment, SAS Survival Secrets, Casualty Saved My Life, All the Queen’s Cooks, Sylvia Young Theatre School, and Coast. Major series included: Gardeners’ World, Countryfile, Points of View, Call My Bluff, and Sky at Night. Daytime titles included: To Buy or Not to Buy, Houses Behaving Badly, Feather Your Nest, Trading Up, Big Strong Boys. Asian Programmes unit shows mentioned are: Nuclear Paradise, India’s Ladyboys, The Joy of Curry, Dating the Asian Way, Desi DNA and Malai Presents.

Factual & Learning was a prolific department, producing a wide cross section of shows for BBC1, and 2 as well as some for BBC3.

Thanks to Dharmesh Rajput for sharing the booklet, and keeping it for the last decade.

Save BBC Birmingham Campaign


Staff of BBC Birmingham were protesting this lunchtime on the steps of the Mailbox against the closure of factual television and radio network production.  Flagship series like ‘Gardeners’ World’, ‘Coast’ and ‘Countryfile’, are scheduled to move from BBC Birmingham to Bristol from August 2012.  Production staff face redundancy or relocation, whilst post production staff look likely to be made redundant, as BBC Bristol does not have its own post production facilities.

The number of staff and programmes made at BBC Birmingham has been being run down since the move from BBC Pebble Mill in 2005, and the commissioning guarantee from London has been quietly forgotten, eroding the production base.

When Pebble Mill was at its height there were around 1,500 staff.  The number now at BBC Birmingham is only a couple of hundred.