Gosta Green – Page 8 – What Was Pebble Mill?

CMCR6 – Birmingham’s first colour scanner

Gosta Green Studios – cutting c/o Gail Herbert

The first colour scanner (CMCR) in Birmingham was CMCR 6 which was based at the OB base which was then at Carpenter Road, Edgbaston.

It was equipped with 5 EMI 2001 colour cameras which had the lens within the body of the camera. 4 of the cameras were used normally and the other was used as a spare and for parts to repair the others.

BBC Birmingham did not have a Colour TV studio before Pebble Mill opened in 1971. The BBC had a studio at the Cinema in Gosta Green in Aston. It was fitted out in the days of black & white and during the late 60s until Pebble Mill opened CMCR6 would be used part of the week to produce Dramas or Drama series in colour.

I think that CMCR6 was at Gosta Green on a Wednesday & Thursday each week and would then go and do a Match of the Day or other OBs returning on Tuesday for the rig for the drive in.

CMCR 6 was moved to Kendal Avenue in the 1970s and replaced in Birmingham with CMCR 9 which had Philips PC80 Cameras. This meant that the cameras in the Studios at Pebble Mill and the ones on the OB unit were different which caused problems with maintenance, spares etc.

John Duckmanton

Pre-Pebble Mill buildings – Gosta Green – Dave Kirkwood

Gosta Green

Gosta Green. This was the main TV drama studio in Aston. It was sited just behind the original Aston University building. The impressive front facade reflected its former life as a bank. Behind it the area used for the studio floor reflected its later life as a cinema. The frontage was still there when I last looked (about 10 years ago) but the studio area had been demolished to lawns.

There are pictures of Carpenter Road and Gosta Green at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_Mill_Studios in ‘Early History’ section. There were other addresses such as in George Road, Berkeley Street.

The BBC in the 60’s was a very different place to work than today. There was a ‘family’ feel to the place and a vibrant social life built around the staff club.

Dave Kirkwood

Memories of working at the BBC – Dave Kirkwood

Dave Kirkwood

I joined the BBC in 1965 and trained as a ‘technical operator’. In the
regions, TOs were expected to work in both TV and Radio. Normal jobs for a
TO were operating cameras and sound equipment in TV studios and sound
recording suites for radio as well as the sound control room. Radio Studios
were the province of a different breed called ‘studio managers’. These were,
in the main, graduates whereas the majority of the TOs were recruited from
schools after A Levels.
I spent most of my time working on camera crews in Gosta Green and Broad
Street. As a trainee I was only allowed to operate a camera in Broad Street
and for simpler programmes at Gosta Green, but I often drove the ‘Heron’
camera crane used on most of the dramas at Gosta Green. By 1968 it was becoming clear
that the TO role was a bit of a ‘dead end’ and that those senior to me were
not much older, so I was encouraged to look for other opportunities. I was
keen to explore production and broadcasting rather than engineering (TOs
were very much ‘engineers’ in the eyes of personnel). Local radio was just
starting, so I managed to transfer into that as a station assistant and
(after just two years) was promoted to producer. I stayed in local radio
until I left the BBC in 1996 from the post of ‘Senior Broadcast Journalist’.
Along the way I had spells as a Continuity Announcer at TV Centre and as a
trainer at the Local Radio Training Unit.

Dave Kirkwood

‘United’, a soap from Gosta Green – Dave Kirkwood

This photo from the 1960s, shows a group of technical operators ‘relaxing’ on the set
of another soap produced at Gosta Green. This was called ‘United’ and was about life in a fictional football club. It was a total flop and hardly mentioned in BBC drama history at all.

Gosta Green (Gosta Green was the BBC studio in Birmingham before the building of Pebble Mill) did a lot of drama, but also general work – Percy Thrower’s gardening programmes and music items for the fledgling immigrants’ programmes among them.

Dave Kirkwood

Marconi Mark 3 Camera – photo from Dave Kirkwood

This is a very young ‘me’ with a Marconi Mark 3 camera. This was one of the iconic cameras of the era (1960s) used in studios and outside broadcasts. It was the one featured on the original opening shots for ‘Grandstand’.

(Incidentally it was the Grandstand titles that inspired me to go for a career in broadcasting). The camera was obsolescent by the time this was taken but still in daily use at Gosta Green (pre BBC Pebble Mill).

Dave Kirkwood

Former Radio WM presenter, Gordon Astley, remembers working at Gosta Green: ‘I was there as my first posting after Wood Norton. My biggest thrill was being allowed to play on the new colour cameras …I seem to remember a scanner outside. Then I went to be a boom operator on all sorts of shows such as “The Doctors”. Looking back I should have stayed on staff, and now would be living on an island on a hefty pension!!!’