Category: Radio Leicester; Asian Network
Date: 08.04.2005
Printable version
BBC Radio Leicester begins broadcasting from its new state of the art centre at St Nicholas Place at 6.00am tomorrow (Saturday 9 April).
The station - the BBC's first Local Radio station - has proudly taken up residence at its new home and will be followed by the BBC Asian Network at the end of May.
The centre has seven studios equipped with the latest digital technology.
Website teams for Leicestershire and the Asian Network will also be on site, along with television facilities for the regional news programme East Midlands Today.
Over the next three months, greater accessibility to the public will become available - visitors can see the presenters at work through the specially designed viewing windows.
And at the end of April a BBC shop stocking a variety of BBC DVDs, videos, audio and books, is set to open together with a cyber café.
In addition, June signals the launch of an interactive open centre where people can come along to learn multi-media skills and produce content for both radio and the web.
Kate Squire, Managing Editor, Radio Leicester, says: "The centre offers a new and exciting dimension for the BBC as the world's most famous public service broadcaster.
"The digital studios and offices have been designed to be accessible and inviting to audiences while offering staff a really creative working environment."
Visitors will even be able to see into the past, as special lighting and glass panels in the floor of the cyber café provide a viewing point to an important Norman archaeological site that is underneath the building.
Local artist Ashok Mistry is creating a work of public art inspired by the Norman remains for display in the centre.
The move to St Nicholas Place signals the start of a new weekday schedule for BBC Radio Leicester with Tony Wadsworth re-joining the station where he began his career, along with his wife Julie Mayer.
The new line-up kicks off on Monday 11 April.
Radio Leicester began broadcasting on 8 September 1967 on 95.05 VHF to the central area of Leicester from Epic House, a ten storey office block built in the mid-Sixties.
Radio Leicester now broadcasts on 104.9 FM, on DAB digital radio and at bbc.co.uk/leicester.
Facts about BBC Leicester's new broadcasting centre
The new BBC Centre in Leicester is built on one of the most important road junctions in the city's long history where the Roman Fosse Way crossed the town's medieval High Street.
The centre stands on the site of a former cheese warehouse built in the 1840s.
Rare encaustic coloured tiles, made by two famous English companies, were mounted on the front facade of the old building, and have been made into two permanent displays in the BBC Open Centre.
Slate tiles from the old warehouse have also been incorporated into the roof of the new building.
The move means the building will also be home to the BBC's Asian Network which was launched by the station in 1996.
BBC Asian Network broadcasts nationally to Asian communities throughout the United Kingdom.
BBC Leicester's new home is a three-storey building at 9 St Nicholas Place.
A full-height glazed atrium runs through the heart of the building to provide an open and inviting space to the general public.
