Working in Birmingham
"On April 3 1948 I arrived in Birmingham. The next day it snowed."
"Birmingham was awful. It was dilapidated, black, unbelievably raddled by war. There seemed to be cripples in every street. Adults distorted by rickets. Men with hunched backs. Skinny under-nourished kids. The sharp nasal accent astonished me. Perhaps I expected to feel what I expected to feel: the industrial cities of Britain were as unknown as the moon, full of strange horrors . [I was] a stranger in a place that could have been familiar. In Brum, they did not, thank God, speak 'Standard Southern English' - BBC English. Nor did we in the BBC often speak their language."
From 'We Were the BBC: An Alternative view of a producer's responsibility 1948-1884', Philip Donnellan, unpublished mss.
Almost all of Donnellan's work was made out of BBC Birmingham. His oeuvre can be placed in the context of production which attests to the historical strengths of regional programming (as opposed to programmes made in the regions). It can be set alongside the pioneering radio productions of Charles Parker, TV series such as Rainbow City and the work of the Regional Drama Unit under David Rose which produced the most memorable contributions to the prestigious 'Play for Today' series.
The 'Pebble Mill Project' is prompted by Donnellan's work, investigating the culture of production of the Midlands - more information to follow.
This page will develop in tandem with debates about local TV. If this issue interests you then contact ATCO. ACTO is an advisory committee of local television organisations working alongside the Institute of Local Television. ACTO's objective is to share information supporting the introduction of local digital terrestrial television in the UK as an independent form of local public service broadcasting.
The ACTO - local public service television directory - promotes local lines of research, meetings and publications which support small-scale Local TV. Back editions of the ACTO directories can be downloaded from http://www.maccess.org.uk/members/ilt.html.
