BBC

Thursday I went for a tour of the BBC Television Centre. It is in west London, way north of the Thames, and is situated on 13.5 acres of land. (The guide was very proud of having that large of an amount of land for the studio, but when he asked where I was from and I said California, he replied with "Well, that's not very big to you then, is it? That's probably the size of your back garden.") 8,000 employees on this site alone in a total of 7 floors: 2 basement floors and five above ground.

For security we had two guides with us the whole time and they spent the entire tour making fun of each other. Their British humor was so subtle and attack-like against each other. It made for a very entertaining tour.

The outside of the Television Centre. The land was bought in the very late 1950's and the studio opened in 1960. It was once the largest television studio in the world, but no longer. It's now just one of the biggest in Europe. (The biggest studio is in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro I believe, if you were wondering.) Now, copyright issues prevented pictures from being taken in all but two or three rooms, but it was way cool to see. Very similar to the tour of the CNN building in Atlanta all those years ago. (Though, this shouldn't have surprised me. They both are working television studios after all.)

"Doctor Who" anyone? This is next to the entrance of the centre in the courtyard.

One of the medium sized filming studios. It was pretty huge.