TVC Centre developments

I've managed to find yesterday's Times and can thus share the latest spin on the sale of BBC Television Centre. The price has apparently moved downwards from original estimates of £300m - but not quite to my niggardly valuation of around £30m.

The Times thinks there are four short-listed bids, ranging between £120m and £200m. But it's by no means straightforward. Apparently the successful applicant will buy the entire freehold, which the BBC will lease for three years (at £8.2m a year) until it's ready to leave almost entirely in 2015. The developer will have to bash about "Stage 6" (the news block, closest to Wood Lane - due to empty this year) as a new home for BBC Worldwide.  BBC Worldwide will then have moved three times in five years - and might begin to think it's hardly worth unpacking; still they seem to like new trendy furniture - and the manufacturers like supplying them.

It's not clear who will pay to own and maintain the studios that will remain; can the BBC do it through its subsidiary BBC Studios and Post Production - now with John Tate, Director of Strategy in the chair and Alan Yentob on the board ? The BBC has been trying to find a buyer for years - and in January this year internal CEO Mark Thomas departed, and the gap has not yet been filled. BBC Studios made £6m profit in 2010/11 - most of which was "lost" in re-structuring costs. Staff numbers are down to around 200, from 1,000 when they were "spun off".

The big remaining cost in vacating Television Centre for the BBC is re-providing the switching and transmission links that come via its control room. How many gun-metal racks and triple-redundant servers will the cold war warriors at the heart of old BBC technology require - or can it be "outsourced", as when Red Bee took over presentation ?

So against a potential lump sum coming to Auntie, at the top end, of £200m, we can off-set £24.6m in rental; relocation costs for Worldwide; a cash injection to boost BBC Studios; and possibly big money for new control equipment. Watch this space.