BBC Head of History Robert Seatter considers the future of the iconic North London landmark which transmitted the first BBC television broadcast in the mid 1930s. This article was originally published in Ariel magazine on Friday March 12.
Last month, Haringey Council approved plans for a £28m regeneration of derelict parts of Alexandra Palace.
They include turning the old BBC studios - from which the BBC launched the world's first regular television service in 1936 - into an interactive broadcasting museum.
Some like the idea, others favour a reconstruction of the original studios. Here, BBC head of history Robert Seatter says saving them for posterity is all that matters...
Up on a North London hill, with its iconic, latticed transmitter tower, is 'Ally Pally' - where BBC TV began in the mid 1930s.
Following a tense competition between rival TV methodologies (Baird in one corner of the ring, Marconi's engineers in the other), BBC launched the world's first ever regular TV service on November 2 1936, and Adele Dixon sang her specially commissioned song, designed to convey the wonder of the new broadcast revolution: 'A mighty maze of mystic magic rays is all about us in the blue…'
Others were less convinced - 'Television ... the word is half Greek, half Latin. No good will come of it,' wrote a Manchester Guardian critic. And John Reith, the BBC's first director general, notoriously hated the new, upstart medium, preferring the elegant anonymity of radio. Presented with a gift of a TV set when he left the Corporation in 1938, he thundered with characteristic directness that he would never use it.
The TV studios closed during WWII, reopened in 1946 and then rose in ascendancy, becoming the home of News and the Open University, until they were finally abandoned in the 1980s.
Ever since then the question of what to do with Alexandra Palace has haunted a variety of bodies - Haringey Council, which has largely paid for its upkeep; English Heritage, which was keen to protect it and gave it a blue plaque; a number of historical associations who diligently collected and archived its story; and various commercial groups who attempted to make the vast sprawling building pay its way.
Oh, and the BBC was constantly called upon to maintain the flame of that first great television moment, without committing any funds from the licence fee.
Now, finally, there seems to be a reinvention plan which has both vision and the funding to make it work. It's not without contention though - as Nick Higham reported earlier in the month.
It comes down to the question of how the famous TV studios will be interpreted. Hardly anything remains of the authentic fabric, but some Palace supporters want a direct reconstruction of the studios, while the team in charge of the interpretation of the building is aiming to tell a broader story with spatial punctuations indicating where the studio activity was.
Both perspectives have some validity - but most important of all is that something happens NOW to save Alexandra Palace from slow ruin and ultimate decay.
Robert Seatter is BBC Head of History.
