Leading article: Cobbled together

Thursday 16 December 2010 20:00 EST
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They will be digging up and transporting the cobbles when Britain's longest-running soap opera, Coronation Street, moves to a new home in 2012. The Street, which has had a special place in the national culture since the cameras first panned across Weatherfield's rooftops half a century ago, is moving to the glittering, glass new media complex.

MediaCityUK in Salford Quays – which will become the home of BBC Sport, Radio 5 Live and the BBC's children's, learning, religion and future media technology departments – will be the biggest in the world, outside Hong Kong, when it opens next year.

It is now also to house a "bespoke production and studio centre" for Corrie, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last week with a ratings-boosting tram disaster in which several major characters had their blood spilled on the famous cobbles. On the existing Coronation Street set, which has been in use since 1982, the terraced houses are slightly smaller than real houses. But unforgiving new high-definition technology will expose the oddity of that so the new outdoor set is to be built on a bigger scale.

If they had really wanted to enter the modern world, of course, they could have replaced the cobblestones with tarmac. But you can take this modernisation lark too far, you know.

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