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Queen Elizabeth II's coronation in 1953
Queen Elizabeth II's coronation in 1953. Photograph: PA
Queen Elizabeth II's coronation in 1953. Photograph: PA

BBC1 to go live for coronation anniversary night in 2013

This article is more than 13 years old
Channel to go live for evening marking 60th anniversary of royal event and final year broadcasting from Television Centre

To mark the 60th anniversary of the day the nation crowded around television sets to watch the Queen's coronation and commemorate the final year broadcasting from Television Centre in London, BBC1 is to go live for a night.

One evening in 2013 will be chosen for all the shows on the BBC's main channel to be aired live – taking viewers back to the days when the BBC transmitted live from Alexandra Palace and broadcast television's first 'watercooler' moment, the coronation.

Earlier this year the BBC experimented with live broadcasting by screening an episode of EastEnders from the soap's set in Elstree in Hertfordshire.

The event, which marked the 25th anniversary of the soap, was a hit, drawing around 15.6 million viewers.

Speaking to staff today in a meeting of the corporation's in-house production department, the BBC Vision director, Jana Bennett, said: "To commemorate both the day the nation tuned into the BBC for the Queen's coronation – and our final year broadcasting from Television Centre – we'll go live for a night on BBC1.

Every programme in the schedule will have the vitality and ambition I witnessed at Elstree earlier this year."

The event will also be part of the commemorations of the BBC's move out of Television Centre, which has been the home of some of the corporation's biggest programmes, including Blue Peter and Newsnight.

In June it celebrated 50 years in its west London home, but the BBC is planning to sell off the building.

It hopes it will be redeveloped as a cultural quarter as several thousand staff from the news, children's, sport, learning, future media and technology departments and Radio 5 Live move to new homes at the refurbished Broadcasting House in central London and Salford Quays in Greater Manchester by 2012.

Television Centre was the home of live broadcasting for the BBC and it is understood that Bennett wants to recreate some of the magic of those days.

The BBC said it is still too early to say which programmes will be broadcast live but said they will be across different types of genres, such as drama and entertainment.

In addition, today Bennett also announced that in 2012 the BBC is, "planning a major landmark series about London – a people's history of the capital that gets under the skin of this great city and provides vivid slices of life from past centuries."

Also for 2012, the corporation is also adapting five Shakespeare plays, one of which will be broadcast live over three hours.

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