BBC North director Peter Salmon has told The Drum the corporation will better reflect the lives of its licence fee payers in northern England when it moves into its new Salford Quays home next year.

Salmon said new TV productions in the region and creative schemes like @North are already bringing the BBC closer to its audience and potential partners in the north.

And he feels the corporation will only become more representative of its new northern surrounds once Five Live and BBC1's flagship Breakfast show move from London to MediaCityUK.

Salmon spoke to The Drum at yesterday's Digital Revolution conference in Burnley, an event to mark the opening of the Lancashire town's NorthernNet Media Access Bureau, which offers high-speed broadband links to MediaCity and beyond.

He said: "We're really trying to change the relationship fundamentally between ourselves and licence fee payers in the north of England.

"We've said from the very beginning that this is about a more open, more networked BBC and it's not just about physically the north west, or Manchester or Liverpool, it's about the whole surrounding area.

"MediaCity is the wheel and it has to have spokes reaching Teeside and Merseyside and so on..."

Salmon said the @North digital media project - £500,000 funding for agencies to create digital content for Cbeebies - and 5 Live starting to commission independent northern radio companies showed the BBC was already making its mark up north.

"We're involved in a number of things, some of which are digital, some of which are convential television-oriented things to bring this part of the world into the thick of what we're doing with MediaCity.

"So for instance in Burnley we've just done a series for BBC2 called Antiques Master which has been a big hit. Now, I'm not saying it's going to revolutionise things, but it's a different view of this part of the world and its history.

"We're trying to make sure that by being connected now at these early stages we're portraying the various faces of the north of England; it's not just curry houses in Bradford or mill towns in Lancashire.

"Instead lots and lots of different and more modern and diverse faces of the north of England. And that will be something we want to reflect when you hear the accents and the voices of people who are going to be employed on our site."

Another speaker at Digital Revolution, Bryan Gray, the chairman of MediaCity developer Peel Media, echoed Salmon's sentiments about reaching out to the whole of the north.

Gray (pictured, left, with Salmon) told The Drum: "In developing MediaCity I was very keen that MediaCity wasn't just a physical location but a centre for media activity across the north of England.

"We were quite keen that people didn't have to relocate to MediaCity or live in Manchester or Salford to benefit, but MediaCity would be kept for the north.

"Hence why NorthernNet and the [high-speed broadband] Media Access Bureaux were born by the RDAs. People can live where they want to live, keep away from high property prices and not have to commute to Manchester and still have a connection to MediaCity."

Gray said he wanted MediaCity to take on a "coffee shop" atmosphere where people could meet and work together.

And he told us he was deep in discussions with prospective MediaCity tenants whose identities are expected to be revealed soon.

"We're well advanced in our discussions with a whole range of people and I think we'll see that snowballing now over the next six months or so because basically MediaCity starts going live from January next year.

"But I've been very keen not to start too soon in trying to sell property. It's not a property place, it's a creative place."

We can expect the media and creative companies that make up MediaCity to represent a broad mix of disciplines, Gray said.

"We've got to remind ourselves, it's not a broadcast city, it's a media city.

"There's a bit too much focus on people's minds on broadcast and not enough on the wider range of media.

"But actually the companies that are talking to us cover the full media spectrum."