2003 – 2014
Located within the industrial development next to the Hogarth Roundabout, this studio was originally built around 2003 for NOW TV – a Hong Kong based company that produces an Internet TV service.
It was used by the iBuy shopping channel from 2006 after they left Teddington until March 2007. Bookings for shows included Bremner Bird and Fortune for C4, Churchill for ITV1, Loose Lips for Living TV, Don’t Watch That Watch This for BBC4, Who Do You Think You Are? for BBC2 and Alastair McGowan’s Big Impression for BBC1.
Around 2007 the facilities were taken over by IMG. They are said to be the largest independent producer of sports-related programming in the world. IMG adopted the name ‘Mediahouse’ for their activities here. They used the facilities to make various programmes and host a few sports channels too. They used an adjoining building for post production and transmission suites.
There was a main studio originally called 1a which was 60ft x 35ft (2,100 sq ft) wall to wall. The grid consisted of scaffold bars with sliding bars between them.
The scene dock area (1,400 sq ft) was also occasionally used as a studio when it was known as 1b. It had its own production gallery but had to borrow the cameras from the main studio. The studios were initially equipped with 7 Philips LDK-100 cameras with a Philips DD35-3 vision mixer in studio 1a and a Sony DVS7250 in studio 1b.
In the summer of 2011 the studios and galleries were given a £1.5m refit. There were then 4 studios in total and the two galleries were given 1080P HD capability, enabling them to transmit in 3D if necessary. They were equipped with Sony MVS-8000X vision mixers. The main studio (simply called Studio A) had six Sony HXC100 HD cameras.
For a while the Mediahouse studios provided facilities for ESPN’s football coverage, and the BBC’s The Football League Show was also made here. Since August 2013 ESPN has been based in the BT Studios in the Olympic Park.
The lease for these studios ended in 2014. In July 2013 IMG began the move to new facilities in Stockley Park in West Drayton, near Heathrow. They have established a very well equipped broadcast centre there – see this section on the website for more details. These Chiswick facilities have been demolished and replaced with housing.
