Across the Pennines from Manchester are The Leeds Studios, which are owned by ITV. (Not to be confused with ‘Versa Leeds Studios’.) These ones opened in 1968, when Yorkshire TV began its new franchise for the north-east. The centre was constructed in Kirkstall Road on slum-clearance land and was said to be the first purpose-built colour television production centre in Europe. The building opened with these studios…
studio 1/1A – two small presentation studios sharing facilities
studio 2 – 1,225 sq ft
studio 3 – 4,430 sq ft
These three original studios were equipped with Marconi Mk VII colour cameras. In 1969 EMI 2001 cameras were purchased for the last studio to open…
studio 4 – 7,650 sq ft
Around 1976 Philips LDK 25 cameras replaced the Marconis in studio 3.
The studio centre – still referred to by many people in the industry as ‘Yorkshire TV’ – is the base for the northern transmission area for ITV. Of the original four, only studios 3 and 4 remained in use during the first decade of the 21st century. Studio 3 had been the home of Countdown since 1982 when Channel 4 began broadcasting. Studio 4 had in latter years been mostly used as a 4-waller for dramas including Heartbeat, Where The Heart Is, The Royal, A Touch of Frost, Fat Friends, Bodies and Wire In The Blood, but was also used occasionally for multicamera work with Bruce’s Price is Right (’95 – ’01), My Parents Are Aliens, Question Time, Emmerdale, Bullseye and Win My Wage. In March and April 2006 Mastermind was recorded here as ITV’s Manchester studios were closed due to asbestos contamination. A celebrity edition of the snooker show Pot Black was made for Sport Relief in May 2006.
Sadly, The Royal and Heartbeat were axed by ITV in 2008, with A Touch of Frost ending in 2009. Once ITV’s Manchester Studios were fully operational again the old YTV studios had very few bookings during 2008/9 so their long-term future became doubtful. Countdown was the only regular occupant of studio 3, with 4 being empty for much of the time.
As many had feared, on 4th March 2009 Michael Grade (yes, him again) announced that the main studios would indeed be closing and Countdown would move to Manchester. Emmerdale ‘s production offices, post production work and interior set shooting would continue to be based in the buildings adjoining the centre (with exterior filming continuing at the programme’s purpose built facilities in Harewood) and the local ITV news programme Calendar would also continue to be based in its existing facilities at the site.
Incidentally, I noted that Michael Grade referred to the soap as ‘Emmerdale Farm’ in his interview on Radio 4’s Today programme. It hadn’t been called that since 1989 so I’m sure that will have gone down very well with the production team. One assumes he wasn’t a regular viewer himself. When asked about the Leeds Studios closure Mr Grade dismissed the question by simply replying – “We move on.” With those blunt and rather tactless words he appeared to end 41 years of television from these studios.
ITV said that the studios would be ‘mothballed’ although the likelihood of them being brought back into operation by ITV looked slim. For a while there remained a chance that the studios might be run by an independent company with support from Screen Yorkshire and/or Yorkshire Forward, offering facilities to independent production companies. However, in May 2009 Yorkshire Forward announced that they had ruled out making a rescue bid.
The last edition of Countdown was recorded on 22nd April 2009. The show moved to Manchester’s Granada studios operated by 3sixtymedia and is now made at MediaCity in Salford.
In December 2009 there was a dramatic change of fortune for the studios. Rumours that had been circulating for about six months were confirmed. The studios received a £5.2m refit during 2010/2011 which included the latest HD tapeless facilities. The work was completed in summer 2011 and Emmerdale moved its interior sets, post production facilities and production offices into the building. These were previously housed in an old car showroom and were in need of updating.
The refit was considerable to say the least. The building was radically changed internally and included five – now six studios. The two existing studios were completely refurbished and were joined by two converted from service dock areas and one in the former joinery workshop. The sixth opened in 2017 and was previously an area used by Provision. They were acoustically treated and have TV resin floors and lighting grids.
Three new gallery suites have also been constructed along with a number of dressing rooms, prop stores, make-up areas and other facilities. This is all quite a contrast to the bad news announced by Michael Grade.
So the future of the studios is, after all, secure. At least, for as long as Emmerdale continues to run. (Don’t mention The Bill.)
Thus the studios are now as follows:
studio 1 – Converted in 2017 from an area previously used by Provision.
studio 2 – was the scene dock of studio 3
studio 3 – one of the original TV studios, previously used for Countdown.
studio 4 – one of the original TV studios, previously used for dramas and ITV entertainment shows.
studio 5 – was the scene dock for studio 4
studio 6 – was the chippies workshop.
In October 2024 I was sent some updated information about the studios:
There are three galleries on the main site, Red, Green and Blue which can be routed to any studio. Each gallery has a sound control room and a combined production & vision control room. Lighting is controlled from desks on the studio floor. Racks is in the PCR and the Vision Engineer is also responsible for the recordings on the Avid system. There are vision mixing desks but when Covid hit all the staff, Vision Mixers were made redundant and the production went to 2 camera shooting, with no plans to revert. Sometimes 3 cameras are used for pub scenes.
Emmerdale also use another building nearby which they call Burley road which is where Provision Leeds are based. They used three areas in there for shooting whilst studios 4 & 5 were out of use for refurbishment. At the south east end is Studio 7 and has the Purple gallery within it. At the north west end of the building is an area labelled as studio 8 but apparently is never referred to by that number! This has some disused control rooms. Shooting here is controlled using one of the 2 camera vans which are also used on the outside sets.
The exteriors for Emmerdale have been shot since 1998 on a purpose-built set on the Harewood estate near Leeds. The houses in the ‘village’ at Harewood are timber framed structures covered in stone cladding. The set is built on green belt land so all the buildings were originally classed as ‘temporary structures’ with a requirement to be demolished within ten years. However, further planning permission was granted and the set is effectively permanent, at least one assumes for as long as the programme continues to run.
