The television studio sector has had a challenging time of late, with many of the old certainties disappearing, or finding new homes. But those TV studios are now seeking out a new and varied customer base to fill their spaces. Pippa Considine reports
The business for dedicated TV studios is holding steady, despite the last year witnessing significant shifts. While quite a few productions have scaled back, moving out of traditional TV studios, there have been large scale, new shows looking for pre-rigged homes.
Commercial director at Maidstone Studios Jo Clark reports 2025 as a strong year, with 2026 not quite so shiny, but on an even keel. BBC Studioworks has seen clients come and go; head of Television Centre Tim Wood says, “our portfolio at the moment is pretty much perfectly matched to demand,” although “we’re not seeing a lot of new things coming through…What is out there is hard won.”
Clark notes that the market is increasingly unpredictable. Alongside continued market consolidation, the bar for recommissions is rising. Maidstone recently hosted Deal or No Deal, Tipping Point and Romesh Ranganathan’s Parent’s Evening, which went to a second series, “I don’t think you can always bank on returning, repeat series,” says Clark. “A few years ago, you could predict what was going to be being booked in the year after and the year after that. It’s getting harder to do that.”
In Manchester, dock10 (now renamed MediaCity Studios) has a strong base of clients, but with budgets down and costs up, head of studios Andy Waters says, “I don’t think it’s any surprise if I was to say that the industry is quite challenging at the moment.”
In the last year, ITV Daytime production has cut costs, scaling back its footprint. Having occupied TC2 and TC3 at StudioWorks’ London TV Centre for eight years, it has reduced the size of its team and moved This Morning, Loose Women and Lorraine to the H Club studios in central London. It’s now recording Good Morning Britain at ITN, which has upgraded its Studio1 at Gray’s Inn Road, decommissioning its VR studio and installing LED technology as a centrepiece. The space is also designed to work for ITV News programming. ITN’s three studios now live broadcast around 80 hours for ITV, C4, C5 and occasional third parties.
Jon Creamer
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