ASIA-PACIFIC BROADCASTING

Do we need in-house TV studios anymore? 

By Graham Stephens

Over the years I have been watching the changes in the global TV production facilities landscape with interest. In my early days in the broadcast industry in the UK, it would have been unthinkable for any self-respecting broadcaster not to have in-house TV production facilities — employing a small army of technicians and support staff — heavily unionised, and most probably underworked and overpaid.

Then along came Channel 4 with its concept of the “Publisher Broadcaster” in 1982. All production for this channel, including news, was outsourced to independent production companies by commissioning editors, who heard the pitch, approved the outline and pilot script, provided the funds and scheduled the end-result. The rest was left to the independent to manage.

These independents initially shot film-style on lightweight equipment, in made-to-measure locations or warehouses with simple scaffold lighting rigs or in civic theatres using OB trucks or flyaway kits hired in as required. Only as a last resort did they go back to the traditional broadcasters to use their expensive in-house studio resources and inflexible staff.

So as the notion of independent TV programme commissioning grew during the late 1980s and early 1990s to encompass all UK broadcasters, the utilisation of in-house facilities decreased and many internal studio facilities closed down or were sold off to facility hire companies. This resulted in staff retrenchments within the established broadcasters but a corresponding growth in the freelance sector.

Looking back with the clarity of hindsight, one wonders whether this was a good thing or not. It unquestionably broke the power of the broadcasting unions, cut the cost of TV programme making, and brought down artificial job demarcations and over-staffing.

But did this lead to better programmes on screen? Did the new short-term contract-based employment regime allow for proper career development within the industry?

Initially at least, overall TV programme quality and diversity clearly suffered but, ultimately, it has recovered, in part due to a heavy investment in freelance training led by a strong UK association of independent producers determined to seize this new opportunity and make it work.

Nowadays, few UK broadcasters maintain in-house TV facilities, unless they exist as a fully independent profit centre, staffed by skilled freelancers. The BBC’s TV Centre facilities, currently up for sale, are used to produce programmes for commercial TV, and the London Studios (part of ITV) are used for TV programmes for the BBC. TV programme makers, whether full-fledged independents or in-house producers, pay real money and now have real choice when it comes to selecting the studios and staff they will use.

This market-led system seems to work well, with external facilities providers such as Fountain TV and The Pinewood Group offering competitive rates and the flexibility to customise their studio facilities on-demand with new technology that permits the pooling of equipment such as CCUs, video switchers and audio mixer resources, and their assignment to studio floors on an as-required basis.

This trend to outsourcing in the UK makes it surprising that Sky has just opened its new, dedicated in-house Sky Studios facility in West London. To be fair, the floors are mid-sized to small, and designed primarily for sports links, news, current affairs and children’s programmes, rather than big audience-based light entertainment shows or dramas. But it does fly in the face of the publisher broadcaster approach that has been Sky’s favoured model (apart from Sky News) since it launched over 20 years ago.

Will these new facilities allow Sky the freedom to increase its in-house production cost-effectively or will they become a big white elephant? Only time will tell. Sky has just announced profits of more than £1 billion (US$1.64 billion) last year so they can certainly afford to experiment with an expansion of in-house production. But few others can.

And how does Asia compare with the UK’s experience? With a few exceptions, the TV production facility landscape in the region remains firmly attached to the national and commercial broadcasters, with their in-house producers being charged “internal” rates and getting first pick of the studio time available. Studio dry-hire, although theoretically available, is discouraged.

So just like 30 years ago in the UK, independent producers with limited budgets are often constrained to using sub-optimum civic-hall locations and rigging their facilities on the fly. Alternatively, they forget about the variety, light entertainment and studio comedy genres, and concentrate on shooting single-camera location drama and documentary.
The acoustics of civic auditoriums, often built many years ago, are not up to modern TV standards. Even when new, they are usually designed acoustically to benefit live musical performance with long reverberation times rather than recorded speech or multi-microphone instrumental recording that demands a “dead” acoustic. In tropical Asian regions where heavy rainstorms including thunderclaps of 120dB intensity are common, the acoustic isolation of these spaces may also be insufficient for live TV use.
The current in-house monopoly of studio multi-camera facilities in some parts of Asia means that the pool of available freelance staff skilled in this form of TV production is very small and often tied to the existing broadcasters with long-term contracts.
Recognising that high-quality, truly independent, film and TV-making facilities in the region are scarce, the Malaysian government has formed a partnership with the UK’s Pinewood Group to develop a large area in Iskandar, South Johor, for the purpose of constructing such a facility.
Pinewood Iskandar Malaysia Studios (PIMS) will be unique in the region in having not only multiple film-sound stages capable of shooting Hollywood-scale movies and the largest TV shows, but also dedicated TV studios capable of handling the large audience-based variety and light entertainment productions as well as studio-based drama. The TV studios are designed to international acoustic standards, to permit security of live production whatever the weather.
But these facilities in themselves, advanced as they are, will not be sufficient. A freelance film and TV production community will also need to be built, virtually from scratch, by the time the facilities open for business in 2013. This is a daunting task, given that the existing local TV production community is currently centred on Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. However, with the assistance of local creative and media colleges, some of whom are planning to set up film and TV schools close to the PIMS facility with easy access for hands-on training, we believe it can be done.

So do Asian broadcasters really need to retain all of their in-house production resources indefinitely? Their future production mix, their willingness to embrace the publish-only model and the ability to sustain their profitability under the threat of competition from new distribution platforms will be the key decision factors. 

The changing nature of TV consumption, as it fragments from a handful of free-to-air terrestrial channels, through multi-channel pay TV, to online and on-demand means that, in the future, no broadcaster can remain “all things to all people”. To stay relevant and to stand out from the crowd, hard decisions must be taken about which TV programme genres offer the best chance of future success — whether these are better outsourced or produced internally, and the in-house production resource mix rationalised and refocused accordingly.

A healthy independent sector, with access to a pool of skilled freelance labour and a range of cost-effective, high-quality external TV production facilities available, should help to make this rationalisation decision-making process a whole lot easier. 

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