Julian Clover visits the new Sky Studios in Osterley, West London, where bright sunshine and a modern eco-friendly facility is the order of the day.
It is a curiosity in these days of outsourcing broadcast facilities that BSkyB should not only open a new lot at its Osterley facility, but also declare that it will use it to produce original drama. The BBC meanwhile has the for sale signs up on its iconic Television Centre in West London.
Sky Studios opened for business on Monday morning with Good Morning Sports Fans. The following day I joined a party from the Broadcasting Press Guild to receive a tour of the premises from Sophie Turner Laing, Sky’s managing director, Entertainment and News and John Lennon, head of broadcast operations.
The 8-storey high building, looking a little like a contemporary Battersea Power Station, was conceived in 2006 by the then CEO James Murdoch and his CFO Jeremy Darroch, now the CEO of the company.
It is modern in every sense. The building is light and airy, but there is no air conditioning, stairs linking between sections add to the spacious feel. The platform control is on the top floor, providing plenty of natural light to a group often confined to the basement.
Some carpet still needs to be laid, despite the 15,000 km of cable already in place there is the possibility that more may be required.
There are 8 HD studios, 45 edit suites and 6 audio post production units, supplemented by around 600 desktop facilities. The digital workflow means that once a piece of content is made available it can pass anywhere in the building from the Sky Sports News channel to the Sky News iPad app.
Banks of TV screens line the wall of the Sky Sports News newsroom. However, those behind the presenters are not all they seem. Rather than TVs in the distance they are backlit panels that give the illusion of even more spaciousness. The panels themselves could be changed in just 15 minutes.
Much is made of the eco credentials of the new building – for example the lighting in the Sky Sports News studio burns just 15% of the electricity in similar installations. Sky of course can afford to be eco-friendly, but its position in the market, so often criticized in other areas is being used for good in bringing companies to heel and making them deliver on their promises.
Sky is committed to increasing the amount it spends on original production, planning to double its commitment to £600 million by 2014. “We won’t make all of our entertainment at Sky Studios as we work closely with independent companies,” says Turner Laing. For his part Lennon rules out the possibility that third party broadcasters might be able to hire the studio facilities for their own programmes.
While there have been other studio openings in the 25 or so years Sky has spent at Osterley, the opening of Sky Studios is arguably the most significant.
