The maidstone Studios is to invest£2.3m in a brand new 12,000 sq ft studio. Chairman Rowland Kinch said Maidstone can afford the new studio partly because it secured a year's contract for SMTV's replacement, Ministry of Mayhem (MOM), produced by Fountain TV and airing from this Saturday.
The maidstone Studios is to invest £2.3m in a brand new 12,000 sq ft studio. Chairman Rowland Kinch said Maidstone can afford the new studio partly because it secured a year's contract for SMTV's replacement, Ministry of Mayhem (MOM), produced by Foundation TV Productions and airing from this Saturday.

The studio will cost £1.2m in the first year, and, with ongoing investment in the second year, the total will be £2.3m. It will have a full set of galleries and will be HD ready.

Kinch, who is part of the Kent consortium that bought the studios in November 2002, said it would benefit from having a year's contract for MOM, but added that it is also a new attitude towards business which has made the extra studio possible.

"I've never worked in this industry before. And I noticed that an extra zero gets put on the cost of everything in TV. I've applied a business rationale from outside TV and we've vastly reduced the costs of producing this new space," he said.

He admitted that he benefits from owning the building: "It is different to paying horrific London rates. But we have had a good few months. Several small entities are relocating from Southampton, Vic and Bob moved in a while ago and are giving us huge amounts of post, we're picking up playout and we're tendering for some big D&R [disaster and recovery] contracts at the moment."

Maidstone announced in June 2003 that it was expanding its production and post facilities. So far, the consortium has paid for two Avid Media Composers and an Avid Symphony.

Kinch said that as the principal founder: "I can say that I can finance a new studio for a specific period of time. I can then look at additional work at very constructive rates. I can promise our rates are going to be very attractive".

He admitted that hiring more freelance staff and making some redundancies has allowed more competitive rates, but he called this strategy "usual new owner moves".

Maidstone currently has three other studios, of 2,000 sq ft, 6,000 sq ft and 500 sq ft.