WEST CHESTER, Pa.-QVC Inc., a division of Philadelphia-based Comcast Corporation, has opened Pioneer Studios, a studio complex that the company hopes will attract commercial, feature, television and corporate video productions. The studios, which opened in March, consist of seven studios of varying sizes and are situated at a location 20 miles southwest of Philadelphia. The studios were built out of a facility where QVC originated and broadcast its programming for 11 years until September ’97, when the company moved to Studio Park, a new broadcast facility also in West Chester.
Pioneer Studios has an overall space of 30,000 square feet, and the seven studios range in size from 405 square feet to 3,850 square feet. Since Pioneer’s opening, the complex has been used for productions including an infomercial, a local program, and a corporate video.
Mark Buscaglia, general manager of Pioneer Studios, explained that QVC opened the studios because the company felt there was enough of a production base-commercial and otherwise-in the Greater Philadelphia and surrounding area to support the facility. That conclusion was based in part on an economic study done in ’96 by MBA students at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania for the Greater Philadelphia Film Office. The study’s authors analyzed the current state of Philadelphia’s film and video production and made suggestions about how to increase production revenues.
Based on data collected from survey respondents, the projected direct revenues for the Greater Philadelphia area’s film and video production in ’96 were $138 million, and the estimated revenues in ’95 were $106 million. (The figures were not broken down into production categories.)
The targeted revenue for Pioneer’s first operating year is $1.2 million, which would recoup QVC’s investment building out the studios as well as the operating costs for the first fiscal year. Following the first year’s projected break-even performance, Buscaglia said that Pioneer’s business plan estimated a 20% growth rate in the second and third year of Pioneer Studios.
Buscaglia explained that Pioneer hoped to draw productions from the Philadelphia area as well as from surrounding locales such as New York. "We’re not looking to stay isolated to the Philadelphia market; we’re looking to grow the Philadelphia market," he said.
Buscaglia noted that because it’s surrounded by warehouse buildings owned by QVC, Pioneer could potentially expand if the demand for the studio space were high enough. Pioneer currently plans to build out an audio post facility and may eventually build a postproduction facility. But Buscaglia acknowledged that Pioneer’s future plans depended on the vagaries of the business. "We’re waiting to see what the market will bear," he observed.
