Prime Television was founded in 1990 by Nick Ludlow, an experienced broadcast professional with a family history in television. Nick made his name filming major documentary, magazine and news events for the US News Networks. He was quick to recognise that within this market there was a strong requirement for the provision of outsourced high quality crewing and equipment in place of the usual in-house teams. Nick’s philosophy was simple “know what they want and always invest in the latest technology”, in short; give people what they want by providing the best service, the best crews and the best equipment.
During the mid 1990s, Nick grew the business further when he expanded Prime’s client base to encompass, other areas of the broadcast market. Keeping the high standards and the latest technology, Nick adapted kit requirements and marketed the company to UK production companies and broadcasters focusing on entertainment and factual programming. At the same time Prime Television set up an in house production bureau pitching ideas and providing edited packages for US news and entertainment magazine shows. This led to numerous co-produced entertainment series with US networks including MTV and Fox.
Chris Earls joined the company in 1997, a graduate in IT from Imperial College London, Chris brought a new dimension to the services Prime Television was then providing, as he helped introduce the company to the ever expanding world of the World Wide Web and what it meant to the future of television.
Prime Television very quickly became known as the company for innovation, always looking to the future, asking ‘what is next in television’ and now more recently’ what is happening in new media’. They were one of the first companies in the UK to recognise the enormous change that High Definition format represented and in 2003 Prime Television entered into a strategic partnership with Sony, going “on the road” to all the major UK broadcasters and production companies teaching them that HD was now affordable and outlining the commercial advantages of future-proofing their productions.
Now with the advent of “tapeless technology”, “streaming media” and 3D production, Prime is again at the forefront of these new exciting innovations and is in the perfect position to provide the right facilities from multi-camera outside broadcasts to full edited productions. Prime is now working on providing a low cost solution to 3D production and will update our news section with details in due course.
But it’s not just equipment that makes a production stand out, Prime expanded their post-production facilities this year with the purchase of additional edit suites and the arrival of award winning executive producer Ron Fisher with over 15 years experience with ITV and many years freelance producing light entertainment and music television for both television and online.
While Prime Television continues to produce and provide broadcast facilities to all areas of the media world, we are often asked for advice on new technology and trends, systems integration and upcoming changes in the marketplace. Prime now provides expertise, crew and broadcast facilities for live events, commercial productions and documentary film makers across the globe.
As the 2012 London Olympics draw near and now the recently announced Royal Wedding in April this year, Prime is gearing up to provide equipped camera crew, edited and live streamed packages for their non rights holder clients as part of the Prime News Bureau facilities. This News bureau service provides regular story ideas, production staff, camera crew and editors, PAL, NTSC and HD equipment and end to end production or live feeds to clients in the US, Japan and other countries.