Fountain Studios

Fountain Studios was an independently owned television studio in Wembley Park, north-west London, England. The company was last part of the Avesco Group plc.

Several companies owned the site before it was bought by Fountain in 1993. Originally a film studio complex, as Wembley Studios it was formerly the base for the ITV London weekday franchise holder Rediffusion from 1955 to 1968, and London Weekend Television from 1968 to 1972. More recently, the studios were best known for being the venue for the live stages of ITV British shows The X Factor and Britain's Got Talent.

The last show to be broadcast live (and recorded) at the studios was The X Factor on 4 December 2016, after which the studio was closed, and the site sold to property developer Quintain. It is now known as Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre.

In 1927, Ralph J. Pugh and Rupert Mason founded British Incorporated Pictures with the intention of creating an American-style studio complex in the former British Empire Exhibition's Palace of Engineering. They bought a lease at Wembley in June 1927, though it was for the Lucullus Garden Club Restaurant site, not the Palace of Engineering. Their financial backing fell through and in May 1928 the lease was sold to Victor Sheridan. Sheridan announced that £500,000 was to be spent on developing the biggest and best-equipped studio centre in Europe, British Talking Pictures engaged with Dynamics Corporation of New York to develop and supply a new improved Electromagnetic horn driver known as the Type 1 for its state of the art studio. Sheridan sold his lease to British Talking Pictures a few months later.

In September 1928, British Talking Pictures formed a subsidiary, British Sound Film Productions, to make films at Wembley. Wembley Studios was Britain's first purpose-built sound studios. Its three sound stages were officially opened in September 1929. Perhaps because of a major fire, the studio was never as successful as had been hoped. They were taken over by the American Fox Film Company, who leased the site and then bought it outright in 1936.

Fox used the studio for the production of their 'quota quickies'. A change in the law in 1938 led 20th Century Fox to use other studios, but it retained ownership. During the war the studios were leased to the military (the Army Kinematograph Service and RAF Film Unit), with intermittent rental to independents. Ealing Studios filmed Ships with Wings at Wembley in 1941. There was a fire at the studios in 1943.

In the 1950s the studios were used by Mercia Film Productions, who made feature films, and Rayant Pictures, who made shorts and adverts. The last film made at Wembley was Ealing Studios' The Ship That Died of Shame (US: PT Raiders, 1955).

Wembley Film Studio was taken over by Associated-Rediffusion, ITV's weekday broadcasters for London, in January 1955. Two of the existing studios were fully converted by the time commercial television began in September 1955, with the other two by the end of the year. An expansion on the site, the newly built Studio 5, opened in 1960. It was the largest television studio in Europe, and could be split into two parts for separate productions when required. The first production was An Arabian Night with Orson Welles. Shows such as Ready Steady Go!, No Hiding Place and Take Your Pick were to follow. During the 1960s the studios were home to some of the most popular programmes on the ITV network, including The Rat Catchers, Blackmail, At Last, The 1948 Show and The Frost Report. The Beatles appeared on more than one occasion at the studios.