Emoa Birmingham

Emoa Studios, Birmingham (soon to be re-named Mercia Studios) is the name of the headquarters of Mercia Television. As the name suggests, the facility is based in Nechelles, just south of Birmingham. It is a converted Business Park unit, purchased by Emoa Television in 2006 when it briefly operated Mercia Weekend Television, however when Emoa lost the licence in May 2006, the company leased out its facilities to other broadcasters. As part of its 2009 bid for the Midlands, Emoa re-instated the facility as its headquarters for Mercia.

Most of the playout equipment was still installed from the period of Mercia Weekend, however Mercia will share some facilities with Spectrum's studios in Coventry. The facility consisted of 3 studios labelled 0, 1 and 2. Studio 2 was later converted to offices and sub-let out to local businesses.

Although the facility is seen as "adequate" for Mercia West's current business, the company wishes to move further to central Birmingham and possibly to acquire larger studios. Mercia's parent, Emoa Group, purchased glizz Leisure plc, an entertainment business, in March 2009, of which it holds a former large nightclub complex in Birmingham. Emoa has stated, should its financial situation be stable, it intends to refurbish the facilty as a complex for Mercia, which could host up to "4 medium sized studios".

Studio 0: Mercia News West regional magazine, plus low-key regional programming Studio 1: All other regional programming Studio X: Presentation suite, featuring CG green screen

Playout suite
The complex comprises of three playout suites, although only one was built and was operational at the time of opening in 2006.

P1: Mercia Main Feed / Mercia West / Mercia +1 P2: Interactive services / Mercia East (Sundays) P3: Backup

P1 is the largest of the three, offering high-quality playout with the most latest of technology installed in 2006. It, like the Cheviot Studios, makes use of Neptune's BombardaMediator playout and encoding system. It currently handles the Mercia clean feed, deals with incoming Network / Newcastle playout and plays out Mercia West. P2 however was built in early 2009 using technology acquired from Spectrum Television, which is due to be upgraded to use the BombardaMediator system in line with P1 in 2011. It handles all of Mercia's interactive services, and also plays out Mercia East between Sundays 4pm to Monday 5.59am, when the Nottingham playout suite is closed. P3, also using former Spectrum technology, is currently used as a backup facility, but also occasionally handles the uplinking of Network programmes in addition to P1. A further suite, P4, will be opened in July 2010, matching the standards of P1. P3 will be closed as of that time for refurbishment and will re-open to cover the closure of P2 in 2011.