Television Magazine November 2014

November 2014

Zoella How a YouTube star cashed in

RTS Craft & Design Awards 2013/14 Monday 1 December London Hilton Booking

Callum Stott 020 7822 2822 callum@rts.org.uk

Journal of The Royal Television Society November 2014 l Volume 51/10

From the CEO The accent has very much been on youth in our busy autumn events calendar, thanks to two marvellous RTS Futures events and our first standalone Student Masterclasses – held in the highly appropriate setting of the BFI. We heard how being able to self-shoot is fast becoming an essential skill for anyone serious about working in television.

At the other Futures evening, “How to survive as a freelancer”, attendees received some essential tips on thriving in a flexible job market.

The good news is that freelance pay

is going up. A massive thanks to all those who made these two occasions the successes they were.

Three experienced TV practitioners shared their wisdom at the RTS Student Programme Masterclasses.

I’m very grateful to Saurabh Kakkar, Andrew Mackenzie and Gwyneth Hughes for all finding the time to be with the students at the BFI. Our November schedule contains lots of treats, starting with Doctor Who: Anatomy of a Hit, an absolute must for all Whovians.

Next up is a high-powered discussion on TV diversity at the House of Commons. The panelists are: Helen Goodman MP, Shadow Minister of

Contents 5 6 9

10 13 16

State for Culture, Media and Sport, John Leech MP, Liberal Democrat Culture, Media and Sport Spokesperson and Ed Vaizey MP, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries.

Look out, too, for the RTS’s inaugural Higher Education Media Day and the next RTS Early Evening Event, “Connected TV decoded”.

Whoever said November was a gloomy month?

Theresa Wise

Brigitte Trafford’s TV Diary

18

How to cash in on YouTube

20

Trust in the BBC

24

Young Turks needed to save TV

26 29 32

Self-shooting to stardom

When not emulating Ally, the Night Owl, Brigitte Trafford relishes any work day that includes a high-vis jacket and Swiss wine

YouTube is booming, but a viable business model for the platform’s contributors remains elusive, finds Tara Conlan

Our Friend in the North

Alex Connock offers scientific proof that MediaCity UK has taken off – or you could try squeezing into a local RTS event to see for yourself

Thriving against the odds

Jimmy Mulville has faced down addiction, serious illness and the prospect of financial ruin. Andrew Billen listens to an extraordinary life story

The evolution of the biopic

The genre continues to deliver critical acclaim on very tight budgets, says Torin Douglas

Everything still to fight for

There is a deafening silence over what devo max means for the BBC and other broadcasters, writes Maggie Brown

Editor Steve Clarke smclarke_333@hotmail.com Writer Matthew Bell bell127@btinternet.com

Production, design, advertising Gordon Jamieson gordon.jamieson.01@gmail.com Sub-editor Sarah Bancroft smbancroft@me.com

Television www.rts.org.uk November 2014

Royal Television Society 3 Dorset Rise, London EC4Y 8EN T: 020 7822 2810 E: info@rts.org.uk W: wwwrts.org.uk

A game of two winners?

As an unknown number of media titans stalk the glittering prize, the Premier League might secretly be hoping for a score draw, reports Owen Gibson

Outgoing BBC Trustee David Liddiment explains to Steve Clarke why the Trust, the licence fee and the corporation’s budget all need to be defended

The industry’s failure to attract young engineers has put it in a critical situation. Sanya Burgess looks at new initiatives to avert disaster

What do researchers and assistant producers need to develop this vital skill? Matthew Bell supplies answers

How to survive as a freelancer

Matthew Bell hears that working as a TV freelancer requires nerves of steel but the rewards can be lucrative

RTS Student Programme Masterclasses

Matthew Bell and Steve Clarke report the sage advice of top-flight comedy, factual and drama practitioners

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Printing ISSN 0308-454X Printer: FE Burman, 20 Crimscott St, London, SE1 STP

Legal notice © Royal Television Society 2014.

The views expressed in Television are not necessarily those of the RTS Registered Charity 313 728

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RTS NEWS National events RTS HIGHER EDUCATION MEDIA DAY Monday 24 November

Getting into the media

What it takes to get graduates the best jobs. 10:30am for 11:00am. Finishes at 6:00pm Venue: BFI, Southbank, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XT ■ Jamie O’Neill 020 7822 2821 ■ jamie@rts.org.uk RTS MASTERCLASSES Tuesday 25 November

RTS Student Craft Skills Masterclasses: camerawork, editing and sound 10:30am for 11:00am. Finishes at 5:00pm Venue: BFI, Southbank, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XT ■ Jamie O’Neill 020 7822 2821 ■ jamie@rts.org.uk RTS EARLY EVENING EVENT Wednesday 26 November

Connected TV decoded

Panellists: Richard Halton, YouView; Ilse Howling, Connected TV, Digital UK; Emma Lloyd, Sky/NOW TV; Dan Saunders, Google Chromecast; Stephen Taylor, Redshift Strategy.

Chair: Kate Bulkley, media commentator and journalist.

6:30pm for 6:45pm start Venue: Cavendish Conference Centre, 22 Duchess Mews, London W1G 9DT ■ Book online at www.rts.org.uk RTS AWARDS Monday 1 December RTS Craft & Design Awards 2013/14 Venue: London Hilton, Park Lane, London W1K 1BE ■ Callum Stott 020 7822 2822 ■ callum@rts.org.uk RTS LEGENDS Friday 5 December

In conversation with…

Cilla Black OBE Lunch is £60.00 (inc VAT) and includes service but not

4

beverages. Cilla Black will be presented with the first RTS Legends Award. The event is sponsored by Baroness Ben­ jamin OBE. 12:30pm for 1:00pm Venue: Cholmondeley Room, House of Lords, Parliament Square London SW1A 0AA ■ Book online at www.rts.org.uk ■ Jo Mitchell 020 7822 2823 ■ jo@rts.org.uk RTS EARLY EVENING EVENT Monday 8 December Speakers include David Abraham, Chief Executive, Channel 4 and Tom Mockridge, Chief Executive Officer, Virgin Media. 6:30pm for 6:45pm Venue: The Hospital Club, 24 Endell St, London WC2H 9HQ ■ Book online at www.rts.org.uk RTS FUTURES Tuesday 9 December

I made it... on screen With Sue Perkins, Holly Pye, Anna Richardson and other participants TBC Venue: Hallam Conference Centre, 44 Hallam St, London W1W 6JJ ■ Book online at www.rts.org.uk RTS AWARDS Wednesday 18 February 2015 RTS Television Journalism Awards 2013/14 Venue: London Hilton, Park Lane, London W1K 1BE ■ Jamie O’Neill 020 7822 2821 ■ jamie@rts.org.uk RTS AWARDS Tuesday 17 March 2015 RTS Programme Awards 2014 Venue: Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane, London W1K 7TN ■ Callum Stott 020 7822 2822 ■ callum@rts.org.uk

Local events BRISTOL ■ John Durrant ■ john@bdh.net

DEVON & CORNWALL Wednesday 19 November Breaking into Media and Student Television Awards Venue: Plymouth University, Drake Circus, Plymouth PL4 8AA ■ Contact TBC EAST ANGLIA ■ Contact TBC

Interactive programming: the business case Venue: London Television Centre, Upper Ground, London SE1 9LT ■ Daniel Cherowbrier ■ daniel@cherowbrier.co.uk MIDLANDS ■ Jayne Greene 07792 776585 ■ jayne@ijmmedia.co.uk NORTH EAST & THE BORDER Thursday 20 November

3D screening of Storm City

Venue: Cineworld, Marton Road, Middlesbrough TS1 2DY Friday 12 December

Quiz of the Year

Venue: Live Theatre, Quayside, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 3DQ ■ Jill Graham ■ jill.graham@blueyonder.co.uk NORTH WEST Wednesday 28 January

An evening with Kirsty Wark 6:30pm Venue: Quay Five, BBC North, MediaCity UK, Salford M50 2QH ■ Rachel Pinkney 07966 230639 ■ rachelpinkney@yahoo.co.uk

RTS Futures Media Careers Fair Free tickets available on Eventbrite. 5:00pm-8:00pm Venue: Queen’s University Employability Hub, University Road, Belfast BT7 1NN ■ John Mitchell ■ mitch.mvbroadcast@ btinternet.com

REPUBLIC OF IRELAND ■ Charles Byrne (00353) 87251 3092 ■ byrnecd@iol.ie SCOTLAND ■ James Wilson: 07899 761167 ■ james.wilson@ cityofglasgowcollege.ac.uk SOUTHERN ■ Gordon Cooper ■ gordonjcooper@gmail.com

LONDON Wednesday 19 November

NORTHERN IRELAND Wednesday 19 November

Your guide to upcoming national and regional events

THAMES VALLEY Friday 28 November

Annual Dinner Dance Venue: Beaumont House, Burfield Road, Old Windsor SL4 2JJ Wednesday 10 December

Managing live events

Venue: Pincents Manor, Calcot, Reading RG31 4UQ ■ Penny Westlake ■ info@rtstvc.org.uk WALES Tuesday 18 November

RTS Wales Centre Annual Lecture: Blair Jenkins, Scottish Digital Network In association with the National Assembly for Wales Commission.

Introduced by Dame Rosemary Butler AM. 6:00pm Venue: National Assembly, Pierhead Building, Cardiff CF10 4PZ Wednesday 3 December

Christmas Quiz

Places on the teams of staff from broadcasters, independent producers and freelancers are limited and will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.

Venue: Ku Ku Club, Park Plaza Hotel, Cardiff ■ Hywel Wiliam 0798 000 7841 ■ hywel@aim.uk.com YORKSHIRE Tuesday 18 November

So you want to work in video games?

Venue: West Yorkshire Playhouse, Quarry Hill, Leeds LS2 7UP ■ Lisa Holdsworth 07790 145280 ■ lisa@allonewordpoductions. co.uk

November 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

TV diary When not emulating, Ally the Night Owl, Brigitte Trafford relishes any work day that includes a high-vis jacket and Swiss wine

I

am a Leytonstone girl by birth. I share that provenance with David Beckham, and I have many happy memories in my teens of going to watch Trevor Brooking (look him up, if you’re under 40) at Upton Park.

It was a different football world, back then. No seats, for a start. And it did not seem that long ago since England lifted the World Cup with a West Ham player as captain.

So, after all these years away from the game, it’s good to be part of the team at Virgin Media asking Ofcom to look into the ever-increasing costs of watching live football on TV. We pay the highest prices in Europe to watch the least amount of football.

There is clearly a lot of support for what we have asked Ofcom to do.

Whether Bobby Moore, who earned £1,000 for winning the World Cup, would back us, we will sadly never know.

■ The Commonwealth Games was a great sporting event this summer.

Glasgow, next door to Virgin Media’s major centre in Bellshill, has become a second home this year for many of us in the company.

While the Games were a great success, we are determined to create a digital legacy for the city as part of our sponsorship.

Digital skills transform lives, yet 40% of Glaswegians say they lack the confidence to do basic online tasks.

These skills are a great way to engage with the wider world.

We are working with some of the least digitally savvy communities there to make the web relevant and useful to them.

Television www.rts.org.uk November 2014

■ I try not to miss any opportunity to don a high-visibility jacket. Last month I was in Papworth, just outside Cambridge.

How apt it is that the village, famous for the first successful heart transplant 35 years ago, is where Virgin Media is trialling cutting-edge technologies in deploying broadband.

“Narrow trenching” is an innovative technique for laying cables that enables faster and more efficient roll-out of our superfast network.

We were delighted to see Ed Vaizey recently support this in the Commons – and introduce the term “foam concrete” to the political lexicon. You heard it here first.

■ It’s good to see our new ad campaign is going down so well. It was developed following extensive research into the changing ways we all watch TV. In today’s “always-on” digital world, people want to be able to watch what they want, when they want and where they like. That might be on a rainy day (or weekend) on the sofa with our extensive library of movies – like our character Ed, the Sofa Bear. Or “just one more episode” late at night, with our fantastic range of box sets, available on-demand any time – like Ally the Night Owl, which definitely best describes me.

■ Flights are a good time to catch up on reading. Soon after our new and energetic Secretary of State, Sajid Javid, announced at the RTS London Conference that he would review EPG prominence and the balance of payments between platforms and PSBs, I read Enders’ excellent analysis of retransmission fees.

Virgin Media does not – nor has it ever – charge public service broadcasters for carriage. We simply do not believe that viewers should pay again for programmes that they have already paid for.

That’s a tax at the point of consumption and would constitute a fundamental change to the thriving and unique PSB model in the UK. The review will make for an interesting debate, with possibly far-reaching and unintended consequences.

■ The next flight was to Switzerland, where I was lucky to spend a few days attending a group-wide leadership programme with colleagues from Liberty Global.

One of the many advantages of being part of an international company is that we can share ideas and practices from around the world.

Being away and working intensely together means we all bring back to our own areas a renewed energy, not just to make the company a better place to work, but a better company to work with.

These events are a bit like going to New York: the whole thing is exhaus­ ting but the buzz remains long afterwards. Swiss wine is surprisingly good, too.

■ I have spent most of my career in the media and telecoms industries, at Dow Jones, ITV, Mercury and Cable & Wireless. The convergence that was much talked about early in my career is definitely here. It’s an extremely important and exciting time for the industry and I’m delighted to be back.

Brigitte Trafford is Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at Virgin Media.

5

I

How to cash in on YouTube

n October, YouTube hosted Brandcast, a glitzy showcase of some of its biggest talent. Held in London, it featured Jamie Oliver, whose Food Tube channel has more than 1 million subscribers, and Zoella, aka vlogger Zoe Sugg. She started her channel in 2009 and has 6.75 million subscribers at the time of writing (see box on page 8).

It was the kind of expensive event that UK broadcasters, including the BBC, used to put on when they had “Jacuzzis of cash”.

According to digital researcher eMarketer, YouTube’s net advertising revenue will hit $3.24bn in 2014. This represents around 7% of owner Google’s total advertising revenue.

YouTube’s own figures state that more than 1 billion unique users visit the site each month; during that time they watch around 6 billion hours of video.

These are big numbers. It is no wonder that Ynon Kreiz, CEO of YouTube multi-channel network (MCN) Maker Studios, described YouTube as “the largest cable company in the world”.

But who is really making money out of posting videos on YouTube?

And can Maker (bought earlier this year by Disney for an eye-watering $950m) and the other MCNs available on the platform sustain a business model that seems better suited to bedroom start-ups than boardrooms?

Brandcast certainly sent out a signal about monetising YouTube.

Tom Fryett, Video Associate Director at media buyer Starcom MediaVest, was there: “For Google to hold that kind of thing, and that kind of format, shows that is where it wants to compete. It wants to compete with TV stations. I thought it was very impressive.”

Brandcast included the UK launch of Google Preferred. It uses an algorithm to assess the channels that have the best audience engagement and the most views, which advertisers can then use to their advantage.

Fryett says: “the preference score

6

Digital content

YouTube is booming but a viable business model for the platform’s contributors remains elusive, finds Tara Conlan and data can help find” talent and “make them manageable for advertisers and put them somewhere where advertisers can then leverage that to reach audiences”.

But making money is usually not the driving force or main motivation for YouTube creators. Rising star Buddy Munro, maker of National Geographic stunt show True Tube, says the main appeal is that there are “no barriers to entry and you are your own boss”.

“YouTube is just another channel.

But I have complete editorial control,” he adds. “It’s a great learning ground. It

JAMIE OLIVER MIGHT NOT MAKE ALL OF THE MONEY HE INVESTED IN YOUTUBE BACK IN THE FIRST TWO OR THREE YEARS, BUT… HE CAN SEE THE BENEFITS FURTHER DOWN THE LINE

is also speedy. I’m a big fan of TV, but it often takes a long time to get things commissioned.”

His hilarious escapades in The Adventurists clocked up 150,000 views over five to six months. But Munro says he makes “pennies” from YouTube – partly because he is selective about the advertising that appears around his content.

Moreover, Munro has declined to “seed” his work. This is the system whereby creators pay to have their content promoted via blogs and social media.

However, significant amounts of money can be made from YouTube in a variety of ways. New players are given advice on how to cash in at YouTube’s Creator Academy.

Options include paid subscription and product placement. But the most basic way is from display advertising overlays (typically, banners) or in-stream adverts.

Pre-roll adverts (the ones you sit through after you’ve pressed play) can be lucrative, unless they are skippable.

YouTube’s Partner Programme enables creators and channels to share advertising revenue; the platform currently takes 45% of the revenue from pre-roll ads.

Fryett thinks the Partner Programme “means short-term gains have been made by enterprising young people in their bedrooms with ever-increasingly sophisticated pieces of tech. They can create very professional-looking pieces of content.

“But I think it’s a long game. Jamie Oliver might not make all of the money he has invested in YouTube back in the first two or three years, but I think he’s persevering with it because he can see the benefits further down the line.”

Oliver’s Director of Food, Zoe Collins, agrees: “It is a long game for us, but not because it’s a pilot for traditional media. We are passionate about the platform as a way to reach different audiences that traditional media cannot reach.

Zoe Sugg

Felix Kiellberg

Alfie Deyes

YouTube stars (from top): Alfie Deyes, PewDiePie and Zoella

Television www.rts.org.uk November 2014

“We also believe that a new generation of stars will arise from the online industry – indeed, we are seeing that crossover of talent from digital to traditional happen already… but that is not the point for us.

“The way audiences consume content is changing and we want to be at the forefront of that change.”

Deloitte head of tech and media research Paul Lee co-authored a report this year questioning whether much money can be made from advertising around YouTube content.

Long-form traditional TV ads “generate about $200bn annually worldwide – about 40 times greater than estimated revenues from video clips,” says the Deloitte report.

To put this into context, says Lee: “If we convert both viewers and views to total hours viewed, US residents have spent an aggregate of 38 million hours watching Gangnam Style since 2012 – equivalent to the total viewing time for four and a half episodes of The Big Bang Theory.”

Gamer PewDiePie (aka Felix Kjellberg) is YouTube’s most popular star.

He has around 31 million subscribers and is thought to earn some $7m a year from advertising, according to Deloitte.

So how do people like him get rich on YouTube?

Oliver’s Head of Commercial, Lisa Tookey, explains: “The money isn’t necessarily made via pre-roll ads, although some channels and creators at the multimillion subscriber level will be making reasonably significant revenue.

“The real money is in the integrated, branded content that [adverts] are positioned around, as well as off-­ YouTube products and platforms.

“Brands now recognise the power that YouTube creators have on influencing an audience with whom they have a direct dialogue.”

She continues: “If PewDiePie recommends buying the latest gaming kit, you can be sure it will sell out. �

7

BRANDS NOW RECOGNISE THE POWER THAT YOUTUBE CREATORS HAVE ON INFLUENCING AN AUDIENCE

The Bambi-eyed, dip-dyed, bubblegum and sweetness that is Zoe Sugg has reportedly made £270,000 in the last year as an internet personality.

Zoella, as she is known online, has amassed an army of subscribers who regularly tune in to see her talk about make-up, styling and personal advice.

The 24-year-old began blogging from her parents’ house in Wiltshire while working in interior design. After being made redundant, she was encouraged by fans of her blog to start making videos.

Sugg is often quoted as remembering her parents telling her to ‘get off her laptop and to get a real job’; her vlog now attracts around the same viewing figures as the current Doctor Who series.

The appeal of Zoella is that she is seen as a great role model. She’s a bubbly, big-sister figure who speaks about the importance of a healthy body image and self-respect, as well as eye shadow and hair styles.

Zoella is a digital ambassador for mental-health charity Mind and often speaks about her own anxiety, which prevented her from going to university.

She emphasises that the products she promotes on her vlog are carefully chosen by her so that she can maintain the level of trust she has built up with her loyal audience.

It is this level of trust, combined with the amount of access a viewer gets to Zoella, that has entranced so many 13- to 20-year-olds across the UK. Any teenage girl in the country with an internet connection can log on to YouTube and instantly be with their digital best friend.

Zoella works hard to make sure the barrier of a screen is forgotten by chatting away as if the viewer is in the room with her, occasionally asking opinions or questions that are faithfully answered by her audience in the comment section.

She often appears on-screen with no make-up and her hair in a scraggly bun, as well as looking all dolled up.

Zoella brings her audience into her world and creates a friendship, one that may be digital but feels genuine and valuable to those on the other side of the laptop screen.

As well as viewers having access to Zoella, Sugg also brings in those close

8

BBC

Who is Zoella?

to her. The viewer regularly meets her vlogger brother, Joe, and even her parents pop in and out of her videos.

Perhaps most importantly, they also meet her boyfriend.

Zoella and Alfie Deyes have been called ‘the Posh and Becks’ of YouTube. Deyes runs his own successful blog called PointlessBlog (which sees him smear Nutella on his face and eat cat food in front of his own millions of fans). He has also recently published a bestseller, The Pointless Book. In the spirit of the age, the pair met through YouTube and announced their relationship in a bespoke vlog.

Zoella and Alfie regularly appear in each other’s vlogs, which shrewdly allows them to tap into each other’s fan bases. This habit of appearing in fellow blogger’s videos is commonplace between the members of the YouTube ‘Britpack’ group, which includes Joe Sugg (Zoe’s brother), 23, Caspar Lee, 20, Tanya Burr, 25, and several others.

What’s next for Zoella? Like many of her fellow vloggers, she has expanded her brand beyond the laptop screen. Sugg is releasing a book entitled Girl Online, and has recently launched a line of bath products.

In an unexpected move to traditional media, the internet celebrity is soon to guest present a Radio 1 show. Perhaps it will not be long until audiences see Zoella on primetime television – but she is very unlikely to be leaving her online presence behind.

Sanya Burgess

� “Similarly, Zoella now has a successful beauty range, sold both onand offline, as well as a book to add to her empire.

“And this is absolutely true for Jamie. His success on Food Tube is amplified by an eco-system of owned media, ranging from books and magazines to his recipe app and website.

“For brands wanting to be fully integrated into Jamie’s world, he can offer direct access to all of his ‘touchpoints’ – which collectively reach more than 31 million people every month.”

Fryett says: “I think the bedroom creators are winning for now, but when you see Disney picking up Maker you grasp that the people at the top are fast realising the value of this platform, too.”

But are the multichannel networks on YouTube, such as Maker and rival Base 79, too dependent on the creators? After all, it is they who have the direct relationship with the viewers, not the MCNs. There is indeed, a risk here, believes Fryett: “Facebook is also keen to be an alternative platform for TV advertising spend and wants to leverage video as well. Someone like PewDiePie could be lured away in a big-money transfer to Facebook, for example. It’s a massive content landscape now.”

Zoella’s company made a profit of just over £270,000 in the year to 31 March. It is not known how much was derived from advertising, rather than merchandise, but it does suggest that YouTube can create stars with lucrative careers.

With consumers increasingly on the go and consuming content on tablets, short-form video is much in demand. But, from what we’ve witnessed so far, YouTube content looks likely to be seen predominantly as a video snack, rather than as a whole televisual meal.

November 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

OUR FRIEND IN THE

NORTH

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

Shine

J

ust in case your subscription to Database Marketing and Customer Strategy Management has lapsed, let me remind you of the 2011 study suggesting that, to achieve critical mass, a social network needs to sign up 15% of its relevant population.

The number of staff at MediaCity UK has just topped 3,000 – which happens to be close to 15% of the relevant population of 23,000 in Manchester’s overall creative industries.

And that means, in academic terms, that MediaCity has reached critical mass as a social network.

Which anybody on the ground could have told you. The restaurants (basically Wagamamas and a couple of pizza places) and the pub (a metaAll Bar One called DockBar) are now properly full at lunchtimes.

The one supermarket (Booths – think Northern-posh) has queues practically out of the door, not least for Chinese chicken at the hot counter.

Even upmarket Marco Pierre White has opened a restaurant. I, for one, feel certain he will now be moving to Salford on a permanent basis.

Proper TV shows such as Coronation Street, Mastermind, Countdown, University Challenge, Match of the Day, Blue Peter and many more are in and out all the time, plus concomitant hubbub.

One day last week, all seven studios were shooting simultaneously.

Jeremy Kyle participants from tough neighbourhoods like Wythenshawe are led on circuitous loops of the building to avoid them reconciling with each other before the studio showdown.

When The Voice was in town, the place was flooded with assistants in black T-shirts, conversing with each other extensively on talkback about issues of importance such as where to buy the presenters’ lunches.

One of the key questions, I gath-

Alex Connock offers scientific proof that MediaCity UK has taken off – or you could try squeezing into a local RTS event to see for yourself

ered, was an enquiry from one of the judges as to whether the Wagamama apple and orange juice was organic.

In the indie production sector, True North came over in force from Leeds to produce the Wales-based show, The Valleys (the geography must make sense to someone).

The superb Red, now poetically based above the MediaCity Holiday Inn, is pumping out an extraordinary run of drama hits, from The Driver to Last Tango in Halifax.

Each demonstrates a depth of location filming that does for Manchester and West Yorkshire what Hitchcock did for Northern California.

Their new neighbour is the com-

pany I am running, Shine North. In parallel with MediaCity, we, too, have moved from tiny quasi start-up to bustling offices with four or five series on the go.

Content is shipped to the world from the same docks that shifted cotton 150 years ago.

Happily, the RTS is integral: a driver, a passenger, and a road map to the creative change that has swept through North West TV in the past two years.

The other day we put on probably our loveliest event ever. Puppets and puppeteers jointly took to a crowded stage in The Lowry to discuss the finer amusements of their craft before a rapt audience of our now entirely usual 200-plus.

The conversation was sparkling, warm, creative and a world away from the self-aware, slouching TV executive angst that defines most conference speeches we’ve all endured – or perpetrated.

And at the RTS North West Awards this month, the depth and range are there for all to celebrate.

We rapidly sold out the Hilton for the second year running, with some 460 guests, double the number of sponsors, and almost no free tickets given out even to helpers.

We could have gone bigger. We had an incredible 96 people taking part as judges.

Of course, we have individual shortlists dominated by sector-leading players such as CBBC in the new Animation category or ITV in Continuing Drama (that is, soaps). But take the nominees together, and the overall picture is of an industry in balance between BBC, ITV and independent, – and thriving. TV in the North West definitely has reached critical mass.

Alex Connock is Managing Director of Shine North.

9

Thriving against long odds

T

he founder and Managing Director of one of Britain’s most successful, and certainly longest-lived, genuinely independent production companies sometimes tell his children that too much emphasis is put on excellence. “It’s very important to fail,” their millionaire father says to them, “and to recognise failure”.

Perhaps this is why I spend 75 minutes in Jimmy Mulville’s office at Hat Trick, its windows overlooking the murky Regent’s Canal, discussing the crises in his life.

The one-time enfant terrible of sketch comedy (who will, incredibly, be 60 in January) talks about his father’s suicide, his alcohol and drug addiction, and a cancer diagnosis 12 years ago that threatened to leave his third wife a widow for the second time. Not forgetting his love-hate relationship with the BBC. We could, very profitably no doubt,

10

The Billen profile

Jimmy Mulville has faced down addiction, serious illness and the prospect of financial ruin.

Andrew Billen listens to an extraordinary life story have spent 75 minutes analysing the indestructibility of Hat Trick’s Have I Got News for You?, lauding the company’s classic comedies, from Father Ted to Outnumbered, or discussing its less well-known but also superb dramas, such as Bodies and God on Trial.

Mulville is also entertaining on some of his smaller crises, the stuff the self-­ help books tell us not to sweat.

One of them was the closure of the studios where Hat Trick’s trans-

Atlantic sitcom, Episodes, was filmed and its enforced relocation to unlovely Elstree. “A real dump of a place,” he says. “I mean, something as simple as the catering…. We walked in with these two top-end American writers and Matt LeBlanc on our first day for breakfast, and it was like a scene from a prison movie.”

One can assume that the man from Barclays had never met a businessman like Mulville. Six years ago, the banker was a regular visitor, as Hat Trick faced a seemingly terminal debt crisis that coincided with several of its shows ending their runs.

Mulville says he fully thought that the company, which had been heavily invested in by the venture capitalist August Equity, would go under.

The man from the bank’s idea of helping was to go through its development slate, asking if a forthcoming programme was any good. One day Mulville replied that no, this one he mentioned was particularly terrible.

Indeed, his new strategy was only to “plan failures and fuck everything up intentionally”.

At a board meeting during this period, he found himself saying to his financial partners that they barely knew him. He was, he explained, used to vicissitudes. His mother, a waitress, was, like him, a recovering alcoholic.

His father, a boiler operator at Tate & Lyle in Liverpool, “liked a drink”.

When education and intelligence propelled their only child to Cambridge, a “schism” opened between him and his parents.

Dennis Potter, in his 1993 MacTaggart Lecture, spoke of having been educated to a point where he felt he could never again go “home”. In the audience, Mulville wept.

In his last year at university, the news was withheld from him that his father was seriously ill. “He killed himself when I was 23. He decided that he had had enough. He kind of euthanised himself in the most dramatic way. He

Television www.rts.org.uk November 2014

hanged himself at his home. My mother found him.”

That year, 1978, he joined BBC Light Entertainment, first in radio and then producing and script editing BBC Two’s Alas Smith and Jones.

Mulville did not enjoy Television Centre, which he suspected suffered from a version of sick building syndrome, but he is no more enamoured of New Broadcasting House and the “obscenity” of the “great bear pit” of a newsroom that greets a visitor.

“Nobody loves the BBC for its news.

They trust it for its news, but they love it for its comedy and entertainment.”

His relationship with his first employer is clearly complex, if not Oedipal. He talks of its “complacency” and “arrogance” in the early 1980s, of how no one could believe he might actually take an idea to Channel 4.

This is exactly what he did with the controversial sketch show, Who Dares Wins, in which he starred with Rory McGrath and Tony Robinson.

BBC

Hat Trick

Episodes

When, later, he set up Hat Trick with his girlfriend Denise O’Donoghue to make Whose Line is it Anyway?, his ally was the “inertia and apathy” of the BBC entertainment division. It had not got round to translating the Radio 4 improv show – on which Mulville had appeared – to television itself.

After the BBC bought Have I Got News for You?, he was “threatened” with executive producers to ensure it matched the quality of indigenous BBC comedy, “such as Terry and June”.

Yet he also says he loves the BBC, and, in particular, its consistent support for the genre that Hat Trick is best known for, comedy.

Its Director-General, Tony Hall, is now driving through exactly the reforms Mulville has long advocated: an end to its in-house production guarantee, and the opportunity for the BBC to sell its shows to other broadcasters.

Mulville warns that, for the plan to work, it must change still further: “The ITV Studios establishment is 1,200 people. The BBC’s is nearly 3,000. So Tony Hall says he’s going to liberate the in-house producer to produce for everybody. He’s going to liberate a lot of them into unemployment.”

He singles out Danny Cohen, the BBC’s Director of Television, as a BBC executive who could “easily” run an indie. “But there are also total fucking idiots who couldn’t run a bath and are getting away with it because they’re in these BBC jobs. The BBC used to have more dead wood than Kew Gardens; I think that’s less the case now.”

He recalls a conversation with George Entwistle in which the short-lived DG said he was sure BBC producers were as hungry for commissions as Hat Trick’s.

Mulville replied by asking how many would lose their jobs if they failed to win them. “I said, ‘We’re all beasts of the field. We’re all animals out here, but I’m one side of the fence on the Serengeti, lean and mean, looking for the next kill. Meanwhile, over the other side of the fence, you’re being brought out of the lowing shed and fed three times a day. Different beasts.’”

Back in the late 1980s, Mulville was a beast you might not necessarily have wanted to know. His early marriage to a local girl had not survived his translation to Cambridge, but he was game to try again.

In a brief spell off the booze, he had wed O’Donoghue, but the marriage unravelled when he started indulging �

11

James Thomas Mulville, Managing Director of Hat Trick Productions since 1986

Who Dares Wins 1983 Wrote and performed in Channel 4’s Who Dares Wins 1984 Producer on Alas Smith & Jones 1986 Set up Hat Trick with Denise O’Donoghue and Rory McGrath 1987 Wrote and starred in Chelmsford 123 1987 Married Denise O’Donoghue 1988 Starred in ITV sitcom That’s Love 1988 Hat Trick production Whose Line Is It Anyway?

1990 First series of Hat Trick’s Have I Got News for You 1999 Married Karen Page A hat trick of hits Father Ted, Clive Anderson Talks Back, Drop the Dead Donkey A more recent hat trick Episodes, Facejacker, The Revolution Will Be Televised Hobbies Everton Football Club, shooting

12

Channel 4

Married to Karen Page since 1999; three sons and one step daughter Born 5 January 1955, Liverpool Parents Father: James, boiler operator; died 1978. Mother: June, department-store waitress ‘and fantastic grandmother’ Education: Alsop Comprehensive; Jesus College, Cambridge; joined the Footlights, starring in The Puny Little Life Show by Roger McGough 1974 Married Julia Kelly 1978 Joined BBC Light Entertainment Department

BBC

Mulville’s progress

have been for Karen, whose husband � again, probably to escape goodness had died of cancer, aged 42. “I said to knows how many unresolved issues her, ‘It’s a good job I survived because with his father. if I hadn’t survived, you’d never have He spent a possibly record 13 weeks found another husband. They’d have in rehab at Farm Place in Surrey. “I thought you’re some awful jinx. was very angry in there, very cynical, Someone starts dating you and they and in the end I broke. It doesn’t matbecome tumescent in the wrong way.’” ter how smart you think you are, if The debt crisis of 2008-09 was you have that addictive gene or whatanother story of survival against ever it is, you end up feeling comsome bad odds – stacked higher, pletely lost. And it’s essential that you perhaps, by O’Donoghue’s departure feel lost. It’s essential that you have from the company in 2005. It was a that moment where you think, ‘I’m defection that, he admits, threw him. fucked.’”

Salvation came when his partner I ask if he felt that again in 2002, David Young sold 12 Yard, in which when a lump in his neck was diag­­Mulville had a 50% stake, to ITV for nosed as a secondary cancer, “No. I £35m. With some extra borrowing, felt very frightened, very upset. I loved Hat Trick had pulled out the provermy life. I just wanted to extend it.”

Life was indeed good. Increasingly bial rabbit. enjoying running a company with The story Mulville enjoys telling like-minded people (unlike-minded most concerns his marriage, his three people tended to leave), he had quietly sons and his step daughter Paige, retired his acting career after the ITV Karen’s daughter. When he first met sitcom That’s Love ended in 1992. her, she was three and, on some With O’Donoghue still on board instinct, she had called him “dad”. For and minutely focused on costs, Hat 16 years she did not call him that again.

Trick became very profitable at a time “Behind my back she would call when the mark-up on a sitcom was me dad, but not to my face. I said to 35% more than it is today. Seven or Karen, ‘I can understand that, because eight of its programmes could air in a when she called the first man in her single week’s schedules. life dad, he died. So why would you By his early forties, he had “made a want to make that link again?’ few quid”. He had also met a young “Then, when she was 19, we were in widow called Karen Page through a the kitchen just before Christmas and mutual friend who had Aids. Jimmy she said, ‘I’ve bought you a present. and Karen would turn up at his home Do you want to have it now?’ I said, to watch DVDs with him and go out ‘All right.’ ‘It’ll make you cry.’ I said, together to pick up takeaways from a ‘Will it really?’

Japanese restaurant.

“She said, ‘Yes, it will.” It was a little In the end, the dying man accused key ring from Tiffany’s and it had that them both of coming round merely to on it.” He shows it to me. It says: see each other. They married in 1999 “Dad”. “And it did make me cry.” and started a family.

As anyone who “I was 47 when I was diagnosed and thought he might not I thought, ‘Oh fuck!’ You know, just see them should, he when it was all going well. is looking forward to My father was diagnosed his sixties. “I am at with his illness, which that time now where I was transverse myelitis, can say I love what I which is like a polio viral do for a job, but it’s thing from which there’s not everything,” no recovery, when he was says Mulville.

48. I thought, ‘Shit. It’s “It really isn’t some awful kind of everything. And cosmic joke.’ But, the thing is, fortunately, I was that’s only in very good dawned on me hands and they now, in my late eradicated it and fifties. Until here I am.” the moment I One can do die, I know hardly imagine it’s going to how that must be fine.”

Have I Got News for You?

November 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

Life story Evolution

Cilla

JJ

eff Pope knows more than most about TV drama based on real-life stories, but he can’t quite believe the success of Cilla. Lauded by critics – not least for Sheridan Smith’s “stunning” performance as the young Cilla Black – ITV’s three-part biopic was also a ratings triumph.

Averaging 8.3 million viewers and a 31% audience share, it is the mostwatched new drama this year on any channel. That is almost twice the audience for Not Like That, Like This - ITV’s much-praised film about Tommy Cooper, broadcast in April.

Cilla also beat ITV’s other hit fact-­­ based drama, The Widower, about a convicted murderer, which averaged 7.5 million viewers.

“After decades of making dramas about serial killers, murderers and heavyweight politicians, the life of a

Television www.rts.org.uk November 2014

TV drama

There’s a lot of life left in a genre that has frequently delivered critical acclaim on very tight budgets, says Torin Douglas girl pop star seemed something of a departure,” Pope admitted before Cilla was shown. As writer, executive producer and Head of Factual Drama for ITV Studios, his successes include See No Evil: The Moors Murderers, the Fred West biopic Appropriate Adult, Lucan, Pierrepoint, Mrs Biggs, Mo and Philomena.

ITV

of the TV biopic

“I had always yearned to do a story like Cilla,” he says. “The chance to capture performance as well as drama was an ambition for me – and with Cilla, there were some iconic songs to choose from.”

Pope also had the perfect Cilla, after working closely with Sheridan Smith on Mrs Biggs, which won her a Bafta.

“Sheridan worked for months to get her voice in shape for the rigours of a two-month shoot and to get that ‘Cilla’ sound. I think the result is astonishing,” says Pope.

But that wouldn’t have been enough without a compelling story, he insists: “I was determined that it shouldn’t be a hagiography, it had to have teeth – and one of the most interesting things was to discover how ruthless Cilla had been in putting her career before her boyfriend, Bobby Willis. �

13

� She told me: ‘There were times when I was a real cow.’ Another surprise was that her manager, Brian Epstein, wanted her to go into television and she didn’t.

“This fascinated me, the idea of a pre-Blind Date/Surprise Surprise Cilla running a mile from the career that (for those under pensionable age) now defines her,” he adds.

Pope is a former journalist, famed for the rigour with which he researches his subjects. Before Cilla began shooting, he spent many hours with the star, talking about her story.

“We got to the point where she gradually trusted me enough to reveal some intimate and never previously discussed details,” Pope recalls. “And she was brave enough to give her blessing to a picture that doesn’t flinch from some of the darker episodes in her life.”

But for a long time Black couldn’t bring herself to watch the films.

“We gave her a rough-cut version to watch six weeks before broadcast and she was very nervous about it,” says Pope.

“Fortunately, her son Robert, who’s also her manager, knew there’d be press interest, and he took the DVD round and they watched it together.

I’ve spoken to her since and I know she was pleased.”

Pope says the huge success of Cilla means broadcasters are inevitably looking for more dramas based on the lives of celebrities.

The irony is that – with an entertainer as its subject, rather than a murderer – it was more in the BBC drama mould than that of ITV. BBC Four blazed a biopic trail with a stream of films about popular entertainers and successful women (sometimes both). They include Kenneth Williams, Tony Hancock, Frankie Howerd, John Lennon, Hattie Jacques, Fanny Craddock, Enid Blyton, Gracie Fields, Margot Fonteyn, Isabella Beeton, Hughie Green, Harry Corbett and Wilfrid Brambell.

The road ran out in 2013 with the award-winning Burton and Taylor, who were played by Dominic West and Helena Bonham Carter.

The BBC axed BBC Four’s dramas to cut costs, even though most were made on a shoestring, understood to be around £500,000 an hour.

“The BBC Four biopic has been cut off in its prime,” wrote Ben Lawrence in The Daily Telegraph. Sam Wollaston

14

Lucan

ABOVE ALL, YOU’VE GOT TO BE FAIR – FAIR TO THE SPIRIT OF WHAT HAPPENED

The Secret Life of Mrs Beeton

lamented the loss of “these brilliant BBC Four biopics” in The Guardian.

ITV’s Pope says that, as a viewer, he was “bitterly disappointed”.

Others thought the genre had passed its sell-by date. “Bored with biopics” was the headline on a 2010 feature in The Independent, in which Gerard Gilbert argued that life stories were taking huge chunks of drama budgets – and were generally safe and unchallenging.

By then, however, the BBC’s drama department was moving on. In 2011, Eric and Ernie was broadcast on BBC Two, starring Victoria Wood as Eric More-

Eric and Ernie

cambe’s mother, Sadie, with a budget twice that of the BBC Four films.

Ben Stephenson, the BBC’s Controller of Drama Commissioning, says “Eric and Ernie took things to a different level, winning 6.5 million viewers, BBC Two’s biggest-ever drama audience.

“On BBC Four, those films might get 1 million. Biopics are now in British telly’s DNA – but the BBC and ITV have become slightly more selective, and they now feel more ‘flagship’.”

Eric and Ernie was written by Peter Bowker, who also struck biopic gold recently with Marvellous on BBC Two, the true and uplifting story of Neil

Burton and Taylor

THE KEY IS TO DO THE RESEARCH, BE RESPECTFUL AND KEEP IT AUTHENTIC Baldwin, the kit man at Stoke City, who overcame learning difficulties. It won rave reviews and was watched by 2.2 million viewers.

For both films, it was important to gain the families’ support to help inform the story, even though they would have no editorial control.

That can be difficult when so many of the entertainers are shown to have skeletons in their cupboards - alcoholism, lies about their sexuality, complicated love lives and cruelty to children and partners.

Bowker says it was easier with Eric and Ernie because there weren’t any

Television www.rts.org.uk November 2014

Hattie

great character flaws. “The drama’s tension lay in things that everyone can recognise – disappointment, bereavement, an unexpected pregnancy – and the disaster of their first TV show.

“The most sensitive area for me was that Ernie’s wife, Doreen, felt his role in the partnership had always been underplayed – the eternal fate of the straight man.

“And because Gary Morecambe has done such a great job in preserving his father’s memory, I wanted to redress the balance a bit.”

ITV’s Tommy Cooper film was tougher, showing him torn between

ITV/BBC

Not Like That, Like This

his love for his wife, Gwen, and his assistant, Mary.

The network’s Director of Drama, Steve November, says criticism of it came more from Cooper’s fans than his family. “There were fantastic performances from David Threlfall and Amanda Redman, and his fans didn’t want to hear it, even though it was truthful,” he says.

But can writers and producers play with the truth? “It’s very important to capture the spirit of events, if not the exact letter,” says Bowker. “You can’t usually know exactly what was said.”

“Above all, you’ve got to be fair – fair to the spirit of what happened,” says Pope. “But you have to condense events and, occasionally, people. For example, Fred and Rose West were interviewed by more than 30 police officers over many months. In Appropriate Adult, I had to reduce that to three or four or the audience would never have followed it.”

What if people don’t think it’s fair?

“We’d normally have that conversation at the script stage and then again when editing, before we transmit,” he replies.

“You don’t give away editorial control, but you do want to be accurate and sensitive.”

Not all writers and producers are as rigorous as Pope and Bowker, but Ofcom says it generally receives few complaints that biopics are misleading.

Stephenson says: “I get more complaints about dead animals than biopics!”

“The key is to do the research, be respectful and keep it authentic,” says Katherine Lannon, who produced the dramas about Isabella Beeton, John Lennon, Shirley Bassey and Shappi Khorsandi, and script-edited Hawking.

Now an executive producer at Ecosse Films, she says many biopics become “passion projects”: “I have been amazed by the dedication of casts and crews to replicate a person, a place and a period – even on the more challenging budgets.”

So who’s next for the biopic treatment? Pope is working on a comedy drama series for BBC Two based on the autobiography of Danny Baker, with whom he worked on LWT’s The Six O’Clock Show in the 1980s.

The BBC is focusing on less wellknown people. It has just filmed The C Word, adapted from Lisa Lynch’s inspiring blog about her experience of cancer.

It stars – who else? – Sheridan Smith.

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W

hen Scotland voted against independence on 18 September, the question of whether control over broadcasting would be part of a new devolution settlement was left hanging in the air.

John McVay, Chief Executive of ­independent producers group Pact, expressed a sentiment widely held in Scotland: “The vote hasn’t settled anything. Instead of clarity, there is nervousness.” He was speaking in October, after a post-referendum meeting of his TV-production members in Glasgow.

McVay has been shocked by the lack of awareness in London of how volatile the situation is in Scotland. The nervousness about what happens next is such that few senior broadcasting executives wish to speak openly.

The media city of Glasgow, the BBC’s Scottish base, voted 53.5% in favour of independence. Many of the city’s media and cultural elite believed that Scotland would deliver a yes vote.

“In Westminster, people think that it is settled, over,” said McVay, pointing out that pro-independence demonstrations were still taking place in Glasgow.

16

BBC

Everything still to fight for

Politics

The deafening silence over what devo max means for the BBC and other broadcasters is no longer tenable, writes Maggie Brown This sense that the winds of change are still blowing strongly is echoed by Glasgow University’s Professor of Cultural Policy, Philip Schlesinger. He is also a visiting professor at LSE, a member of the Ofcom Nations Committee, Chair of Ofcom’s Advisory Committee for Scotland and a member of its Content Board.

“No one has given proper attention to broadcasting and devo max in Scotland because of the polarised debate,” says Schlesinger, speaking in a personal capacity and not on behalf of Ofcom.

He also thinks that large swathes of eastern England, from the North East through Yorkshire and the East Midlands to East Anglia, have been disadvantaged in terms of reduced

television production and representation.

This worries McVay, too. He fears that the consequences of the Scottish National Party’s demands for a big increase in Scottish production would be a “beggar my neighbour” approach.

“The SNP doesn’t understand,” he says. “The cake for the BBC is not getting any bigger.”

Gordon Brown’s intervention at the Loanhead Miners Welfare and Social Club, remember, promised Scottish home rule with a 10-point plan for devolving powers over borrowing, job creation and employment rights. Significantly, however, the plan did not mention broadcasting.

The vow in referendum week, from the three main UK party leaders, for “faster, safer, better change” for Scotland was interpreted by the SNP as a huge transfer of powers. (This was, of course, ahead of the actual 55% no vote.)

The SNP’s contribution to the Smith Commission, the body that is attempting to corral a cross-party consensus in drafting the forthcoming Scotland Bill (see box, opposite), is, unsurprisingly, “devo-max” in its approach.

The SNP argues for Scottish control of taxation revenue raised in Scotland, adding that “other economic levers

(outside of taxation), including competition, energy and broadcasting policy... should be devolved”.

The submission to Smith explains that “devolution of broadcasting would provide the leverage needed to enhance job creation, through increased production, contribute to a fairer society and enable Scotland to better express itself in the world”.

But it does not spell out whether a Scottish government would expect to control the £320m of licence-fee money paid by Scots, or a planned new channel for Scotland, costing £75m a year under the proposed Scottish Broadcasting Service. Indeed, it does not mention the BBC by name.

Meanwhile, Scottish Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop is pressing for more independent production to boost the local creative industries.

Alice Enders, of Enders Analysis – who, with sister and company founder Claire, has her main home in Scotland – says: “BBC Scotland is alive, but not well, after the attacks by the SNP for alleged bias. In fact, it was falling over backwards to say nothing at all and, in effect, stifling the no-vote side.”

McVay agrees that “BBC Scotland’s priority is to re-establish credibility for unbiased reporting”.

This question of credibility makes an appearance in the BBC Trust’s most recent minutes, published on 16 October. These refer to research quoted by John Boothman, BBC Scotland’s Head of News and Current Affairs, which suggests that supporters of independence are “less likely to consider that the BBC’s coverage was impartial”.

Enders adds: “The BBC will come under a lot of pressure from the SNP in Scotland –which can be deflected. But, after the May 2015 general election, this will mount as it increases its representation”. Alex Salmond is expected to stand for election to Westminster and, given Labour’s problems in Scotland, many expect him to head a group of upwards of 15 SNP MPs. Meanwhile, the BBC Trust and Executive Board, which both took a vow of silence during the referendum campaign, are still mute.

“Clearly, there is a range of issues that will be debated between the Westminster and Scottish parliaments now that the Scottish people have made their decision, and the BBC will seek, as always, to cover the issues in an impartial and balanced way,” is the official line.

Television www.rts.org.uk November 2014

NO ONE HAS GIVEN PROPER ATTENTION TO BROADCASTING AND DEVO MAX IN SCOTLAND BECAUSE OF THE POLARISED DEBATE Television’s requests to speak to Alison Hastings, the outgoing Trustee for England, about the “English question”, and the BBC’s problems in the Midlands and North were refused.

There have been looser tongues at the party conferences: senior BBC executives let it be known that they believed Scotland had been well treated.

They highlighted the lavish, David Chipperfield-designed Glasgow HQ, and the transfer of network programmes, such as arts show Imagine and current-affairs flagship Question Time, from London to Scotland.

Schlesinger finds the BBC’s ongoing silence frustrating. He thinks it is high time for hard thinking about how the corporation adjusts to life after the referendum.

“It would be nice to have an open debate,” he says. “I worry about the excessive partisanship. In the end, some settlement that everyone thinks is workable has to be agreed.”

Schlesinger warns that the push for

Smith’s schedule The Smith Commission is headed by Lord Smith of Kelvin.

He was BBC Governor for Scotland, 1999-2004; Chair of the Organising Committee of the 2014 Commonwealth Games; and is a former Chair of the Weir Group.

10 October: Political parties submit recommendations 31 October: Deadline for civic organisations’ submissions Late November: White Paper 25 January 2015: Draft Scotland Bill (coincidentally, this is Burns Night) After May 2015: Enactment

more production in Scotland “has great potential for friction… Where we are headed at the moment, Scotland is going to get the most attention. The quickest fix on it will have anomalous consequences.”

Enders believes broadcasting policy is unlikely to be devolved. Moreover, Ofcom (whose licensing regime determines the spectrum available to broadcasters) is bound to be retained as a UK-wide authority.

Channel 4 is quietly relaxed about the no vote and its future; it renewed its licence before the referendum. It has committed to trebling its spending outside of the M25 – but this increase is staggered all the way to 2020.

STV is judged to have played its hand well during the referendum. It is also quietly optimistic and busy launching its second local-TV station.

Those seeking a template for modifying the status quo – but not too radically – point to the Silk Commission’s report on devolution in Wales, published in March.

This rejected an opinion poll in Wales in which 58% supported the devolution of broadcasting. Instead, the report accepted that “neither the Welsh Government nor the UK Government wants to see broadcasting as a whole devolved”.

The commission justified its position by pointing to “the importance of broadcasting to a common cultural citizenship across the UK”.

Even so, the report proposed that: “Most of our evidence suggests that the National Assembly and Welsh Government should take an enhanced role in broadcasting.”

As for the BBC, it recommends that the Wales Audience Council should be replaced with a devolved Trust for Wales, sitting within the main BBC Trust body.

So at the very least – assuming broadcasting doesn’t form part of a devo-max agreement – the Scottish Parliament can expect to gain far more oversight, and viewers can expect an increased portrayal of Scotland’s affairs on Scottish screens.

The BBC’s Scotland Audience Council’s most recent report stated bleakly that news programmes had made “no progress” in improving the balance between Scottish stories and those relating only to the rest of the UK. How long before one symbol of national representation, a BBC Scottish Six O’Clock News, is conceded?

17

A game of two winners?

T

he run-up to the Premier League TV rights auction is broadcasting’s equivalent of the transfer silly season, a time of fevered speculation about telephone-number “bids” for the choice assets.

Indeed, television and the league are inextricably linked – it is the exponential rise in broadcasting income that has fuelled huge increases in players’ wages and transfer fees, which has, in turn, pulled in the top talent that keeps the bandwagon rolling.

Premier League executives and a coterie of close advisers are poring over the fine print of tender documents for the three seasons from 2016-17 onwards.

These will likely be sent out early in the New Year.

David Zaslav, Chief Executive of US cable giant Discovery, got tongues wagging earlier this year when he sketched out plans for the newly acquired sports broadcaster, Eurosport.

“We have had a lot of conversations with a lot of players in local markets, looking for partners as sports rights come up,” he said in March. “We will be keen to look at what is available,” he added, pushing the rumour mill into overdrive.

It has also become traditional at this stage in the proceedings to speculate about the intentions of global technology giants such as Google. However, everything points to the conclusion that it considers itself more of a content platform than rights owner.

Deep-pocketed, Doha-based sports broadcaster BeIn Sports, owned by Al Jazeera, considered a bid last time.

But it decided to concentrate on less-developed markets and expansion in France, where a sister company owns Paris Saint-Germain soccer team.

Another question that always comes up at this point is whether “the bubble is finally going to burst”. With each successive auction, it seems less and

18

Premier League rights

As an unknown number of media titans stalk the glittering prize, the Premier League might secretly be hoping for a score draw, reports Owen Gibson less likely that this particular bubble is going to pop. Instead, the bubble simply changes shape to adapt to different market circumstances.

Despite all the conjectures, the auction process retains the capacity to surprise. While the industry was busy whispering about Al Jazeera three years ago, a small cabal of telecoms executives was secretly plotting around the kitchen table of BT Consumer Chief Executive John Petter.

Jaws collectively dropped when Premier League Chief Executive Richard Scudamore revealed that BT had paid £738m over three years for live rights to 38 matches per season.

The league’s total income from the auction soared by a whopping 71%.

It could have been more dramatic still. Informed sources claimed that BT Sport had tried to outbid BSkyB for all of the packages on offer.

Premier League football has been a signature offering and a crucial engine of growth for BSkyB since a secret phone call in 1991. Alan Sugar, at that time the Chairman of Spurs, told the satellite-TV company’s then-CEO, Sam Chisholm, to blow ITV “out of the water” to gain the nascent Premier League rights.

Much has changed since then – not least, Sky’s success in diversifying beyond football and movies. But

­Premier League rights remain absolutely core to its business model.

BT’s raid forced Sky to pay £2.3bn for its 116 games per season. Some analysts believe the telecoms giant will have to pay north of £3bn if it wants to wrest control of the majority of live rights from its rival.

Once the income from overseas rights is factored in, the Premier League has earned £5.5bn over its current three-year deal. The consensus is that the competition is intensifying and the total will be even higher next time.

The Premier League era is littered with the ruins of companies that have tried and failed to take on Sky Sports.

Think of ITV Digital, Setanta and even the Disney-owned global giant, ESPN. But BT Sport, broadcasting from cavernous new studios in London’s Olympic Park, has since reinforced its commitment to a multimedia plan aimed at building its broadband business. BT paid £900m to steal the rights from Sky to show Champions League games from next season.

And it has deeper pockets and a stronger strategic rationale to keep investing than those who have gone before.

It is, predictably, keeping its cards close to its chest. Both Petter and BT Chief Executive Gavin Patterson have argued that the deal with Uefa for Champions League and Europa League matches enables it to make the decision on whether to stick or twist from a position of strength.

Due to its expense, that Champions League deal will force BT to alter its strategy of giving away its channels for nothing to its broadband customers.

The deal also leaves it with a natural vehicle to house more Premier League rights if it launches a new channel for “premium” content.

That may, however, undermine the rationale of using BT Sport as an added extra to entice broadband subscribers.

As the Premier League considers

Getty Images/Shaun Botterill

Premier League clash between Manchester City and Chelsea at Manchester’s Etihad Stadium, February 2014

how best to structure the packages that live matches are divided into, it is bound to look at ways to increase the overall total on offer to keep both parties happy.

But given scheduling difficulties, it is hard to grow the cake that much more.

One option, of introducing a new Sunday-night package is believed to have been ruled out for practical reasons, including policing constraints.

As the Premier League’s income has grown, from £191m for that first deal in 1991 to £5.5bn now, it has done so in the shadow of regulatory and legal challenges that have shaped the process.

This time around, Virgin Media has submitted a complaint to Ofcom that the current structure has led to ineffective competition and a lack of genuine choice.

Although cynics suspect it is trying to bolster its bargaining position over

Television www.rts.org.uk November 2014

wholesale fees, Virgin insists that it has the interests of the consumer at heart.

Toby Syfret, of Enders Analysis, recognises that Virgin might have a point.

“There is a very genuine question if you are starting to push people to price points where the market for sports subscriptions will crack,” he says.

Wider forces are also at play. James Murdoch, 21st Century Fox Co-Chief Operating Officer, predicted recently in Cannes that, under pressure from Brussels, “territoriality will probably break down over time”.

That could have wide-ranging implications for future Premier League tenders. It is also tempting to wonder whether BSkyB’s acquisition of majority stakes in Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia has been driven not only by a desire for scale and production synergies, but with one eye on the future shape of the rights market.

Meanwhile, the prospect of taking regular season games abroad has returned to the agenda, though probably not in time for this tender process.

The Premier League’s battle against online piracy and against pubs beaming in matches via overseas broadcasters is ongoing.

Away from the titanic battle for live rights there are some intriguing subplots. Will ITV return to the fray to try to wrest the highlights from the BBC? Match of the Day has proved an enduringly popular riposte to the theory that recorded highlights programmes would become obsolete.

And, having splashed out on the rights to online goal clips to help drive traffic to their subscription websites, will The Sun and The Times return to the fray?

But it is on the battle royale for the live rights that most of the attention will focus – it is the equivalent of big-spenders Manchester City and Chelsea slugging it out for the Premier League title.

The league won’t comment on the ongoing process, even to confirm the timings, but Scudamore said in May that the main tender for the live rights would be concluded by the end of this season. “We talk to interested parties all the time. We go to market at least 18 months in advance of the new season,” he said.

Syfret suggests that, even if Sky lost its dominant position after a quarter of a century of symbiotic growth with top-flight football, it would not necessarily be the end of the world.

“It would be serious. However, it would be a massive revenue saving,” he says. “I remain sceptical overall about BT Sport’s model.”

Like many others, though, he is predicting a score draw. “If I was the Premier League, I wouldn’t want BT to wipe out Sky. I’d want both to win. My sense is that they’ll try and find a way to ensure that happens.”

19

T

he Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Sajid Javid, is convinced the BBC can deliver more efficiency savings. But can these be implemented without affecting existing services? David Liddiment thinks he knows the answer and it is not one likely to please Javid.

He believes enough cuts have already made been at the corporation; scrutinise the BBC’s channel line-ups, and the cracks in their services are clear for all to see.

“If you look at the TV schedules closely, they are less rich than they used to be,” observes Liddiment, who last month stood down after eight years as a BBC Trustee. “Look post The BBC News at Ten on BBC One and before 8:00pm on BBC Two. Look at daytime on BBC Two. “Look at the fact that BBC Four doesn’t go on the air until 7:00pm.

What kind of modern channel is that?

It’s the same with BBC Three.”

He believes the time is long overdue for politicians and papers such as The Daily Mail to stop their remorseless attacks on the BBC. Pigs might fly.

Liddiment, of course, knows what it’s like to be on the rough end of a good Westminster kicking. A few days after this interview, he was again in the Commons defending the BBC against hostile MPs in what would be his last public appearance as a Trustee.

Liddiment was on good form – smart, funny and noticeably unflappable as Conservative MP Philip Davies tried to wind him up.

He is exasperated by the negative newspaper stories, such as the ones continually alleging that the BBC is overstaffed.

Liddiment cites Javid’s criticism of how, as a minister visiting Jersey to meet the Commonwealth Games baton, he was shocked to find 10 BBC staff in attendance.

“I can’t comment on that individual incident because I don’t know the exact circumstances,” says Liddiment.

“What I will say is that an anecdote like that somehow becomes used as hard evidence that the BBC is inefficient, while very often failing to recognise the complexities of running

20

Trust in the BBC The BBC

Outgoing BBC Trustee David Liddiment explains to Steve Clarke why the Trust, the licence fee and the corporation’s budget all need to be defended multiple services and the complexities of programme making.”

He adds: “What matters to the audience more than anything else is great television, great radio, great services.

“They want to feel the BBC is being well managed, and it hasn’t always been well managed. But, in a sense, the job of a body such as the Trust, the job of the National Audit Office, is to do a health check on whether the place is operating effectively and efficiently.

“And, by and large, those NAO reports give the BBC a pretty clean bill of health in terms of how it runs its major projects. Even the DMI [Digital Media Initiative] report was quite positive.

“I hope in the Charter debate we get down to some evidence-based arguments around efficiency.”

Many people – and not just those on the right of the Conservative Party – would disagree with this upbeat take on how the BBC operates.

But few could deny that, as an elder statesman of British TV, David Liddiment (who has occupied senior editorial roles at both ITV and the BBC) speaks with genuine authority.

His views get right to heart of the debate over the Trust’s future. The question a lot of sceptics ask is how the body – not so long ago written off as “broken” – can be both critic and cheerleader and not compromise its regulatory role.

Already, one Tory MP has accused the new Trust Chair, Rona Fairhead, of “going native”, despite her being completely new to the role.

Liddiment brought a unique sensibility to the Trust by virtue of his huge experience as a programme-maker, commissioner and broadcaster.

Whoever succeeds him as Chair of the Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee will need very big shoes, indeed.

Despite all the crises – Savile, McAlpine, the DMI disaster, rows over

Paul Hampartsoumian

The Trust beats the Governors

hefty pay-offs to BBC executives, to name a few – Liddiment is exiting the Trust with his reputation intact.

Arguably, his reputation is enhanced by the experience of being at the sharp end of helping to regulate the BBC in difficult times.

But why did he want the job in the first place? His broadcast-TV career was glittering, to say the least. And as a founder of All3Media (all ties with the producer have been severed following the sale to Discovery/Liberty), and with experience of working alongside Kevin Spacey at the Old Vic, Liddiment would never have been short of job offers.

“I was quite keen to become a Trustee because I’d been quite critical of the BBC Governors,” he recalls. “And because I believed in the BBC. I still believe in the BBC. “I’ve never really understood why people are confused about being a critic and a champion… We’re there to

Television www.rts.org.uk November 2014

protect the independence of the BBC and the public interest in the BBC and to ensure the BBC reflects the interest of licence-fee payers. We are, if you like, the protector of the institution.”

There have, however, been some tense moments at the Trust in recent years. Chris Patten’s leadership of the Trust was widely criticised and not only by hard-line BBC naysayers.

Liddiment concedes that mistakes were made, especially in the blurred lines of governance at the top of the organisation.

“I think the BBC Trust has had a bad press, particularly in the past few years,” he says. “On one level, this is with some justification and that level is this: in the [licence-fee] settlement that created the Trust there was one fault line. There was a lack of clarity about the purpose of the Executive Board and, in particular, the non-executive directors versus the purpose of the Trust. �

‘If you look at the work of the Trust in the round – the work around editorial complaints and standards, the creation of the service licences, the service-licence reviews, and holding the BBC to account for what it actually puts out to the public, having a body that has a clear responsibility to listen to licence-fee payers and reflect their views in the way it assesses the BBC services – all of that has been an improvement on the previous governance regime.

‘We are more outward-facing.

The Trust has specific responsibilities to listen to licence-fee payers and we have got a clarity in the function and the purpose of each BBC service, against which the commercial competitors can judge that output and judge the BBC.’ David Liddiment

Was George the right man?

‘George Entwistle was a very credible candidate for BBC Director-General. He made very persuasive arguments about the kind of BBC he wanted to lead and the changes he wanted to make.

‘He had the full support of the Trust’s Appointments Board [on which Liddiment sat] and he got engulfed in the Savile crisis almost within a week or two of him taking his desk…

‘Subsequent events revealed that he lost control of the situation… I wouldn’t say it was a mistake to have appointed him.

‘It was a very sad sequence of events that saw him resign. It was a personal tragedy for him. He was a very talented and honourable man, and in the end he did the honourable thing.”

David Liddiment

21

� “That led to some real confusion between the two bodies, particularly when things go wrong. When things go wrong you need absolute clarity about responsibility and accountability.

“That was not what was communicated in the case of the PAC [Public Accounts Committee] hearings over DMI, or when we heard conflicting evidence over severance issues or, to some extent – although I think it was a separate issue – around the handling of the Savile crisis.

“Pretty much in every case I think that was rooted in a lack of clarity of function between the two bodies.”

Changes have been made. These have involved a clarification of roles.

The shadow of Savile ‘It was a terrifying narrative of infighting and cock-up. The only comfort I take from it is that very few crises occurring in any business or company get scrutinised and reported on to that degree…

‘One of the unfortunate things about the Savile crisis is that the BBC has taken the hit for, if you like, the broad moral landscape that we all lived through from the 1960s, 1970s.

‘It has happened, we can’t unpick that. The behaviour in all walks of life, the way women were treated, not just in the BBC, would not stand up to close scrutiny by today’s values, thank God... We can’t be complacent about that, but we have come a long way.’

‘Were BBC colleagues intimidated by Savile? I have no idea. I wasn’t there. I was in the business, I was in television, I did not hear any rumours.

‘I had very little to do with the man. I met him twice when I was Controller of Entertainment at the BBC. But I had no sense that he was doing anything untoward. I mean, he was just a bit weird… the track suit, the silly voice and the cigar.

‘I had to tell him Jim’ll Fix It was ending. He took it perfectly well.’

David Liddiment

22

Happy Valley

BBC

The Trust has made it clear, too, that it expects non-executives to function similarly to non-executives on a conventional PLC board.

Liddiment claims that “everything is running efficiently” now. Let’s hope, for Fairhead’s sake, he is right.

Looking to the future, he rejects outright the idea of Ofcom inheriting the Trust’s responsibilities should the next government abolish the Trust.

“I think the BBC is too important [to be regulated] by Ofcom,” he says. “It is a very, very precious asset for the British public and a very precious asset for Britain internationally.

“The BBC needs a body focused on its public purposes and the public interest in the BBC. “You can call it OffBeeb, if you like…

We are well past the point when Channel 4 was out with the begging bowl.

Channel 4 and the commercial TV market are all in good shape.”

On the licence fee, Liddiment believes it should remain in place, at least for the term of the next Charter: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. It works.”

He adds: “People are not taking to the streets complaining about the licence fee.

“In the context of other elements of the cost of living it is not an extraordinarily high amount of money. I appreciate that it is for some people a significant amount of money.

“I don’t see the evidence in audience behaviour to make a change for this Charter. It is something that should be kept an eye on for the next Charter…

“Either you index-link it or you take out of the licence fee those bits and bobs that, frankly, have no business being there in the first place – such as funding local-TV and broadband roll-out.”

He appears to think that, to overcome the problem of people watching online without paying the licence, the fee should be extended to include devices other than TV sets. How this would work in practice is unclear.

In the face of all the high-profile rows that have engulfed Broadcasting House in recent years, it is sometimes forgotten that the Trust’s day job is to ensure the BBC provides distinctive, high-quality content across all services.

In this respect, Liddiment is con­ vinced that improvements have been made since 2010.

The Trust’s recent report, published in July, assessed the four main TV channels and was broadly supportive

Television www.rts.org.uk November 2014

of each network’s programmes. However, there were criticisms. Anxieties were expressed that, excluding BBC Three, audiences for BBC One, Two and Four were all getting older.

Is he worried that the under-34s are gradually shunning traditional, linear TV? “I am not so much worried about that as I am about how public service broadcasting, which I believe in, responds to the changing habits and changing opportunities of a digital media,” answers Liddiment. “There’s no doubt that a lot of young people are not viewing linear channels, they’re viewing on their laptops… Mobile viewing is increasing rapidly.

“A great many young people are using YouTube as a major part of their viewing activity. It’s a different kind of viewing to sitting down and watching a half-hour programme or a one-hour narrative.

“There are real challenges around how programme-makers, let alone broadcasters, respond to the changing needs of our audiences.

“They are challenges, if you like, about delivering public-service prog­ rammes, impartial news, current affairs, programmes that inform young people about the democracy they are living in and their role in that democracy. That’s got to be a very important challenge for the BBC.” One of the biggest challenges editorially is how flagship channel BBC One should respond to evolving viewing patterns and changing audience tastes.

The Trust praised the service for the progress it had made in backing distinctive drama. Shows such as Luther and Call the Midwife were singled out.

But more work needed to be done in refreshing the schedule overall and in what Liddiment describes as “the big factual shows” on BBC One, where he says it is “work in progress”.

The Trust’s decision on whether to accept Director-General Tony Hall’s idea of moving BBC Three to an online-only service is expected to be made early next year. “It’s not an issue I will be involved in,” says Liddiment.

Responding to David Attenborough’s recent criticism that BBC Two had become indistinguishable from BBC One, and that truly serious documentaries were no longer being broadcast, Liddiment says that across BBC Two and Four, “we’ve got a broader range of factual output than the BBC has ever carried”.

He adds: “I want to praise the BBC when I think it’s due, but I want to exhort the BBC always to be prepared to go into new territory and to innovate. I think it does, but I think it could do more.”

Greg Dyke famously said: “It’s the programmes, stupid.” Liddiment endorses this statement when he concludes our conversation by saying: “Whatever systems you put in place, there will be more misjudgements, more mistakes, more crises, but the most important thing is we keep focused on what the BBC does and how it serves licence-fee payers… At the end of the day, what matters about the BBC is what it makes.”

Jewels in the BBC’s crown ‘BBC Two drama is one of the jewels in the crown of the BBC. There’s been Peaky Blinders, The Fall and Marvellous, and more to come with Wolf Hall.

‘Bake Off was one of those classic BBC Two success stories that come out of the blue and out of a space that no one else is in.

No commercial network was going to invest in baking. Janice Hadlow [then Controller of BBC Two] had the insight and foresight to do that.

‘Happy Valley on BBC One was an extraordinarily sophisticated, complex, multi-layered drama and the audience brilliantly rose to the occasion. I think it got the highest AI [Appreciation Index] ever for a BBC drama.

‘Peaky Blinders was very bold in its form, highly stylised – visually and aurally – and created this mythic world of the British Midlands. Wasn’t that glorious?

‘BBC Two’s Stargazing and Lambing Live, the whole notion of taking what they’ve learnt from Springwatch and doing live coverage of, as it were, natural occurrences.

‘They’re exciting, accessible TV. They are exemplary shows. No one has been in that territory. The BBC invented live, factual event TV and doesn’t get the credit that it deserves for it.’

David Liddiment

23

Young Turks needed to save TV

S

o few engineering graduates are joining the broadcast industry that “we might actually forget how to make television programmes”, warns Simon Broad, Programme Manager at the BBC Academy.

The International Association of Broadcasting Manufacturers (IABM) backs this up by pointing out that 60% of the broadcast engineering workforce are set to retire within the next 10 years.

With only 20% of undergraduates choosing to study Stem (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects at university in 2013, broadcasters need to attract this fresh blood ahead of technology giants such as Google and Microsoft.

“When you say BBC, you probably don’t think of software engineering,” says Maggie Philbin, CEO of TeenTech and leader of the Digital Skills Taskforce. “But when you say Google, that’s all you think about.”

From her experience of talking to young people, Philbin believes that “it’s not that students don’t want to work in the broadcast industry… They do not understand the roles [available] and we are not good enough at showing the pathways to those roles.”

Presenters, directors and camera operators are all well-known roles, but most young people considering a TV career would struggle to identify other, equally important jobs, such as lighting technicians and set designers.

24

Training

The television industry’s failure to attract young engineers has put it in a critical situation.

Sanya Burgess looks at new initiatives to avert disaster It is this lack of awareness of the associated career prospects and salary potential that is blocking potential young broadcast engineers from entering the industry.

Philbin argues that the ways TV companies seek to entice potential broadcast engineers need to change.

From the youngster’s perspective, she says, “you can bang on about how we’ve got a real shortage of software engineers, ‘but that doesn’t really make any difference to me as a kid. I don’t really care about your shortage. But if you make it so that it’s more about me and what I might make out of being a software engineer, then I might become more interested.’”

One solution to this shortfall is apprenticeships. Speaking at the RTS London Conference in September, BBC Director-General Tony Hall spoke passionately about his belief in

apprenticeships: “I’m a big believer in apprentices because… it’s paid employment, it’s paid skills, it’s finding people from all backgrounds.”

Hall believes apprenticeships offer answers to several problems. They address shortfalls in expertise, fix regional imbalances and reach out to people whose background might otherwise deter them from applying to work at the BBC. Apprenticeships also provide paid training and employment.

“The best thing we did was take our professionals into schools and say, ‘This could be you’,” claims Hall.

One of the reasons for the corporation’s skills shortage is the decision, made in the 1990s in order to save money, to stop recruiting school leavers to BBC engineering courses.

Now the initiative has returned in the shape of the BBC Academy Technology Apprentice scheme.

Broad, who manages the project, acknowledges that the average BBC technology staff member is in their mid-fifties and heading towards retirement.

“The story started for the Technology Apprenticeship when John Linwood, who was then Chief Technology Officer for the BBC, was walking around the Olympic Park in 2012,” explains Broad. “He was hugely proud of the engineering achievement of creating 48 simultaneous streams on the red button, but he realised that most of the senior people who delivered it were 55 or older.

YouView trialled paid summer internships this year “He felt there was a succession issue and a demographic time bomb.”

To help solve the problem, an industry steering group was formed.

Sky, ITV, Channel 4, Red Bee Media and Arqiva were among those who came on board. Sky subsequently stood down to devise its own programme, while BT and the IABM have now joined.

The group, working with universities, looked at the skills that employers said they most wanted. This informed the design of the BBC’s apprenticeship course, which focuses on four areas: audio-visual systems, electronics and transmission, computer networks and software programming.

Apprentices will be awarded a BEng in Broadcast Engineering on completion of the three-year course; the first cohort started work in September 2013.

The scheme has been deemed a success, but Broad is anything but complacent. He recognises the shortage of young technology staff is “a clear and present danger”.

He warns: “We have to assume that in five years’ time some of this expertise may go and it may all go in one fell swoop.

“There is huge, huge competition for the talent out there. Obviously, as a public service broadcaster, we can’t hope to compete on salaries.”

But this fresh talent is exactly what broadcasters such as the BBC need.

“The average BBC engineer graduated before the internet was used and before iPlayer, iPods and iPhones,” reflects

Television www.rts.org.uk November 2014

Broad. “Many of them have learned these IT skills and have bolted them on to their broadcast-engineering skills.

“What we really want to do is bring up a new generation who are natives in both areas… they don’t see these as separate disciplines.”

Although Channel 4 works with a wide pool of talent across the UK’s creative industries, the broadcaster’s Industry Talent Specialist, Priscilla Baffour, acknowledges that, “where technology is concerned, the talent pool could be wider”.

She adds: “A lot of people in this industry are aware that it is quite male heavy. It would be great to get more women into entry schemes in this area, as well as more talent from less affluent areas. It’s about making sure that young people and new talent know that there are opportunities for them.”

Technical masterclasses at 4Talent’s national open days offer technology-­ specific training from Channel 4. The station also provides newcomers with the opportunity to work as a technical assistant, as part of its Production Training Scheme, and the chance to get involved in the Scotland-based Gen Up programme.

It is not just broadcasters that are waking up to the problem. YouView is making a concerted effort to draw in new talent to help to manage its services, such as the seven-day scroll-back for catch-up TV and its library of on-demand programmes.

The company’s Head of Engineering,

YouView

WHEN YOU SAY BBC, YOU PROBABLY DON’T THINK OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING. BUT WHEN YOU SAY GOOGLE, THAT’S ALL YOU THINK ABOUT

Piers Lomax, says: “We’re currently recruiting to expand our technology team by more than 50%. To support this, we’re doing everything we can to attract the best talent to YouView.

“We have a presence at the big media and technology conferences. We’re out at recruitment fairs and we’re contacting the brightest talent directly.”

This summer, YouView trialled a paid summer internship. A mix of 10 students and graduates worked in a variety of technology teams across the business. Lomax describes this as “a great way to encourage and give experience to the next generation of young technologists.” He adds: “The quality of talent has been very high – this first internship has had a positive impact, not only on the interns, but on the company as a whole.”

The RTS is backing a range of initiatives to encourage and support young talent, including the RTS Young Technologist of the Year award, which this year was presented to BT software engineer Bobby Moss.

Looking beyond traditional sponsors, software engineers can take part in Abertay University’s annual “Dare To Be Digital” competition, in which teams of contestants seek to create a world-class game.

With a united effort across broadcasters, universities and other education providers, hopefully a new generation of engineering talent is beginning to step into the shoes of the unsung professionals behind the screen.

25

S

elf-shooting is rapidly becoming a key part of the job description for researchers and assistant producers working in television’s factual arena.

But with training thin on the ground, how will tomorrow’s TV talent learn to shoot their own material?

Help was provided by a recent RTS Futures event, “Shooting stars: a beginners’ guide to self-shooting”.

A panel of self-shooters, chaired by executive producer Matt Bennett, offered advice, while training in basic camera skills was provided by Pro Motion Hire.

Attendees at the sold-out event in central London were taught how to shoot with the Canon XF305 camera, widely used for documentary, reality

26

All pictures: Paul Hampartsoumian

Self-shooting to stardom

RTS Futures

How do researchers and assistant producers go about developing this vital skill?

Matthew Bell supplies the answers and other factual entertainment shows.

At the end of the evening, the RTS Futures members were let loose to test their new skills, shooting short pieces to camera.

“The demand for researchers and

assistant producers who can shoot has increased. Over the last decade, the development of technology has fuelled that demand and now camera [manufacturers] are making cameras that can be more or less operated by anyone…

“No longer do we [necessarily] need cameramen and women who’ve gone through years of training to operate very complicated cameras,” said Bennett, whose credits include Channel 4’s The Island with Bear Grylls and Sky 1’s Ross Kemp: Extreme World.

Shooting producer/director Dave Minchin, bound for Italy the next day to work on the BBC Two property series, Escape to the Continent, told the audience: “If you can shoot, that’s going to give you a competitive edge.

“Even if the job isn’t a shooting role, if I was hiring, I would probably go for

the person who could pick up a camera and use it.”

Minchin broke into TV as a runner, first in entertainment and then in factual. “From the beginning, I made it clear that I loved shooting and that I’d been into photography as a teenager.

I kept on badgering people until, eventually, I got to shoot some GVs [general views, or establishing shots],” he said.

Assistant producer Amy Harrison, who works with Minchin on Escape to the Continent, believes that possessing the ability to film has broadened her TV horizons.

“I wouldn’t be going to Italy tomorrow if I couldn’t shoot – I’d be in the office setting things up for other people. I’d be dissatisfied if that was my only involvement in making TV,” she said.

Harrison’s first job in TV was as a development intern at TalkbackThames before moving into production as a location researcher on BBC Two’s Escape to the Country.

Is it the end of the line for nonshooting crew? Lewis Hatfull, a self-shooting senior researcher working on Channel 4’s First Dates, admitted that there was “a new wave of senior researchers, and probably even researchers and runners, who can technically handle cameras”. But he added: “I still know loads of assistant producers who can’t shoot. They seem to be happy with setting shoots up and casting.”

However, he reckoned that in his factual entertainment genre, “the days are gone when you can be a director but not shoot – there’s no money for that. I speak to a lot of producers who wish they’d picked up cameras earlier on.”

Hatfull pinpointed the appeal of being a self-shooter: “The first time your footage is used in a programme, the feeling is amazing. There’s so much to think about.

“If you’re a pure self-shooter, you’ve got sound [to worry about], you’re directing, you’ve got a contributor who has gone off the rails or who isn’t talking. That can be challenging, but it’s really satisfying when you nail it.”

For Minchin, the attraction lies in being “the master of your own destiny – you’re controlling the picture, the tone and the content”.

Hatfull won a place on Channel 4’s production trainee scheme, before moving to independent producer Dragonfly. There, he gained self-�

Television www.rts.org.uk November 2014

Self-help for self-shooters Dave Minchin: ‘Everyone makes mistakes… I’ve lost a tape – although you guys will probably never see a tape in your careers, you might delete some footage.

‘I’ve organised a day of pieces to camera underneath Heathrow’s flight path… When you lose a tape, you learn very quickly not to do it twice. No one’s perfect – don’t let your mistake destroy you… learn from them.’

Amy Harrison: ‘Believe in yourself.

Looking back at my career, there were many times when I felt out of my depth… When I got my first shooting assistant producer job… whether it was cross-shooting or main camera [work] on some of the smaller sequences, it was scary… I had to work on my selfconfidence.’

Dave Michin Lewis Hatfull: ‘Get feedback as soon as possible [on what you’re shooting]… you need to know how to improve.

[The feedback] can be horrific, but the only way to learn is to know what you’re not doing right.’

Lewis Hatfull: ‘You’ve got to be hardworking – telly loves a grafter… Don’t turn down opportunities, especially [if you’re] at my level.’

Amy Harrison: ‘Be resilient, because so many people want to work in TV… you have to keep going and getting jobs.

When you’re on a shoot it can go badly… you might [be tempted] to throw in the towel, but you’ve got to keep going.’

Dave Minchin: ‘Learn to shoot with the camera in manual mode because that’s the way your footage will stand out from everyone else’s.

‘Anyone can press “auto” and know that it’s going to be all right, but once you’ve learnt the controls of a camera, which takes time, you’ll have full creative control over it.’

Dave Minchin: ‘Watch stuff: films, music videos, commercials – even art and paintings can be an inspiration for your shooting.’

‘Pick up a camera whenever you can – practice makes perfect. When it comes naturally, you then have time to think about storytelling and composing your shots.’

Training for self-shooters The south London-based broadcast equipment hire outfit Pro Motion trains newcomers to use the high-definition, BBC-approved Canon XF305.

According to the company’s Business Support Manager, Jude Prior, the camera is the ‘industry workhorse’ for factual and observational documentary programming.

‘It’s a fixed-lens camera, so you can just point and shoot. It’s very much a broadcast-approved camcorder,’ she explained.

During the evening, Pro Motion’s technicians ran through the basics for the RTS Futures audience.

They were shown how to set up the camera and tripod and the basics of lighting, framing, exposure and focus.

‘There is a massive skills gap in the industry and I don’t think there’s enough training given to people starting out,’ said Prior. ‘If you can sell yourself as a shooting assistant producer, more doors will probably open for you.

‘There will always be a need for specialists in camera, lighting and sound – we don’t train people to be those things. But budgets these days mean that companies need people who can do everything.

‘You’re getting people at as low a level as runners being asked to pick up a camera and shoot.’

Pro Motion, which is almost a decade old, has worked with most of the UK’s leading broadcasters and independent production companies.

27

All pictures: Paul Hampartsoumian

QUESTION & ANSWER Q

You can edit that stuff as well.

You don’t need all the fancy kit.

Q A

Can you use the Canon XF305 widely across TV? Dave Minchin: [It’s used] for a lot of observational documentaries. It’s about four years old now… but it’s an industry standard [camera] for low-budget and self-shooting. It’s one of the best ones to be learning on…

There are a lot of cameras out there but once you know the basics of one camera, it’s fairly easy to learn the other ones. Every camera works on the same set of principles.

Lewis Hatfull: The Canon XF305 is still the workhorse – if you can learn on that camera, you will be fine.

A

Q A

How can I practise if I don’t have access to a broadcast camera?

Dave Minchin: Even with consumer cameras, you can put a lot of them on manual mode [and learn about] the iris [which controls exposure] and shutter speed… It’s about getting your head around [the science] and then you can translate that into much fancier cameras.

Lewis Hatfull: In terms of shot composition and coverage, you can practise on an iPhone…

A

28

What’s the best sequence you’ve shot?

Dave Minchin: It was for Hunting Britain’s Most Wanted, a one-off for Channel 4 [Cutting Edge documentary strand] about finding [European] murderers hiding out in London. The day [involved] sitting in a police car for six hours, doing nothing.

They spotted the guy – I was running through the rain, the light and sound were horrible, members of the public were screaming at me… I was filming someone’s freedom being taken away in front of his wife and it was horrible. But when I look back at it, shooting a good sequence with everything against me was really rewarding.

A

Q A

What more do you need on top of technical knowledge?

Amy Harrison: You’ve got to press all the right buttons at the right time, but you’ve also got to make it happen in front of the camera, especially when you’re on your own. You’ve got to know how to work with people and get the content.

Dave Minchin: Aside from the technical bits, the most important thing is being good with people and that’s with people from all walks of life, not just your colleagues… [including] the unruly kids in the background trying to ruin your shot.

A

� shooting experience. He received formal training with Channel 4 and Dragonfly, including attending camera courses.

“Try and get on them – they are great. I could not have afforded to do them at my level on my own,” he said.

However, Hatfull cautioned: “It was great to do the training, but there’s nothing like getting out into the real world. Looking back, I think I’ve learned more on the job.”

Hatfull has been lucky, in contrast to Minchin, who said: “I’ve been in the industry for eight years, directing for five, and the only formal training I’ve had is in how to lift boxes – that’s not a good thing.

“If you can get training – great, but you can train yourself. Get your hands on cameras, ask questions, talk to people.”

Bennett asked whether camera talent was innate or could be developed through hard graft.

“You can learn the technical things, but some people are naturally better than others. However, I don’t think it should deter you, if you don’t think you’ve got a natural eye,” reckoned Minchin.

And, of course, good TV is more than pretty pictures. “At the end of the day, if everything is beautifully shot but the content isn’t there – that’s no good,” said Hatfull. “You’d rather have the content.”

The RTS Futures event, ‘Shooting stars: a beginners’ guide to self-shooting’, was held at the Hallam Conference Centre in central London on 6 October. The producers were Emily Gale and Grace Owen.

November 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

How to survive as a freelancer

M

aking television can be a precarious occupation.

Jobs are hard to land and rarely last longer than six months. Production staff are constantly looking for new positions and are often out of work. The creative rewards, though, can be immense for freelancers working in such a vibrant industry.

The latest RTS Futures event, “How to survive as a freelancer”, assembled an expert group of talent managers and production staff to offer tips on networking, writing CVs, successful interviews and managing money.

Even the best-prepared freelancer will have to deal with rejection during their TV careers, particularly in the early years.

“At entry level, for every job we advertise, we get 40 to 50 applicants,” warned RDF Head of Entertainment Development Neale Simpson, who introduced and co-produced the event.

Television www.rts.org.uk November 2014

RTS Futures

Matthew Bell hears that working as a TV freelancer requires nerves of steel but the rewards can be lucrative Those who succeed, he added, “have grasped the idea that it’s not about what we can do for you, but what you can do for us.

“We don’t care about how passionate you are about television – we care about how much easier you can make our jobs – that’s the reality.”

Competition for jobs may be tough, but there are opportunities to get in, and on, in television. BBC Talent Executive Caroline Carter said that, in her area of factual programming,

freelancers make up half the workforce. “Most of the hot talent is freelance,” she revealed.

“The people who freelance are earning more, they’re being promoted more quickly, they have a range of opportunities at different companies and they can choose the projects they work on. The in-house staff are trapped – they can only work on the commissions we’re getting,” added Carter.

Having landed their first jobs in the industry, there’s no let up for the freelancer – keeping the work coming can be gruelling.

Production Manager Jude Winstanley argued that freelancers need good communication skills to win regular employment.

“You have to work hard to maintain relationships after you’ve finished a job,” she said. “As a freelancer, because you’re always moving around, you have to add [employers] to your social-media groups and make the effort to stay in touch.” �

29

The facts of freelance life Outside the main broadcasters and larger indies, working in TV is a freelance occupation: people are hired to make a programme and released when it’s finished.

‘The majority of this industry is freelance – it’s not going to change. You go from contract to contract, do your production and look for your next job,’ explained CPL Creative Executive Dawn Beresford. ‘Few production companies can afford to employ staff researchers or assistant producers, because they don’t know how many commissions they will win,’ she added.

Employment is precarious, but there are compensations, not least the pay, which has been rising in recent years.

In fact, freelance rates are often higher than those paid by broadcasters.

‘The BBC doesn’t pay as well as many of the indies do. And we struggle, because we are not allowed, with our rate card, to offer as much as them –

� “Attitude, personality and character are important,” added Winstanley, who is also Director of The Unit List, a website that advertises broadcast-­TV vacancies. “TV is a people industry and, if you can’t get on with people, it becomes very difficult.

“If you just turn up, do the jobs you’re told to do and go home, nobody will be particularly interested in working with you. You’re not giving anything.”

Once they have begun to forge a career, argued Wall To Wall Factual Series and Executive Producer Kathryn Taylor, freelancers have to show discretion in voicing their opinions because news travels fast in the industry. “People are unaware of how small television is – don’t go into a job and start slagging people off,” she said.

“The freelance pool has a high turnover and everyone moves around. If you specialise, say, in history or drama, you’re going to be coming up against the same people over and over again.

“Always be positive and respectful with the people you are working with, because you will meet them again,” added Taylor, whose credits include Who Do You Think You Are? The experts stressed that young freelancers should experiment before specialising. “Once you start going down the factual-entertainment alley, it’s hard to switch to history or current

30

and then we lose top talent,’ revealed BBC Talent Executive Caroline Carter.

Even at entry level, few runners and researchers seem to be ruthlessly exploited. ‘There’s much more awareness now, certainly at the proper independent production companies, about the minimum wage and the London living wage,’ said Production Manager Jude Winstanley. ‘There’s more investment in young talent – I am seeing more paid internship schemes than ever before, although there’s still not loads of them.’

Competition for these schemes is tough. ‘You’ve got to be quite exceptional to get a year’s internship. But if you do, companies will place you in different departments and on different productions, which gives you experience and access to contacts,’ she added.

Beresford argued that entry-level jobs have to be paid, if TV is to become more diverse. ‘It’s of paramount importance – not just in terms of race and ethnicity,

THE EARLIER IN YOUR CAREER YOU ARE, THE SHORTER YOUR CONTRACTS WILL BE affairs,” said Carter. “At the beginning of your career, as a runner or researcher, take the opportunity to test the genres out for which ones appeal to you.

“Once you’ve worked on one or two shows, you will start to work out what your strengths are,” argued Dawn Beresford, Creative Executive at the independent production company, CPL. Not all production jobs, however, require genre-specific skills. “What we do as production managers and coordinators is pretty much the same for each job,” explained Winstanley. “Even if I don’t know anything about sport, I know we still need a schedule and need to know how to manage a budget.”

After an initial, six-month, in-house job as a runner, Taylor has freelanced for her entire 15-year TV career. “You can constantly update and broaden your skills by moving from programme to programme,” she said.

“If you’re bored in a job, the chances are that it’s only going to last another

Dawn Beresford but also in terms of social class and background,’ she argued.

She also stressed the role of work experience in increasing diversity: ‘If you can get youngsters in at 16 and give them a week or two in television production, it shows them that this world is open to them, that it isn’t a closed middle-class, Oxbridge world.’

few months before you can move on and try something new.

“The massive advantage, for me, is that I’m always getting new experiences, whether that’s in content or the production environment.”

Taylor’s advice for would-be producers is not to specialise. “I never bothered,” she said. “At series producer level, you tend to get hired more for your project-management skills than your expertise with content.”

Gaps between jobs can quickly drain bank accounts. They are a recurring problem for less experienced workers.

“The earlier in your career you are, the shorter your contracts will be and the more lulls you will get,” said Taylor.

“If you are an assistant producer you might get hired for 10 to 12 weeks at a time. So, to pay your rent, you will need five hires in a year.”

The more senior a job, however, the longer a contract is likely to last. “As a series producer, if you get on a big series, your contracts will be nine or 10 months, perhaps up to two years. Returnable formats are great,” she added.

If workless periods become more frequent, it may be time for freelancers to reassess their approach.

“If you’re a researcher or an assistant producer and you’re not getting re-hires within two to three months, that might be a signal that you need to

Tips from industry veterans

Do your homework ‘If it’s a long-running series you are after, make sure you’ve watched a few episodes. YouTube is there so you can watch clips of every single show – there is no excuse.

‘See if you can find out who is going to be heading up the creative or development team of the company that

Television www.rts.org.uk November 2014

The RTS Futures event ‘How to survive as a freelancer’ was held on 29 October at the Hallam Conference Centre in central London. The producers were Neale Simpson, Carrie Britton and Susie Worster.

you enjoy – there is no point in trying to deliver on a job if you’re not interested in the programme you’re making,’ added Taylor.

Get your foot in the door ‘It’s a long game. Your first job in telly is unlikely to be in the genre or the kind of TV you want to make for ever. You need to make the most of any opportunity to get in and not be too choosy,’ said Series Producer Martin Conway.

‘If you can get on a six-month apprenticeship or intern scheme, it’s your opportunity to make an amazing impression and get your foot in the door,’ added CPL Creative Executive Dawn Beresford.

Gain technical skills ‘Increasingly, being able to self-shoot is crucial,’ said the BBC’s Caroline Carter (see page 26).

‘In factual and documentary, and even entertainment now, editorial staff need to have technical skills,’ added Production Manager Jude Winstanley.

All pictures: Paul Hampartsoumian

Jude Winstanley, centre

do things differently,” suggested Taylor.

“You might need to look at what you’re not offering or whether you’re targeting the wrong people. Sometimes, it takes a while to find your niche.”

“You need to be meticulously organised, professional, stay in contact with all your production managers and producers and make an a good impression,” said Beresford. “As they move on to their next production, if you have proved yourself, they will take you with them. If they can’t take you, they will recommend you to other people.”

It can involve a lot of effort and heartache, but, over time, the best freelancers are able to cement their reputation and make themselves indispensable to programme-makers.

“We’ve got freelancers who are like gold dust – we get them back time and time again,” said RDF’s Simpson.

Take any help on offer ‘There are lots of free or cheap events. Go along to anything that any of the broadcasters hold, because they will always have senior staff there from production and commissioning,’ said Beresford.

‘There are lots of people who are only too happy to mentor people. You have to approach them politely, watch their work before you approach them and be really professional,’ said Carter.

Neale Simpson you’re hoping to work for, and do your homework on them,’ said freelance Executive Producer Kathryn Taylor.

When you’re looking for work ‘Don’t take a scatter-gun approach and try to talk to everyone. Focus on what you want to achieve,’ said Conway.

‘Target those employers whose output

Social media is a professional tool ‘From my experience, talent managers use social-media platforms to look for people with specific experience, such as whether they can speak French or drive an HGV,’ said Winstanley.

Take the initiative ‘You need to be organised. Update your CV and get in contact with talent managers two months before a contract ends to line up a new job,’ said Beresford.

And if work is thin on the ground ‘Don’t be afraid during a lull in work – it doesn’t mean your career is over,’ said Taylor.

31

Write, shoot, link – then see if I laugh

JJ

ane Austen, JK Rowling and Hilary Mantel would all have made the grade in TV. That’s because they are all great storytellers. “If you are not terribly excited about all forms of storytelling, you’ve got no business being in television at all,” stressed Saurabh Kakkar, Head of Comedy Development at Big Talk Productions, speaking at the opening RTS Student Programme Masterclass.

He added: “All storytelling is entertaining an audience… If you have a passion for it, the chances are that you have done something about it.

“You’ve either directed some plays or made some content to go online or you’ll have started a theatre company or run a film club.”

Kakkar told his student audience that his own background in engineering didn’t make him an obvious candidate

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RTS Programme Masterclass Comedy

Saurabh Kakkar recommends online pitching for those who want to get ahead in comedy. Steve Clarke takes notes for a high-flying career in TV comedy: “I gave up a job that was really quite well paid and was a proper profession.

“Coming from an Indian family, it’s not great to give up an engineering job to do something fly by night. But I did it because I loved comedy and I loved storytelling,” he told his interviewer, Pat

Younge, former Chief Creative Officer of BBC Vision and now Director of his own consultancy, WeCreate Associates.

While studying for his chemical engineering degree at Cambridge, Kakkar performed as a comedian. He confesses: “I tried being funny and realised I wasn’t. I was a deeply average stand-up comic.”

His show-biz break came when he answered an ad in The Guardian placed by a company looking for enthusiastic young people to work in live comedy production.

For six years Kakkar worked behind the scenes and on the road for Pola Jones Associates. There, he helped to nurture talents such as Matt Lucas, David Walliams, Bill Bailey, the League of Gentlemen and Armstrong and Miller, including at the Edinburgh Fringe.

The hours were “preposterous”, recalled the Big Talk executive: “You’re

Paul Hampartsoumian

IF SOMEONE SENDS ME AN EMAIL WITH A LINK TO SOME VIDEO, I AM MORE LIKELY TO LOOK AT IT THAN TO READ A SCRIPT

out until 2:00am and you’re back in the office at 9:00am. It’s relentless.”

Younge asked if working in TV production was any less demanding.

“Producing TV is as relentless as live work,” Kakkar admitted. “You’re on set at 7:00am and don’t finish until 7:00pm or 8:00pm. You’ve always got rushes to watch or scripts to sort out.

“It’s a 15- to 16-hour day every day.

Once you get out of physical production, it almost goes back to being a day job.”

Over his 15 years in TV, Kakkar has developed and produced comedy for a range of channels. As Director of Comedy at ITV Studios he was responsible for shows such as Dirk Gently, Security Man, Headcases, The Fattest Man in Britain and White Van Man. The students were treated to a clip from The Fattest Man in Britain, which starred Timothy Spall and was co-written by Caroline Aherne and

Television www.rts.org.uk November 2014

Jeff Pope, whose most recent hit is ITV’s Cilla (see page 13).

Inevitably, Kakkar spends a lot of time working with writers. Asked about the experience of executive producing The Fattest Man in Britain, he said that dealing with two co-writers can be problematic. But working with Aherne and Pope had been a “brilliant experience.”

“The reason I am in television is I like working with talent… Jeff is an experienced producer (in common with most of Pope’s work, The Fattest Man in Britain was based on a true story) who sort of produces himself.

“Like all pairs of writers, they have their ups and downs. But they work very complementarily. Caroline is full of amazing dialogue, whereas Jeff does structure and rigour.”

Strictly speaking, The Fattest Man in Britain was comedy drama rather than pure comedy. “It is very hard to put comedy into discrete bundles,” Kakkar told the masterclass. “You’re better off looking at it as a sliding scale.

“At the one end are big, all-out comedies such as Mrs Brown’s Boys and at the other end are dramas with jokes.”

TV comedy is usually character-­ driven. This makes sketch shows especially difficult to pull off because it is harder for audiences to form a relation­ ship with the characters in a succession of sketches, unless they are very clearly delineated like those in Little Britain.

As for other styles of TV comedy, Kakkar said that as far as TV was concerned, impressionist shows had become somewhat passé. They worked better on radio.

He suggested that the sub-genre needed refreshing: “If anyone has a great idea for a new impressionist show, come and see me.”

There is a glut of comedy panel shows at the moment, thanks to the popularity of long-running series such as Have I Got News for You? and Never Mind the Buzzcocks.

“Commissioners have fallen out of love with them [because there are so many around],” Kakkar observed. “But they are gold dust for production companies and channels because they are completely repeatable.

“For a new comedy panel show to be commissioned, it has got to be very different to the existing shows.”

The students were shown a clip of White Van Man, which survived for two series on BBC Three.

The show was adapted for US audi-

ences by ABC and retitled Family Tools – but axed after one season.

“It’s quite a well-trodden path that usually ends in disaster. The re-make of White Van Man was pretty good,” opined Kakkar.

He highlighted big differences in the economics of TV comedy in the UK and the US. In Britain, successful stand-up comedians make more money from touring than they do from TV in these cash-strapped times.

While a US show costs around £1.5m per episode (around 20% of this is allocated to the writers’ budget) the same amount of money pays for an entire six-part British comedy series.

This is why US broadcasters are able to employ writing teams on their sitcoms. If a show is successful in the US, writers (the best example is Friends) grow rich thanks to the advertising dollars and syndication fees.

Online is inevitably becoming more important to TV comedy. At the BBC both Citizen Khan and spoof rock doc, The Life of Rock With Brian Pern, began as digital-only content; Kakkar – who left ITV to become Head of Development at BBC Comedy Productions – explained that “Brian Pern started out on the BBC Comedy website as a series of five-minute shorts. We then did a series for BBC Four and there will be more on BBC Two this Christmas.”

He joined Big Talk (whose shows include Rev, Him and Her and Friday Night Dinner) this summer. Here, said Kakkar, he is inundated with scripts, from agents and wannabes.

His advice to all who aspire to make successful TV comedy is to send him a link to a video clip: “Putting stuff online is the way talent comes through now.

“Everybody is looking for the next big thing… the idea of sending it on paper is quite outdated.

“You can make this stuff on a smart phone now. If someone sends me an email with a link to some video, I am more likely to look at it than to read a script.”

The technology is changing but, as disruptive as digital is, the need for storytelling in comedy TV remains constant.

Saurabh Kakkar, Head of Comedy Develop­ ment at Big Talk Productions, was inter­viewed by Pat Younge, Director of WeCreate Associates, at the RTS Student Programme Masterclasses, held at the BFI, London, on 27 October. The producer was Helen Scott.

33

The hard facts of factual TV

T

wofour Group has made some of the most critically acclaimed factual TV of recent years. One of its biggest shows has been Channel 4’s Educating Yorkshire. The company’s Chief Creative Officer, Andrew Mackenzie, is also no stranger to controversy, having commissioned My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding during his time at Channel 4.

Quizzed by ITV Commissioning Editor for Factual Katy Thorogood, Mackenzie revealed his approach to making successful TV to the assembled students.

Mackenzie’s path to the top is hardly unusual: he went from researcher to assistant producer to director to commissioner to indie big cheese. But to have accomplished this in under two decades is remarkable.

Armed with a postgraduate diploma in broadcast journalism, Mackenzie landed a job with BBC Radio Lancashire before the lure of television became too strong. “TV was far more glamorous,” he told Thorogood.

His break came in 1993 on the comedy-meets-football magazine show, Standing Room Only, which was part of BBC Two’s Def II “yoof” strand, made

by BBC Manchester.

“I did that thing that everybody

34

RTS Programme Masterclass Factual

Andrew Mackenzie , the man behind Educating Yorkshire, explains why creatives need to be entrepreneurs, reports Matthew Bell should do when they’re trying to take their first step,” Mackenzie recalled, “which was to identify one individual and badger the shit out of them.”

He swapped paid radio work for making the tea and doing odd jobs for Series Producer Alan Hurndall, who “started giving me little bits of work – writing copy and working up ideas”.

“I got very lucky,” Mackenzie said.

“I don’t know in the current climate whether I could do now what I did then. “It’s a lot harder for your generation than it was for my generation.

There are a lot more courses pushing people towards the broadcast production industry.”

Nevertheless, he added: “Good peo-

ple who are persistent and make themselves indispensable break through.”

Mackenzie stayed with BBC Manchester for three years, before moving south to the BBC Features Department in London.

There, he worked on The Film Prog­ ramme with Barry Norman. “We’d watch three movies with Barry on a Monday and go for lunch in the Groucho and talk about them on the Tuesday. I had to leave because it was too easy,” he sighed.

Ambitious to direct, Mackenzie returned to one of his passions, sport, making a programme about the boxers Chris Eubank and Nigel Benn for BBC documentary series Clash of the Titans.

Turning freelance in 1997, he made more documentaries, including Channel 4’s The Real Brian Clough.

Julian Bellamy (now Managing Director of ITV Studios, but then Head of Programming at Channel 4) recruited him as a commissioning editor to Channel 4 in 2003.

There, he ordered two highly controversial series, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding and Boys and Girls Alone.

Discussing the former, Mackenzie said: “The production team were brilliant. I don’t think they exploited that community at all. Anybody who was on

Andrew Mackenzie, Chief Creative Officer of Twofour, was interviewed by Katy Thorogood, Commissioning Editor, Factual for ITV, at the RTS Student Programme Masterclasses, held at the BFI, London, on 27 October. The producer was Helen Scott.

Television www.rts.org.uk November 2014

Life at a top independent ‘We generate the ideas, sell the ideas and then make the ideas,’ was Chief Creative Officer Andrew Mackenzie’s summary of the Twofour Group’s business at the RTS factual masterclass.

In TV, he continued, ‘most of the ideas for shows start with conversations with commissioning editors’.

Twofour does not ‘spend too much time and money [developing ideas] that we know aren’t going to land on fertile ground’.

At an indie, Mackenzie argued, ‘You have to balance creativity with entrepreneurship because, if you don’t make profitable programmes, you will go out of business. You need to win awards and you need to make money.’

Twofour aims to make 10% to 12% profit on every production, though this

is harder on first series, when costs are more difficult to control. The first Educating… series, Educating Essex, came in £200,000 over budget, but Mackenzie saw it as a loss leader.

‘We are now in our fourth series, we’ve won awards for it and it’s changed the face of the company because it’s a much-loved series,’ he said.

Mackenzie advised the students in the audience: ‘I think the strongest place for you to be is in a production company. It’s very hard as an individual to pitch ideas direct to a channel.

‘There’s a perception that “companies are going to rip me off and nick my idea”, but, more often, your idea will become better. You’ll hear some brutal truths about it, but then – collectively – you can pitch it to a broadcaster.’

QUESTION & ANSWER

Q A

All pictures: Paul Hampartsoumian

television wanted to be on television and was proud of the way they lived.”

Boys and Girls Alone, a TV experiment in which young children were left to fend for themselves for two weeks without parents, caused tabloid outrage and sparked an Ofcom inquiry.

“Those kids were shown to be incredibly bright and resourceful. They astounded their parents and had an amazing experience,” said Mackenzie.

The series, however, didn’t flinch from filming the children when they were upset. “When kids cry on TV, quite rightly, questions are asked about whether the kids who are in a television construct and not enjoying it at that point should ever have been put [there],” he admitted.

It was a “horrible” experience, he recalled, “being made out to be a media monster” in the press.

Ofcom cleared the production team and broadcaster of harming children.

However, it did find that Channel 4 had failed to make viewers sufficiently aware of the safeguards in place.

Mackenzie was promoted to Head of Factual Entertainment at Channel 4 in 2007. He moved to Twofour three years later. One of his first programmes was Educating Essex. He said this “became in many ways the defining project of this company”.

At the time, though, it was a “noose around our necks – if we had got it wrong, it could have bankrupted the company”. The costs of installing some 70 cameras at the Harlow school, long days of filming and weeks in the edit suite were huge.

Educating Yorkshire followed. It was the channel’s highest-rated series of 2013 and scooped multiple awards, including Documentary Series at the RTS Programme Awards.

“With Yorkshire, I was lucky enough to have probably the best production team I’ve ever worked with,” remembered Mackenzie.

The team chose a Dewsbury school for the series because of the charisma of some of its teachers. But luck as well as judgement played a part in its success, not least when cameras captured the joy of Mr Burton helping Musharraf overcome his crippling stammer.

Q A

Should I produce a sizzle reel before I pitch?

Andrew Mackenzie: A sizzle can help, but before that I would test the idea on as many people as possible. [Go to] production companies who’ve made similar shows and commissioning editors who’ve commissioned that kind of stuff.

Katy Thorogood: If you want it to go on telly, think about where it would go, what channel, what slots. That will really help how you pitch it.

A

What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced in pitching?

Andrew Mackenzie: They’re all hard… Pitching is a conversation. If it’s not a conversation and you’re doing all the talking and they’re quiet, it’s probably not going well.

Q A

Have you ever regretted making a programme?

Andrew Mackenzie: I want to make telly where [the people on screen] are as proud of it as I am. We’ve managed that with the Educating programmes and they are now advocates for our production processes. We wheeled them in to talk to the military when we were [looking to make] Royal Marines Commando School. You reap what you sow, I think.

35

G

True to life Gwyneth Hughes shares her approach to the craft of screenwriting with Matthew Bell

36

Paul Hampartsoumian

RTS Programme Masterclass Drama

wyneth Hughes is one of the most versatile writers working in British television. Her screenplays encompass crime serials, costume drama and fact-based pieces.

Her credits include: thriller Five Days; The Mystery of Edwin Drood; The Girl, the story of Alfred Hitchcock’s obsession with Tippi Hedren; and U Be Dead, based on the story of a real-life stalker.

This month she branches out in a new direction with a three-part ghost story for BBC One, Remember Me. Interviewed for the RTS Student Programme Masterclass by executive producer Ruth Pitt, a former colleague from Yorkshire Television, Hughes described her style as “overwrought, emotional melodrama with a socialrealistic core”.

Remember Me, starring Michael Palin, making a welcome return to straight acting, is a “weird hybrid of a kitchensink drama and ghost story”, she added.

Hughes, whose father was a London police constable, was the first in her family to go to university, where she studied Russian history.

She worked first in print journalism and then in television news, before directing TV documentaries, including Channel 4’s Mercy for Myra Hindley?

“What all these things have in common is storytelling,” said Hughes.

“The great thing about journalism as a starting point is that you meet a lot of people who you would never normally come across,” she continued. “It’s not a prerequisite for becoming a successful screenwriter; it’s just the way it happened for me. It means that I’ve been able to populate my dramas with a lot of different people – I’m not just mining my own, rather limited, experience of life.”

While working in factual TV, Hughes started to write fiction, and submitted a short story to Radio 4, which was accepted. A brief stint writing for ITV cop show The Bill in the mid-1990s and on programmes such as long-running BBC forensic pathology series Silent Witness followed, before Hughes penned her first original work, the ITV twoparter Blood Strangers.

One day at the end of the 1990s, Hughes came across a newspaper story about a Barnardo’s project in Bradford.

“See if this reminds you of anything,” she told the audience. “The charity was working with white, teenage girls who were being groomed by Asian men.”

“As a baby writer, you go into the industrial sausage machine, working on shows such as The Bill or Doctors.

The issue is, can you get out the other end?” Hughes said.

“You can stay there and earn a lot of money – some of the highest paid screenwriters in British television work for EastEnders and Coronation Street – but if you don’t want to do that, you’ve got to get that first original piece away. That was what Blood Strangers did for me.”

In 2007, the BBC One serial Five Days, following the investigation into a young mother’s disappearance, confirmed Hughes’ arrival as a major TV writer.

Writing about crime, argued Hughes, “is a shortcut to big issues of right and wrong and truth and falsehood. The stakes are automatically very high – I struggle with stories where no one dies.”

At face value, the 2007 BBC One film, Miss Austen Regrets – for which Hughes won a Writers’ Guild of Great Britain award – seems to have little in common with the writer’s TV thrillers.

However, she hoped that both her crime work and the Jane Austen biopic were grounded in Britain’s common culture and evolving national identity.

Hughes nabbed another Writers’ Guild award for The Girl, her BBC/HBO drama about Alfred Hitchcock’s infatuation with (and bullying of) Tippi Hedren, star of The Birds and Marnie. “It’s another big, British story – Hitch­cock is, artistically, a great hero of mine,” she said.

Next up is an adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s final novel, Villette. “If any of you have read it, you’ll know already that it can’t be dramatised,” she said.

And in a radical departure from her normal, home-grown subject matter, she is penning a western for HBO, albeit one with a woman at its core, an outlaw associate of Jesse James, Belle Starr.

“HBO is calling this its feminist western, so I hope in the end we’ll all agree on what such a thing might look like!,” she smiled. “It’ll be fine.”

Screenwriter Gwyneth Hughes was inter­viewed by executive producer Ruth Pitt at the RTS Student Programme Masterclasses, held at the BFI, London, on 27 October.

The producer was Helen Scott.

Television www.rts.org.uk November 2014

Ruth Pitt

Paul Hampartsoumian

‘The most important thing we do is write suspense. It doesn’t matter if it’s a romantic comedy or a thriller… the audience must care what happens next.’

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING WE DO IS WRITE SUSPENSE

Hughes on screenwriting ‘Everything you write is very personal; the thing that it shouldn’t be, is autobiographical. We’re writers, we’re not interesting people, we sit at home in a corner.’

QUESTION & ANSWER Q A

Do you follow the advice of screenplay-structure writers such as Robert McKee? I do bear those kind of things in mind – but only because my producers are looking for them. I think they’re pretty much merit-free for television writers.

Q A

Do you sacrifice truth for drama?

When I’m doing factual drama, there’s a lot of pressure to make those true stories fit the template of the Hollywood movie… but the way to make that happen is not to jettison the truth…

I try so hard to keep it as true as possible and I’m to be found bleating constantly, especially with the Americans.

Q A

How do you write authentic dialogue?

You’ve got do the work – listen and read a lot… You can put modern notions into 19th-century people, but they have to express them in an adequately 19th-century way.

If you did it realistically, we’d all

‘It takes a lot of time [to write a screenplay] and you have to be prepared to put up with everybody else’s ideas – if you don’t want to work in a team, write a novel.’

‘I’d much rather do the research… writing the script is hell.’

‘In a screenplay… everything is significant and has to pay off… you cannot set a hare running without giving it a resolution. That makes it a very technical, draughtsman-like way of working… You don’t have the freedom that a novelist has, but nor do you have the solitude.’

be lost because their speeches are so long. It’s one of the problems with Villette: Brontë doesn’t give you a single line you could put in a film.

Q A

How do you overcome writers’ block?

I don’t get writers’ block… it’s partly because, if you’re doing it for a living, then you’re writing for someone who is on the phone wondering where your script is.

What you have is deadline issues… or knotty, specific plot problems.

Q A

Do directors interfere with your vision?

You have to be prepared to give your baby up for adoption… to the producer, then to the director they hire. The director gives it up to the cast and the cast to the audience.

You lose control in a maternal way very early on… A director wants to put your story [on the screen] but in a way that will be most glorious for him… You give your baby up to them and you have to hope they care what you think.

Q A

Do you mind doing rewrites?

Some writers are very difficult about rewriting, but most of us aren’t, because we know that’s the deal. I’ll do as many rewrites as it takes, as long as the script keeps getting better.

37

RTS NEWS ■ What do you do with one of Britain’s most iconic buildings, BBC Television Centre, when it closed for business in March 2013?

Sell it and lease some of it back, is the short answer, but the details of its decommis­ sioning and rebirth make a fascinating story.

The tale was told at a Southern Centre event, “The rebirth of Television Centre”, in late September by Lynden Potter, Andrew Wheeler and Andrew Fullerton, all mem­ bers of the BBC team responsible for the project.

TV Centre opened in June 1960 and its cultural associa­

tions are well known, having been home to the likes of Blue Peter, Monty Python, Only Fools and Horses and Children in Need. But it was also the base for the BBC’s Interna­ tional Control Room, a world­ wide communications hub that moved out only at the end of last year.

Knowing smiles from the audience greeted the decommissioning team’s description of the scale of the job they faced: 22 satel­ lite links, more than 7,000 circuits, miles of cabling and “giddy over-patching” from the past meant cable cutting continued long into the night.

Public domain

New life for 1960s TV icon

Some links, often the ingenious work of long-gone engineers, were undocu­ mented. This made many individual switch-offs an act of faith, carrying the possi­ bility of losing Washington or the iPlayer feed to the Home Counties.

Financially, the BBC has profited. Apart from redis­ tributing more than £4m of TV Centre kit around the corporation, it sold the site for £200m to developer Stanhope – and retains a share of future profits.

Gordon Cooper

Paul Hampartsoumian

Colin Shaw CBE 1928-2014

F

ew of television’s senior bureaucrats have been as influ­ ential as Colin Shaw, who has died, aged 85.

A Fellow of the RTS and a regular attender of Society events, Shaw’s low-key, but incisive, wit helped negotiate the BBC out of many a tight spot in the 1960s and 1970s.

He was latterly the corpora­ tion’s Chief Secretary.

Sir David Attenborough described Shaw as “very efficient, meticulous in all details and very diplomatic,

38

with an extraordinary ability to phrase letters.”

Shaw, who wrote plays, principally for radio, joined BBC Radio in 1953. He was the son of a Liverpool bank manager and read English at Oxford.

His first job at the corpora­ tion was as a drama producer in Leeds.

Throughout his life he was an avid theatre-goer and amassed a huge collection of theatre programmes.

In 1960, Shaw was called to the Bar. His legal mind was to prove invaluable at the BBC. Sir Paul Fox, the former BBC One Controller, said: “If you had a problem, you could go to Shaw and he wouldn’t come up with a snap answer – it was his lawyer’s training.

[Instead], he would reason it out for you.”

Shaw was appointed Sec­ retary to the BBC in 1969 and

promoted to Chief Secretary in 1972. He left the BBC in 1977 to become Director of Television at the newly founded IBA. He was meticulous, patient and tactful. Shaw cared deeply for words and famously banned his daugh­ ters from reading Enid Bly­ ton because he said the experience would not expand their vocabulary.

At the BBC, part of his time was taken up by correspond­ ing with Mary Whitehouse.

She was convinced the cor­ poration was responsible for what she regarded as the country’s “moral decline”.

When Whitehouse com­ plained in 1970 that BBC drama was full of nudity, Shaw responded by pointing out that nudes had been “a feature of art for a great many years”.

He added: “No one could

describe Michelangelo’s David as an unseemly work”.

Defending the comedian Dave Allen against a charge of blasphemy – Allen was a practising Catholic – Shaw pointed out that it was a “well-known tradition” that “the best jokes” against reli­ gion were told in convents and monasteries.

He was involved in tense negotiations over the licence fee, which, during times of high inflation, was often set annually.

Shaw’s duties at the IBA involved important work that formulated the structure of what became Channel 4.

In 1983, he was appointed Director, Programme Plan­ ning for the ITV Companies’ Association, and was the first Director of the Broadcasting Standards Council from 1988 to 1996.

Steve Clarke

Steven Knight ■ Midland Centre teamed up with BBC Drama and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain to invite Steven Knight to the George Cadbury Hall Theatre in Birmingham in early October to discuss his award-winning BBC Two drama, Peaky Blinders.

In a wide-ranging career, Knight has written the Jasper Carrott TV vehicle The Detectives, scripted Stephen Frears’s film Dirty Pretty Things, for which he was nominated for an Oscar, and written and directed the well-received 2013 film Locke, starring Tom Hardy. He was also a co-­creator of the game show Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?

Peaky Blinders, which has just finished its second series,

was inspired by stories told to Knight by his uncle and parents. ‘They are stories of Birmingham,’ said the writer.

Set in the 1920s, the series follows the exploits of a Birmingham criminal gang, notorious for the razor blades sewn into their caps.

Knight offered encouragement and advice for anyone wanting to write. ‘How do you create characters? Just let them talk. Everyone can write dialogue,’ he said.

Knight said that he was committed to working in Birmingham and to campaig­ning for more production facilities, including film studios, in the city.

Dorothy Hobson

■ Film-maker Ian Graham gave the Republic of Ireland Centre a wonderful insight into Irish silent movie direc­ tor Rex Ingram at RTÉ in mid-October, which he illus­ trated with excerpts from his 1993 documentary on the Hollywood great.

Ingram left Ireland for the US in 1911 and moved to Hollywood after studying at Yale University School of Art. He discovered and cast Rudolph Valentino in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and went on to make The Conquering Power, The Prisoner of Zenda and Mare Nostrum.

Ingram despised the hag­ gling required by the Holly­ wood system and quarrelled with his MGM boss, Louis B Mayer. In 1923, he moved to France, where, working from his own studios, he directed films of his choosing.

In his later career, Ingram

Public domain

Steven Knight

Irish film legend who discovered Valentino

Rex Ingram acted as a mentor to the young Michael Powell. He made one talkie in 1932 but, unimpressed by sound, retired from film-making.

Graham has directed four major films on James Joyce, including The Scandal of Ulysses. He is also a film his­ torian, specialising in Ameri­ can cinema.

Charles Byrne

R

epublic of Ireland Centre members were invited by Vikings executive producer Morgan O’Sullivan to visit the set of the History Channel drama. It is shot at Ashford Studios in County Wicklow, just under 40km from Dublin.

At the height of production, more than 300 cast and crew work there.

At the end of September, RTS members were shown around the three sound stages: the 2,800m2 gasworks stage; the 1,350m2 box stage and the Christmas tree stage.

As well as using the two larger sound stages, Vikings, which is now in production on series 4, is also shot on the large back lot. A lake in the Wicklow mountains is used for the seafaring scenes.

Following repeated requests from O’Sullivan, who brought The Tudors to nearby Ardmore Studios, entrepreneur Joe O’Connell built his own film studio. The result was Ashford Studios, a state-of-the-art, €22m film and television facility that serves both Irish and international producers.

In 2013, the independent film, TV drama and anima­

Television www.rts.org.uk November 2014

History Channel

Ashford Vikings pay their way

Vikings tion sector contributed more than €168m to the Irish economy, up 18% on 2012.

“Economically and cultur­ ally, film is important,” said

James Hickey, Chief Execu­ tive of the Irish Film Board.

“It is a key part of the Irish economy.”

Charles Byrne

39

RTS NEWS

■ Launched in 2012, S4C’s £4m Digital Fund supports digital content, primarily in the Welsh language, that can generate a commercial return on investment. The Welsh-language channel’s investments range from £1,000 to £150,000.

At a Wales Centre event, held in Cardiff at the end of September, S4C Corporate and Commercial Policy Director Elin Morris and Digital Man­ ager Huw Marshall explained how the fund operates to an enthusiastic audience of digital content producers and games developers.

“We want to see ambition – products with their roots in Wales, but with the potential to go global,” said Morris.

Marshall explained that there was a paucity of apps in the Welsh language, but he enthused about the potential for co-operation with global partners such as Microsoft.

“We’re a bilingual nation and there is great potential to use Wales as a test bed to develop content for interna­ tional audiences,” he said.

Last year, S4C developed Enaid Coll, based on the pop­ ular game Master Reboot, which was the first Welshlanguage version of a console game.

Co-funded by the Welsh Government, the concept has been picked up by CBBC, which is currently talking to Cardiff-based indie Cube Interactive about a spin-off project.

Marshall said that S4C is looking for a console game linked to this year’s cente­ nary of the birth of Dylan Thomas, adding: “The Xbox is big in Wales, but we will export our content to PSP and Wii, as well.”

Hywel Wiliam and Tim Hartley

40

London’s take on Amsterdam

L

ondon Centre offered a review of IBC’s weird and wonderful exhibits at the end of September. The annual media technologies confer­ ence and exhibition had welcomed more than 55,000 attendees to Amsterdam earlier in the month.

The key question raised by IBC (International Broadcast­ ing Convention) was: “How do we take technology and

ogy information platform The Broadcast Bridge, David Auster­ berry, reckoned the letters IP (internet protocol) “came up at every press conference – everyone was moving to IP or offering IP-connected products. The only time I heard SDI [serial digital interface] mentioned was on a strapline, ‘SDI is dead’.”

Austerberry was also taken

by Ericsson’s plans to launch its “TV Anywhere” in 2015.

Ericsson

Welsh Digital Fund appeals to developers

Ericsson’s multi-device TV new ideas and turn them into innovation?” said panellist Vali Lalioti. The Professor of Innovation at Antwerp Man­ agement School added that, for broadcasting, the answer should be: “when this new technology allows you to tell your stories even better”.

Lalioti’s personal high­ lights from IBC included 3Dragons’ 360° 3D display, the Holo-Deck, which uses hologram technology. The company is hoping “by the next Olympic Games to turn the carpet in your living room into a [virtual] swim­ ming pool in which you would watch the swimming events”, she said.

The Co-editor of technol­

“It is integrating mobile phones, televisions and video on PCs and tablets,” he said.

“You get exactly the same viewing experience on whatever device you’re watching.

“The demonstrator was watching a programme on his phone as he came in from work and the system in the home detected his phone over wi-fi and he was able, in effect, to throw the picture from his phone on to the TV.” Austerberry said that Ultra-HDTV in its 4K variety – with pictures approxi­ mately 4,000 pixels wide – “definitely seems to be taking off”. But added a caveat by praising Dolby

Vision’s new high-dynamicrange TVs, which “were showing pictures in HD, not even in 4K, on a 50-inch screen and they looked absolutely stunning.”

He asked: “Are we doing the right thing in rushing into 4K and 8K? Should we be looking at better pixels rather than more pixels? I think there’s a lot of mileage in the route that Dolby is taking in trying to make better pictures, rather than going for huge pixel counts.”

BT graduate trainee and the 2014 RTS Young Technol­ ogist of the Year, Bobby Moss, agreed that 4K products were ubiquitous at IBC and con­ firmed that “BT Sport is going to use 4K in the next few seasons”.

“The consensus that we got from the conference was that there is a certain size of TV before you can really see the benefit of 4K – you’re looking at 40-inch and big­ ger,” Moss said, adding: “4K will become a mainstream broadcast standard around 2017-18. There’s also the possibility of 8K by 2020.”

Simon Gauntlett, Technol­ ogy Director of the Digital TV Group (DTG), agreed that ultra-HD was around the corner, but added: “If you said, ‘I want to launch a 4K service tomorrow’, you would struggle. Although lots of the bits are available, putting a complete end-to-end chain together at the moment would be very challenging.”

At IBC, Gauntlett was impressed by Rovi’s pro­ gramme search and naviga­ tion technology. He said: “You could talk to the EPG [electronic programme guide] in a [voice recogni­ tion] Siri kind of way and ask, ‘When are the Gunners playing?’ It would know that the Gunners were Arsenal and you were talking about football and it could tell you the time of the next match.”

Matthew Bell

Animators celebrate BBC’s Rose

Tartan Films

F

rench animateur extraordinaire Sylvain Chomet provided his own unique contri­ bution to a special RTS cele­ bration of the prodigious talents of BBC Bristol pro­ ducer Colin Rose at the end of September.

Chomet donned heartshaped glasses and sang a special version of La Vie en Rose via video, a fitting finale for an audience of some of the world’s leading anima­ tors and programme-makers at the city’s Watershed arts centre.

Rose worked with Chomet on the multi-award-­winning animated feature Belleville Rendezvous.

Rose was in conversation with BBC Radio 4 Drama Commissioner Jeremy Howe, one of his many protégés from a career that has spanned flagship documen­ taries and arts programming.

Belleville Rendezvous Career highlights include the much-loved BBC Two documentary shorts series 10x10 and working in the animation unit. For the latter, Rose and his team developed a new generation of film and TV talent, commission­ing the

likes of Aardman Animation’s The Wrong Trousers and Rex the Runt.

The audience included the Aardman team – Nick Park, Peter Lord and David Sprox­ ton – as well as many of Rose’s BBC contemporaries

and collaborators, including Jeremy Gibson, Peter Symes and Peter Salmon. There were places, too, for the next generation of talent – stu­ dents from the University of the West of England’s under­ graduate and postgraduate animation courses.

The evening was intro­ duced by Salmon, Director of BBC England, who also pre­ sented Rose with the RTS’s Sir Ambrose Fleming Award for an outstanding contribu­ tion to the industry.

“I’m a dyed-in-the-wool West Country person and the award means a very great deal to me. To be honoured by one’s fellows in one’s own territory in this way is as good as it gets,” said Rose.

The event was put together by the RTS Bristol Centre and Watershed arts centre to mark 80 years of the BBC in the city.

Lynn Barlow

Graeme Aldous

Les Coates honoured on home ground

■ Not many people nowa­ days accomplish half a cen­ tury in the same job – even fewer in the same locality.

But Les Coates has not only been a freelance TV camera­ man in the North East for more than 50 years, he has also worked mainly for the same client — the BBC in Newcastle.

Coates used his first film camera at the age of 17, but it was after his 18th birthday that he officially started his first TV job. Now approach­ ing 70, he received an RTS Special Award from the North East and the Border Centre, presented to him by Centre Vice Chair Garth Jeffery at a lunch for family

Television www.rts.org.uk November 2014

and friends at a Yarm hotel in early October.

The archive video clips showed the changes that Coates has seen over those 50 years – the first was from a documentary on the mid1960s rivalry between skin­ heads and “hairies”, including footage taken by Coates on the back of a motorbike with a wind-up Bolex, shot over the rider’s shoulder.

At the other end of the scale was a typical Look North “and finally…” about a noisy cockerel on a housing estate, shot in full HDTV. Stories in between showed the variety of work a regional news cameraman is called on to do, including being caught in the thick of picket-line

action at Wearmouth Colliery in 1984.

When Margaret Thatcher took her famous “walk in the wilderness” on Teesside three years later, Coates was there – and again in 1992 when she and John Major came back to view the regeneration of the Thornaby-on-Tees site.

Officially, Coates was due to retire last year when he reached his half-century, but despite hip replacements – one done and one pending – he hasn’t stopped yet.

His two sons, Karl and Jon, who followed him into the family trade, look as though they’ll be competing with their father for jobs for some time yet.

Graeme Aldous

41

OFF MESSAGE

D

esert Island Discs is one of Off Message’s greatest radio listening pleasures. So, it was a genuine treat to hear the incomparable Roger Graef castaway on that mythical desert island.

For those who missed the great film-maker, it was encouraging to hear him tell Kirsty Young that TV documentary is in “good shape”.

Few would disagree with Graef’s verdict, but it would be a brave commissioner to green light an 11-part series such as his seminal 1982 BBC series, Police.

Contrast that with BBC Two’s recent and excellent Afghanistan: the Lion’s Last Roar?, which weighed in as a mere two-parter.

■ In a perfect world, Off Message would give readers a form guide to the runners and riders jostling to occupy the Ofcom hot seat.

Remember that Ed Richards exits at the year’s end.

But the field looks wide open and harder to call than the next general election.

Inside Riverside House, one potential candidate is the justifiably popular Claudio Pollack, Director of the watchdog’s Content, Consumer and External Affairs Group.

Other possible new CEOs are: Philip Rutnam, Permanent Secretary at the Department for Transport, who used to be in charge of spectrum policy at

42

the regulator; Stephen Lovegrove, Permanent Secretary at the Department of Energy & Climate Change, previously CEO of the Shareholder Executive; and perhaps Alex Chisholm, Chief Executive of the Competition and Markets Authority.

However, there appears to be a dearth of candidates with genuine experience of broadcasting.

Carolyn Fairbairn, once an accomplished strategist at both the BBC and ITV, is perhaps the one person blessed with the necessary credentials.

But would she give up her portfolio career for the full-on job of running Ofcom?

■ Who said TV satire was dead?

Channel’s 4 latest spoof documentary, 100 Days of Ukip, suggests the opposite.

The show sounds an absolute hoot.

It deploys actors and mocked-up and archive footage to monster the party famously dismissed by David Cameron for being full of “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”.

By the way, did anyone at Channel 4 consider a send-up of a fictional Russell Brand administration?

Or, perhaps, that is a satire too far.

■ Off Message was thrilled to attend a recent press breakfast hosted by Viacom that featured head honcho Phillippe Dauman.

The Viacom CEO pulled no punches as he answered questions candidly across a wide range of topics.

Inevitably, it was the US behemoth’s

new ownership of Channel 5 that attracted most attention from the assembled hacks. Asked if he hopes to overtake Channel 4 in the ratings, Dauman replied, without missing a beat: “That’s the first step.”

He added: “We do not put bounds on our ambitions. We also are not arrogant about our ambitions. It is a very competitive business. We are here to compete.”

As digital platforms such as Netflix also turn up the heat, 2015 is looking to be über-competitive on all fronts.

■ It will be intriguing to see how BBC America performs following the much-anticipated deal by AMC to buy 49.9% of the cable channel for $200m.

Scale is, of course, more important than ever in the US TV market.

With AMC on board, BBC America looks well placed for growth. Both partners’ global reputation for highquality content is exciting buyers everywhere.

It is, therefore, vital that the BBC’s new John le Carré adaptation, The Night Manager, co-produced with AMC, hits all the right notes.

■ And, finally, the RTS bade farewell last month to highly experienced events guru Lindsey Cran, who has launched her own company, Cranberry, specialising in events and PR. The exiting Cran was toasted at a packed soirée, held at Covent Garden’s Hospital Club.

Off Message wishes the new firm every success.

November 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

RTS PATRONS RTS Principal Patrons

BBC

RTS International Patrons

Discovery Corporate Services Ltd Liberty Global The Walt Disney Company Turner Broadcasting System Inc

Viacom International Media Networks YouTube

RTS Major Patrons

Accenture Channel 5 Deloitte Enders Analysis

EY FremantleMedia Fujitsu IMG Studios

ITN KPMG McKinsey and Co S4C

STV Group UKTV Virgin Media YouView

RTS Patrons

Autocue Digital Television Group ITV Anglia ITV Granada

ITV London ITV Meridian ITV Tyne Tees ITV West

ITV Yorkshire ITV Wales Lumina Search PricewaterhouseCoopers

Quantel Raidió Teilifís Éireann UTV Television Vinten Broadcast

Patron HRH The Prince of Wales

Chair of RTS Trustees John Hardie

CENTRES COUNCIL

History Don McLean

President Sir Peter Bazalgette

Honorary Secretary David Lowen

Vice-Presidents Dawn Airey Sir David Attenborough OM

Honorary Treasurer Mike Green

Who’s who at the RTS

CH CVO CBE FRS

Baroness Floella Benjamin OBE Dame Colette Bowe OBE John Cresswell Mike Darcey Greg Dyke Lorraine Heggessey Ashley Highfield Rt Hon Dame Tessa Jowell MP David Lynn Sir Trevor McDonald OBE Ken MacQuarrie Trevor Phillips OBE Stewart Purvis CBE John Smith Sir Howard Stringer Mark Thompson

BSkyB

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Tim Davie Mike Green John Hardie Huw Jones Jane Lighting Graham McWilliam David Lowen Simon Pitts Graeme Thompson

EXECUTIVES

Chief Executive Theresa Wise Deputy Chief Executive Claire Price

Channel 4

Lynn Barlow Mike Best Charles Byrne Isabel Clarke Alex Connock Gordon Cooper Tim Hartley Kristin Mason Graeme Thompson Penny Westlake James Wilson Michael Wilson

SPECIALIST GROUP CHAIRS

Archives Steve Bryant

ITV

IBC Conference Liaison Terry Marsh RTS Legends Paul Jackson

AWARDS COMMITTEE CHAIRS

Awards & Fellowship Policy David Lowen

Craft & Design Awards Cheryl Taylor

Diversity Marcus Ryder

Television Journalism Awards Stewart Purvis CBE

Early Evening Events Dan Brooke

Programme Awards David Liddiment

Education Graeme Thompson

Student Television Awards Stuart Murphy

RTS Futures Camilla Lewis

Television www.rts.org.uk November 2014

43

Understanding what it takes to get media graduates the best jobs An event for media academics

Getting Inside the Media 24 November

10:30am-6:00pm ▷ BFI, South Bank, London This unique event aims to forge closer links between media academics and senior colleagues in the television and digital media sector.

It is an opportunity for academics and their industry counterparts to develop a better understanding of employment routes for media graduates and the multiplicity of roles available in TV and digital media.

The sessions involve drama, factual, news and sport producers and commissioners from the major broadcasters and independents.

Booking: Jamie O’Neill ▷ jamie@rts.org.uk ▷ 020 7822 2821 Free to media academics ▷ Full programme at www.rts.org.uk

I

n October YouTube hosted Brandcast, a glitzy showcase of some of its biggest talent.

Held in London, it featured Jamie Oliver, whose FoodTube channel has over 1 million subscribers, and Zoella aka vlogger Zoe Sugg, who began her channel in 2009 and has 5.8 million subscribers.

It was the kind of expensive event that UK broadcasters, including the BBC, used to put on when they had “Jacuzzis of cash”.

According to digital researcher eMarketer, YouTube makes $3.24bn in net advertising sales. This translates to around a 7% share of owner Google’s total advertising revenue.

YouTube’s own figures state that more than 1 billion unique users visit the site each month. During that time they watch around 6 billion hours of video.

These are big numbers. It is no wonder that Ynon Kreiz, the CEO of YouTube multi-channel network Maker Studios, described YouTube as “the largest cable company in the world”.

But who is really making money out of posting videos on YouTube?

And can Maker (bought earlier this year by Disney for an eyewatering $950m) and the other MCNs available on the platform sustain a business model that seems better-suited to bedroom start-ups than boardrooms?

Brandcast certainly sent out a

10

signal about monetising YouTube.

Tom Fryett, Video Associate Director at media buyer Starcom MediaVest, was there: “For Google to hold that kind of thing, and that kind of format, shows that’s where they want to compete. They want to compete with TV stations. I thought it was very impressive.”

Brandcast included the UK launch of Google Preferred. It uses an algorithm to assess the channels that have the best audience engagement and the most views, which advertisers can then use to their advantage.

Fryett says “the preference score and data can help find” talent and “make them manageable for advertisers and put them somewhere where advertisers can then leverage that to reach audiences”.

But making money is usually not the driving force or main motivation for YouTube creators.

Rising star Buddy Munro, maker of the National Geographic stunt show TrueTube, says the main appeal is that there are “no barriers to entry and you are your own boss”.

“YouTube is just another channel.

But I have complete editorial control,” he adds. “It’s a great learning ground. It is also speedy. I’m a big fan of TV, but it often takes a long time to get things commissioned.”

His hilarious escapades in The Adventurists get around 150,000 views (ADD TIME FRAME).

But he makes “pennies” from YouTube. He is selective about the advertising that appears around his

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Television www.rts.org.uk November 2014

In the path of a pint-sized tornado

Simon Albury

Panel Headline into here please thank you

Dawn Airey, Senior Vice President for Europe, Middle East and African Business, Yahoo!

Civil partner Jacqueline Lawrence, TV producer turned chair of Elma Trust, charity for underprivileged children in Cambodia; two children Born Preston, Lancs, 1960; moves with father, a civil engineer, to Plymouth, following parents’ divorce Education Kelly College and Girton, Cambridge (studying geography) 1985 Management trainee, Central Television 1988 Director of programme Planning, Central 1993 Controller of Network Children’s and Daytime Programmes, ITV 1994 Controller of Arts and Entertainment, Channel 4 1996 Director of Programmes, Channel 5 at its launch 2000 Chief Executive, Channel 5 2003 Director of Sky Networks 2007 Rejoins ITV as Managing Director of Global Content 2008 Defects to Channel 5 (then called Five) as Chairman and Chief Executive 2010 Leaves to join former Five owner, RTL 2012 Plans start-up with Russ Lindsay of Infinity Creative Media 2013 Joins Yahoo!

On Channel 5 ‘I cared about it more than I cared about pretty much any other broadcaster because I’d given it everything’ On her tombstone ‘Channel 5 stands for film, fucking and football’ Fuller quote ‘It’s actually about a lot more than that’

11

content.

Munro has declined to ‘seed’ his work. This is the system where people pay to have their content promoted via blogs and social media.

However, significant amounts of money can be made from YouTube in a variety of ways. New creators are given advice on how to cash in at YouTube’s Creators’ Academy.

Options include paid subscription and product placement. But the most basic way is from display advertising overlays (banners) or in-stream adverts.

Pre-roll adverts (the ones you sit through after you’ve pressed play) can be lucrative unless they are skippable.

YouTube ‘partners’ programme enables creators and channels to share advertising revenue but it currently takes 45% of revenue generated on its platform from pre-roll ads.

According to YouTube’s own partners’ website: “Earnings are generated based on a share of advertising revenue generated when people view your video - so more views may lead to more revenue.”

Fryett thinks the partnership programme “means yes, short-term gains have been made by enterprising young people in their bedrooms with ever-increasingly sophisticated pieces of tech. They can create very professional-looking pieces of content.

“But I think it’s a long game. Jamie Oliver might not make all of the money he invested in YouTube back in the first two or three years, but I think he’s persevering with it because he can see the benefits further down the line.”

Oliver’s director of food Zoe Collins agrees: “It is a long game for us, but not because it’s a pilot for traditional media. We are passionate about the platform as a way to reach different audiences that traditional media cannot reach.

“We also believe that a new generation of stars will arise from the online industry - indeed we are seeing that crossover of talent from digital to traditional happen already...but that is not the point for us.

“The way audiences consume content is changing and we want to be at the forefront of that change.”

Deloitte head of tech and media research Paul Lee highlights a report he co-authored questioning how much money can be made from 12

November 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television