Television magazine October 2014

October 2014

n o d n o e L c S n T e R nfer Co

From the CEO

RTS Student Craft Masterclasses

I would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to everyone who helped make the recent RTS London conference, “Power, Politics & The Media”, such a huge hit. You will find full coverage of all the sessions in this issue.

The RTS is especially thankful to Rob Woodward, who chaired the conference. Rob and his STV team’s contribution were crucial to the event’s success.

I’d also like to thank everyone who attended. The turnout was fantastic.

It was lovely to see so many nextgeneration leaders at King’s Place and so many of our Centre Chairs.

The line-up of speakers was one of the most exciting I can remember. We

25 November 10:30 for 11:00

Venue: BFI, Southbank, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XT Booking: www.rts.org.uk

Contents 5

Stewart Purvis’s TV Diary

Stewart Purvis gets a lucky break while researching a biography of Guy Burgess – and heads north of the border to celebrate the success of the RTS London conference

Power, Politics & The Media: reports

8 11 14 17

One: 21st Century man

For Fox President Chase Carey, unique content occupies centre stage in a tumultuous media market, hears Steve Clarke

Two: Fear for the future

A panel of digital disrupters tells broadcasters and producers how to adapt to the new world. Matthew Bell listens to their advice

Three: Tomorrow the world

Are UK-based mega-indies pioneering a new studio model? asks Maggie Brown

Four: Digital debaters bypass TV

Steve Clarke discovers which media played the most powerful role in the Scottish referendum campaign – and lessons for the general election

Editor Steve Clarke smclarke_333@hotmail.com

Production, design and advertising Gordon Jamieson gordon.jamieson.01@gmail.com

Writer Matthew Bell bell127@btinternet.com

Journal of The Royal Television Society October 2014 l Volume 51/9

were thrilled to have as keynote speakers Chase Carey, from 21st Century Fox, JB Perrette, head of Discovery Networks International, and Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

I am extremely grateful to them and to all the outstanding speakers and session chairs. The day dealt with many of the big questions preoccupying people who work in media. Those who attended came away with plenty of food for thought.

The London conference set the bar high, but our autumn events programme is already up and running and making a splash.

Our new RTS Futures season got off

to a stimulating start on 22 September with “I Made It… In Drama”. A writer, script editor and director gave tips on how to succeed in this most exacting of TV genres.

Channel 4 News presenter Cathy Newman’s searching conversation with Tim Davie, BBC Worldwide’s CEO, was a vibrant and highly enjoyable occasion.

Later this month the RTS Student Programme Masterclasses debut as a free-standing event. We’ve got a great line-up of top practitioners across comedy, drama and factual. Free tickets are available for students. To find out more, go to the RTS website.

In the pipeline is the third in our

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Five: Have I still got news for you?

23 24

Our Friend in the North

26 30

Seven: Who ate my slice?

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Nine: Voyage of discovery

Despite big challenges ahead, the leaders of BBC News, ITN and Sky News are bullish about their future, notes Matthew Bell

During the Scottish referendum, STV’s digital partnerships benefited each platform – and Scotland, says Rob Woodward

Six: The four pillars of Liberty

Despite its spending spree in the UK, Liberty Global is still keener on pipes than poetry, finds Maggie Brown

Steve Clarke tucks in to a smorgasbord of ideas about how rewards for IP holders could be more fairly divided

Eight: Threats to the BBC

BBC Strategy Director James Purnell is keeping his powder dry until Charter hostilities open in earnest, writes Matthew Bell

JB Perrette explains the thinking behind Discovery’s investment in sports networks and UK indie producers.

Maggie Brown reports

Sub-editor Sarah Bancroft smbancroft@gmail.com

Photographer Paul Hampartsoumian paul@hiphop.com

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

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

“Anatomy of a Hit” series. This one is really extra special. All I will say is that if you’re a Doctor Who fan, you won’t want to miss out.

Also upcoming are “Connected TV Decoded” and a diversity discussion featuring Creative Industries Minister Ed Vaizey and his Labour and Liberal Democrat shadows, Helen Goodman and John Leech. Early hustings for next year’s General Election are underway in our industry.

Theresa Wise

34 38

Ten: Reviews a-plenty – but few decisions

41 44

‘Partnership is what it is about now’

47 50

Make it in drama

Culture Secretary Sajid Javid outlines the many areas where he believes regulation is in need of review

Eleven: Invest today in tomorrow’s talent Jeremy Darroch and Tony Hall find common ground in promoting ways to nurture the next generation of TV professionals, says Matthew Bell

Tim Davie is keen to find joint-venture partners to share the cost of premium BBC content, learns Tara Conlan

The history conductor

As Ken Burns’s magisterial The Roosevelts hits British screens, he tells Steve Clarke how he composes his epic documentaries

Three pros share their experience of establishing successful creative careers. Matthew Bell takes notes

Accelerator to the floor

Some television companies are still in denial about the tech tsunami that is washing over all areas of TV, reports Adrian Pennington

Subscription rates UK £110 Overseas (surface £140) Overseas (airmail £165) Enquiries: publication@rts.org.uk

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 MASTERCLASSES Monday 27 October

RTS Student Programme Masterclasses: drama, factual and comedy One-day event Venue: BFI, Southbank, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XT ■ Jamie O’Neill 020 7822 2821 ■ jamie@rts.org.uk RTS EARLY EVENING EVENT Tuesday 11 November

Doctor Who – anatomy of a hit 6:30pm for 6:45pm start Venue: Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9AG RTS FACULTY DAY Monday 24 November

One-day event

RTS AWARDS DEADLINES Friday 21 November Closing date for entries for the RTS Programme Awards 2013/2014 ■ Callum Stott 020 7822 2822 ■ callum@rts.org.uk Friday 21 November Closing date for entries for the RTS Television Journalism Awards 2013/2014 ■ Jamie O’Neill 020 7822 2821 ■ jamie@rts.org.uk

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

MIDLANDS Thursday 30 October

■ Charles Byrne (00353) 87251 3092 ■ byrnecd@iol.ie

Venue: National Motorcycle Museum, Coventry Rd, Solihull, West Midlands B92 0EJ ■ Jayne Greene 07792 776585 ■ jayne@ijmmedia.co.uk

SCOTLAND ■ James Wilson: 07899 761167 ■ james.wilson@ cityofglasgowcollege.ac.uk

Programme Awards and Student Awards

25th anniversary of Byker Grove

RTS MASTERCLASSES Tuesday 25 November

EAST ANGLIA ■ Contact TBC

NORTHERN IRELAND Tuesday 11 November

One-day event Venue: BFI, Southbank, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XT ■ Jamie O’Neill 020 7822 2821 ■ jamie@rts.org.uk

LONDON Wednesday 5 November

The Dan Gilbert Memorial Lecture: Noel Curran, Director General of RTÉ

A panel comprising a series editor, producer, director, researcher and a celebrity booker takes a look behind the scenes of a popular daytime show.

Venue: London Television Centre, Upper Ground, London SE1 9LT Wed 19 November

Following his lecture, Noel Curran will be interviewed

by Stephen Price and take questions from the audience.

The event is part of the Belfast Media Festival. 13:00pm (Venue: The MAC, 10 Exchange Street West, Belfast BT1 2NJ ■ John Mitchell ■ mitch.mvbroadcast@ btinternet.com

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Interactive programming: the business case

More and more programmes involve second-screen interactivity, but are they delivering bigger audiences or more loyal fans?

Venue: London Television Centre, Upper Ground, London SE1 9LT ■ Daniel Cherowbrier ■ daniel@cherowbrier.co.uk

Visit to Sony, Pinewood Venue: Sony, Pinewood, Iver Heath SL0 0NH Wednesday 12 November

Network infrastructure for media applications

NORTH WEST Saturday 15 November

Venue: BFI, Southbank, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XT ■ Jamie O’Neill 020 7822 2821 ■ jamie@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 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 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

THAMES VALLEY Wed 15 October

With Chris Jackson, presenter, Inside Out. Venue: TBC ■ Jill Graham ■ jill.graham@blueyonder.co.uk

Annual Awards

Production Focus: daytime magazine programmes

SOUTHERN ■ Gordon Cooper ■ gordonjcooper@gmail.com

NORTH EAST & THE BORDER Friday 7 November

DEVON & CORNWALL Early November – date TBC Student Television Awards Venue: TBC ■ Contact TBC

RTS Student Craft Masterclasses

Your guide to upcoming national and regional events

Venue: Hilton Deansgate, 303 Deansgate, Manchester M3 4LQ ■ Rachel Pinkney 07966 230639 ■ rachelpinkney@yahoo.co.uk

REPUBLIC OF IRELAND Tuesday 14 October

Celebrating the art of Rex Ingram With producer Ian Graham Venue: RTÉ studio AR4, Donnybrook, Dublin 4 Tuesday 28 October

Lighting the Winter Olympics With lighting designer Peter Canning Venue: RTÉ studio AR4, Donnybrook, Dublin 4

Venue: Pincents Manor, Calcot, Reading RG31 4UQ 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 uesday 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, Presiding Officer, National Assembly for Wales. 6:00pm Venue: National Assembly, Pierhead Building, Cardiff CF10 4PZ ■ Hywel Wiliam 0798 000 7841 ■ hywel@aim.uk.com YORKSHIRE Tuesday 11 November

Student Awards

Venue: York Racecourse, Tadcaster Road, York YO23 ■ Lisa Holdsworth 07790 145280 ■ lisa@allonewordpoductions. co.uk

October 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

TV diary Stewart Purvis gets a lucky break while researching a biography of Guy Burgess – and heads north of the border to celebrate the success of the RTS London conference

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t is probably known as the one-day conference in London in the year when there isn’t an RTS Cambridge Convention – not the most exciting of billings.

Those who found their way both in and out of the Barbican Conference Centre at past events will remember freshly jet-lagged American executives and Jeremy Hunt talking about nothing other than local TV. So it was a brave and welcome decision by RTS CEO Theresa Wise and this year’s conference chair, Rob Woodward, Chief Executive of STV, to make the 2014 event bigger, brighter and busier but still last just one day.

■ Not content with that challenge, they decided that holding it just before the Scottish referendum was an opportunity rather than a problem and threw in a new location, Kings Place, where you can come up for air and enjoy a relaxing canalside view.

As one of the conference planners, my priority on the day turns out to be nursing my hoarse throat through chairing a half-hour discussion on the future of news followed by a oneand-a-half-hour interview that night at the Frontline Club with Nick Davies about his book on phone-hacking.

Fortunately, the voice just about makes it and the feedback on both events is positive.

■ The BBC WAC is not a relative of the WoCC, but a bungalow with bits

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

on outside Reading. Inside the Written Archive Centre at Caversham is a treasure house of old BBC documents.

I’m researching a biography of Guy Burgess, BBC producer and KGB spy, and find a new lead in the files there.

Next door, at BBC Radio Berkshire I get another lead when, after doing a down-the-line soundbite for Radio 4’s profile of new BBC Trust Chair Rona Fairhead, interviewer Edward Stourton tells me that he used to be in Burgess’s old room at Trinity, Cambridge.

He has edited a book about the college, which may be useful.

In the painstaking world of writing a biography, a double research dividend counts as a very good day.

■ One of the best days in the City University London year is when the new postgraduate students arrive for our broadcast journalism courses.

Lots of excitement in the sunshine as they start their nine months with freshly-minted Professor Lis Howell and the rest of us. And, yes, most of

IN THE PAINSTAKING WORLD OF WRITING A BIOGRAPHY… [THIS IS] A VERY GOOD DAY

these 89 students will get jobs afterwards in the business.

I always spare a thought for those who can’t get here because they don’t have a Bank of Mum and Dad to help pay the fees.

■ Five days after the Scottish Referen­ dum result the Channel 4 Board is in Glasgow for an out-of-London meeting.

The Channel 4 mood is upbeat after the Edinburgh TV festival voted it Channel of the Year, and the two main policy points set out by David Abraham in his MacTaggart Lecture are confirmed to be on the Government’s decision-making agenda.

Jay Hunt has more good news.

Jeremy Paxman has signed to present next year’s election-night programme.

With Jon Snow in the Channel 4 News chair for the campaign coverage, “Paxo and Snow” will make a mighty impact in their own shows.

Before the board meeting, there’s a reception for the Scottish indies and other producers north of the border who are a part of Channel 4’s creative success. It’s also a chance to celebrate on home turf the success of that RTS conference with Rob Woodward and his STV colleague, Alan Clements, who exec produced the sessions.

Stewart Purvis is Professor of Television Journalism at City University London and a Non-executive Director of Channel 4.

He is a former Chief Executive of ITN and Partner for Content and Standards at Ofcom.

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Congratulations

The RTS is delighted to announce that it has awarded 20 Undergraduate Bursaries worth a total of £60,000 to students commencing degree courses in either Television Production or Broadcast Journalism this year.

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Enquiries: bursaries@rts.org.uk or go to www.rts.org.uk and click on bursaries

Pictures: Paul Hampartsoumian and Richard Kendal

rage ove e. c l l c fu ent s Pla pres at King s r e ber port n re 9 Octo o i s i n v o Tele held ages erence p 3 f 3 Con next the London r e S Ov e RT of th

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

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Power, Politics & The Media Session One

21st Century man

C

hase Carey, chief lieutenant to Rupert Murdoch since 2009, devoted much of his RTS keynote to emphasising how the success of 21st Century Fox is underpinned by great content such as The Simpsons, Glee and Avatar.

In a fast-consolidating media landscape, where the traditional entertainment giants are challenged by the likes of Netflix and Amazon, the C-word is taking on a new pre-eminence. Every entertainment company is attempting to strengthen its content portfolio.

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“We are in the content business and certainly for us it begins and ends with creative content,” observed the luxuriantly moustached Carey, Fox’s President and Chief Operating Officer, during a session where he ruled out making a bid for ITV and confirmed that Shine’s merger with Endemol is on track.

“Content is the sweet spot,” he insisted. Just how sweet was made evident in August, when one of Carey’s responsibilities, the US cable station, FXX (formerly FX Soccer), staged a 12-day Simpsons marathon featuring all 552 episodes of the cartoon classic, plus The Simpsons Movie.

This will be followed by FXX launching the Simpsons World digital service this month: authenticated online users will have on-demand access to every Simpsons episode.

This is precisely the kind of initiative that Carey – a rare, but much-soughtafter, presence at industry talking shops – suggested is helping Fox to engage with digitally distracted young audiences.

He outlined to his interviewer, RTS President Sir Peter Bazaglette, how in the US FXX had broadcast for about a year in a saturated media landscape without making much impact on

Paul Hampartsoumian

For Fox President Chase Carey, unique content occupies centre stage in a tumultuous media market, hears Steve Clarke

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

“We’re not selling or in any way making a judgement on our bet on the future of Sky. We’re very excited about the future of the BSkyB franchise, with Sky Italia and Sky Deutschland as part of it.

“In terms of Time Warner… I want to be clear we’ve moved on… The initia-

BSkyB

viewers’ awareness. “We used The Simpsons as a launching point to take that channel to the next level,” Carey said.

He argued that the success of The Simpsons binge “tells you two things: the power of unique high-end content… most people say it’s the best written TV show ever… and the importance of providing a unique platform.”

This is all well and good, suggested Bazalgette, but how does the 21st Century Fox President, widely respected on Wall Street as a shrewd, cost-conscious executive, ensure that the hits keep on coming?

“It depends on great people, great management, great talent relationships and dealing with people and inviting them to fulfil their visions and pursue their passions,” said Carey. “It’s a willingness to take risks and try new things and bet on the right people… and try and find those things that can break out in a world which has more choice.”

If this all sounded rather obvious, Bazalgette reminded the Harvard Business School-educated Carey that there must be more to running Fox than keeping Matt Groening on side.

The year to date has hardly been a quiet one for 21st Century Fox: it has pulled off a series of big deals, though not all its takeover bids have yet borne fruit.

BSkyB, controlled by Murdoch, is gaining more scale by buying Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia from Fox. Mindful that BT will be competing for Champions League football rights, BSkyB should now be in a better position to secure key rights in future.

And then there is the story of Fox’s (so far) abortive bid to bulk up further by acquiring Time Warner.

Had this succeeded, Murdoch’s entertainment empire would now encompass the Warner film and TV studios, HBO and CNN. With Fox so keen to own more content companies, Bazalgette wanted to know if Carey’s firm was moving away from subscription-based businesses towards more content creation.

“Not at all,” said Carey. “In terms of Sky, I would not characterise it as selling out of Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia… We continue to be a 40% shareholder in BSkyB...

THOSE WHO WILL SUCCEED ARE THOSE THAT HAVE UNIQUE CONTENT AND BRANDS THAT CAN STAND OUT IN A WORLD OF MORE AND MORE CHOICE

tive behind Time Warner was certainly about content. What motivated us to take the step we took to try to acquire Time Warner was what we saw as a unique opportunity to create a company that would have a unique position of leadership in unique global content and brands.”

So, is the $25bn line of credit earmarked for that deal burning a hole in his pocket?

“No, we don’t have an acquisition list… Time Warner was very much a unique opportunity… a company that would uniquely fit with us.” Fox, said Carey, is focused on building existing businesses (primarily US and international channels) and investing in content.

Bazalgette changed tack and asked why Fox had invested in comics specialist BOOM! Studios and youthfriendly Vice News?

“They’re opportunistic,” he responded. “We are a content company. We like to invest in all different types of content. Our investment in Shine a couple of years ago was an investment in an exciting part of the content world where we didn’t think we had the basis that we’d like to have – the international marketplace and the unscripted marketplace.

“We continue to look for ways to broaden our footprint and our investment in content creation and every place to do business… in Italy, in Germany, in the UK.” Bazalgette pointed out that in the US free-to-air networks supported by advertising (such as Fox) are facing challenges. Ad revenues are down and the average age of network viewers is hovering around 60. Might all premium content eventually be shown behind a pay wall?

Meanwhile, cable subscribers are “cord cutting” – cancelling their subs.

Are the tectonic plates shifting as younger viewers desert traditional channels for Netflix?

“I probably disagree with a number of the things you’ve said there,” Carey replied. “There’s a lot of noise about cord cutting. What you see in the US is a mature market… but cord cutting is not really a factor yet.

“Those who will succeed are those that have unique content and brands that can stand out in a world of more and more choice.”

Carey pointed out that while “the �

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� vast majority of people in the US” – some 90% – pay some sort of content subscription, nonetheless, freeto-air TV would continue to be important.

RETRANSMISSION FEES WERE NECESSARY FOR [US] BROADCASTERS TO BE ABLE TO CONTINUE TO COMPETE EFFECTIVELY AND INVEST IN CONTENT

Session One, ‘International Keynote – Chase Carey – 21st Century Man’, was produced by Alan Clements. Chase Carey, President and Chief Operating Officer of 21st Century Fox, was interviewed by RTS President Sir Peter Bazalgette.

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The moribund US ad market is more a reflection of the economy than anything else, he added. “In some degree there’s a need for the advertising market to catch up with where viewership is moving. There is no question that you’ve got consumers who want to access and engage with content in different ways – the whatyou-want, where-you-want, whenyou-want-it phenomenon” Conceding that people are watching “less frequently on linear channels” as more time is spent viewing catch-up services, the Fox President admitted: “We have to figure out how to monetise that viewership better.”

Asked about re-transmission fees (an ITV-led campaign is seeking to persuade BSkyB and Virgin to pay the UK commercial public service broadcasters for carrying their channels) Carey said he was ignorant of the British situation.

However, he noted that in the US – where the fees are worth some

$3.3bn a year and expected to double in the next four years – “retransmission rights have been part of the dynamic of the US marketplace for quite a while.”

He continued: “They allowed broadcasters like us to build a multichannel business… a channel such as FX was really in many ways built on the back of retransmission…

“The fees were necessary for broadcasters to be able to continue to compete effectively and invest in content against this wide array of channels that were almost reaching every household.”

As for Channel 4 CEO David Abraham’s view, articulated in his recent MacTaggart Lecture, that US ownership of big UK TV assets is undermining the traditions of British public service broadcasting, Carey begged to differ.

“Everywhere we’ve gone around the world we’ve been a force for creating more and better content… We want to invest more in the UK and provide a platform for that content to reach a broader audience.

“We want entities such as Shine to get bigger and stronger. I am not sure why that is a negative.

“There’s been enormous success in the UK creative industry and a lot of it has been fed by the ability of UK content to participate in a broader range of distributors…

Asked by McKinsey’s Dominic Charles from the floor what keeps him awake at night, Carey replied: “A long list of things. We are clearly in a business that is going to be transformed by digital technologies...

“Content is the sweet spot. The winners will be those who have it and the brands that stand out.”

Bazalgette had one final question – of a personal nature.

What’s it like to be at the top of 21st Century Fox and not be called Murdoch?

“It’s been a fascinating and really fabulous company to be part of for the last 25 years plus,” replied Carey, who seemed to be suppressing a grin.

“In 1988 Fox was a two nights-aweek network. We didn’t have a news or a sports business or an international television business...

“The Murdochs have been great partners. Rupert’s been fabulous to work with.”

October 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

Fear for the future

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or many new-media innovators, TV is the dinosaur of the digital landscape – over-sized and lumbering its way to inevitable extinction.

Nimble online outfits will replace it, they argue, offering viewers the content they want, when they want it and on the device of their choice.

But, according to the experts – all from internet-driven companies – assembled for the session, “The Future You Don’t Want To Face”, TV has plenty of life left in it.

Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy, who chaired a session that he said was “designed to scare” the audience, posed three questions: Is television losing power? Are television channels becoming obsolete?

Who are the financial winners and losers?

Answers were provided by Matt Brittin, Google’s chief of Northern and Central Europe; Facebook Head of International Media Karla Geci; and Kevin Sutcliffe, Head of News

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

Power, Politics & The Media Session Two

A panel of digital disruptors tells broadcasters and producers how to adapt to the new world.

Matthew Bell listens to their advice Programming in Europe for Vice News.

The background to the debate was framed by statistics that revealed that younger viewers are deserting the TV set for online and mobile platforms (see box, page 12).

“We have to reach a point where we start viewing changing behaviours as an opportunity, not a threat,”

argued Geci. “The access to TV is changing for the better. We have to be open to redefining what broadcast content is and how to reach that demographic through various access points.”

As a good example of an innovator, she mentioned BBC News, which is producing 15-second videos for Insta­ gram users.

Sutcliffe, who worked in traditional television with the BBC and Channel 4 before joining Vice News, argued that programming is more important than the platform it plays on.

“The screen is irrelevant; it’s content that’s at issue here and how that content speaks to the audience,” he said.

Vice, he added, has an “enormously engaged, sophisticated audience” thirsting for more than news snippets.

“There is a huge number of young people who want to watch long-form, in-depth news about the world,” Sutcliffe claimed.

Google’s Brittin offered an analogy using the BBC’s Doctor Who to explain �

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Is TV losing its power?

Claire Enders, founder and CEO of Enders A ­ nalysis: ‘All traditional media companies are affected by technology change… The increase in the penetration of tablets and smart phones has had a substantial effect on consumption, particularly of younger demographics.

‘Over the past 18 months we’ve seen a 22% fall in viewing in four- to 15-year-olds and 15% drop in 16- to 34-year-olds.’

Michael Stevens, founder of the Vsauce YouTube network: ‘We have 10 million views every week… YouTube is the right medium for what we’re doing because we can create whatever we want, whenever we want to, and send that right to our fans and get feedback from them.

So, I don’t have to listen to notes from some high-up group of bureaucrats – I just upload what I want to upload.’

Sam Barcroft, CEO of online news channel Barcroft TV: ‘We get more than 40 million views a month globally… Customer demand is what’s going to rule the next decade.

‘All of us have less free time… and so video-on-demand makes a lot more sense than TV.’

Will TV channels become obsolete?

Henry Normal, co-founder of Baby Cow: ‘I can see why the BBC put BBC Three online. There’s the whole issue of the licence fee and [whether] young people will pay [it] in the future.’

Zai Bennett, Director of Sky Atlantic (and, until recently, Controller of BBC Three): ‘Channels have a huge

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amount of power and Sky recognises that and has put a huge amount of money behind the channels and the channel brands.

‘They are a really great way for our audience to navigate, to know what to expect.

‘I think BBC Three will have an interesting future and it is definitely ahead of the market, if not beyond it.’

Roy Ackerman, Managing Director of Fresh One Productions: ‘There will be big content on televisions that families will sit around in future, in living rooms up and down the country…

They’ll probably be watching a big entertainment show, big drama, sport and great factual content and factual entertainment.’

Who’s a winner?

Who’s a loser?

Michael Stevens: ‘The winners will be the ones who embrace all technologies and media experiences.’

Zai Bennett: ‘The big winners will be the ones who own rights and content.

The best content will always win out.

Content is king.’

Henry Normal: ‘You’ve got to look to film as a way that television might go because film is a big version of tele­ vision. Film faces the world, whereas a lot of TV is very local.

It may be in the future that the funding model for TV is very similar to film, that we have pre-buys and we launch [programmes] as a world event.

Hopefully, there will still be room for the smaller, local things.’

Sam Barcroft: ‘If I was in charge of one of the bigger broadcasters, I’d cut the costs in half and be more experimental… Some of these organisations are full of people getting paid very well to not do a great deal.’

Claire Enders: ‘I’d be looking for the next Game of Thrones – that’s the best way to future-proof any business – find the next wonderful franchise.’

� the myriad opportunities for programme-makers that exist beyond conventional TV. “Doctor Who is all about fans and it’s all about time and space. So, if you break out of the linear TV schedules, you have all of time and space available – you can have your content viewed by anybody around the world, when they want it.

“Something like 60% of YouTube original content is viewed outside the country it was made in.”

Emphasising the opportunities for UK content producers, Brittin added: “There are 2.5 billion people online today and there’ll be 5 billion online in 2020. You’ve got some of the best content in the world and suddenly you can distribute it to everybody. What’s not to like?”

YouTube, which Google bought in 2006, has some 1 billion users. It claims that 6 billion hours of video are watched every month.

“Watch time is growing by about 50%, year on year,” said Brittin. “The revenue we’re paying out to content creators is growing faster than that. We have thousands of channels that are earning six-figure sums.”

This growth is increasingly driven by mobile, with almost 40% of YouTube views now on mobile devices. Facebook has become even more of a mobile platform – 65% of its 1 billion daily views are via mobile devices.

The panel then addressed television’s apparently waning powers.

Responding to the comments of media execs (in a video package played to the audience) discussing BBC Three’s proposed move online, Brittin said: “You want to be where the audience is.

Ideally, BBC Three would be on tele­ vision and on YouTube, Facebook and [its] own online services. Be experimental – don’t close yourself off on one platform. We are in a world where people have got choice.

“Our platform is designed to be slippery. A lot of the content on YouTube is not viewed on the website; it’s viewed on Facebook, email links, Twitter and across the web.

“The reason it’s so popular with content creators is that it gives [them] the chance to use our technology to get content to wherever you want it,” added Brittin.

Vice, argued Sutcliffe, is a “content creation platform” that “is trying to place itself in the marketplace in as many places as possible”.

This, he added, includes “high-quality, old-fashioned telly”, such as Vice on HBO, which won an Emmy this year for Outstanding Informational Series or Special.

Vice, he added, had grown “organically in an online place. There is an audience out there that wants [Vice] and has come to it in huge numbers.”

Terrestrial TV, however, finds it more difficult to develop online: “It’s a baffling thing [for them] because they’re used to having rivals, [such as] the BBC and ITV, and scheduling.”

Arguably overstating the decline of TV, Guru-Murthy asked whether ITV juggernaut The X Factor still needs a TV presence to prosper.

“It could survive by itself, but being on ITV and drawing audiences of

Murthy asked the three panellists to pinpoint how budding entrepreneurs could make money out of new media.

“They have to be doing more than creating content – they have to be creating value,” argued Geci.

She said this value would be in “having intellectual property, great product and customer experience”.

“You own your content outright and you license it,” reckoned Sutcliffe, who also recommended forming “technology and content partnerships”.

“I’m not sure if I agree with that 100%,” replied Geci. “Taking Netflix as an example, it is doing lots of deals where it is not looking for exclusivity.

Where it is able to win out is by having a great product, great customer experience, being able to deliver powerful

Geci: ‘Producers have to be doing more than creating content – they have to be creating value’

I’D CUT THE COSTS IN HALF AND BE MORE EXPERIMENTAL… SOME [BROADCASTERS] ARE FULL OF PEOPLE GETTING PAID VERY WELL TO NOT DO A GREAT DEAL

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

recommendations and winning on all fronts, not just the one.”

Brittin identified advertising as one of the keys to a lucrative future. “The technology behind advertising is changing rapidly and dynamically,” he explained. “Let’s say something on YouTube gets 5 million views. What if every single one of those people has a different ad that’s tailored to the kind of stuff they want to watch and what their demographics are. Advertisers [would] only pay when someone chooses to watch the ad.”

In this future, he continued, all parts of the media landscape would benefit: “You’d get a better user experience with advertising that entertains and engages you; the advertiser gets a better audience; and the content creator makes more money.

“We’re at the beginning of this transition at the moment. In the long run, I’m optimistic; in the short and medium term, you won’t make the same amount of money as you do on ITV with The X Factor, but the sums are getting bigger.”

In the meantime, Brittin advised: “Get out there and experiment and figure out what’s going on. Don’t sit back and let other people learn how to make it work.”

Brittin: ‘You’ve got some of the best content in the world and suddenly you can distribute it to everybody. What’s not to like?’

Sutcliffe: ‘The screen is irrelevant; it’s content that’s at issue’

All pictures: Paul Hampartsoumian

something like 11 million is unique – I wouldn’t give it up if I was Simon Cowell,” said Brittin.

The Google exec recalled, however, ITV’s frustration when X Factor con­ testant Susan Boyle’s rendition of I Dreamed a Dream received 150 million views on YouTube and the broadcaster “hadn’t got a deal in place to exploit that fully. That was a wake-up call.”

Addressing Guru-Murthy’s final question – who are the financial winners and losers? (see box, opposite) – Brittin reckoned that “in the long term, the people who will win financially are hopefully the audiences and the content creators”.

Guru-Murthy, however, noted that for Google as a platform the advertising deal it had struck with content creators was “very favourable to you”, offering it a “huge chunk” of the returns.

“I don’t know where you get your facts from,” responded Brittin. “With the advertising on YouTube, we pay the majority of it out to content creators.”

Guru-Murthy pressed for a precise figure but Brittin resisted, conceding only that “in excess of 50% of the revenue goes to the content creators. Ideally, we want to get to the point where we can give more.”

Wrapping up proceedings, Guru-

Session Two, ‘The Future You Don’t Want To Face’, was produced by Darren Childs and Zoe Clapp and chaired by Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Channel 4 News. The panellists were: Matt Brittin, President, Northern and Central Europe Operations, Google; Karla Geci, Head of International Media, Facebook; and Kevin Sutcliffe, Head of News Programming EU, Vice News.

13

Tomorrow the

w●rld

T

ake three forthright, confident, key players at the very centre of the fast-changing and consolidating British television market. Put them together on a panel overseen by Newsnight’s feisty Kirsty Wark. Then listen hard.

This session fizzed, producing a stream of insights, strong opinion and – a rather British bonus – laughter.

Wark posed the question – “What is going on behind the sudden flurry of activity?” – to Kevin Lygo, MD of ITV Studios, and Alex Mahon, CEO of Shine Group. Both are directly involved in current deal making, but rarely spotted in public, let alone speaking together on the same platform.

Also adding her take was Lorraine Heggessey, the former BBC One Controller, who now, after her two-year, educative sortie merging two UK indies, Boom and Twofour, is currently tied up in a legal dispute with the company.

To recap, this year Liberty Global and Discovery have established a joint venture to buy All3Media in a deal reported to be worth more than £500m.

Viacom recently completed its acquisition of Channel 5, and two of the UK’s

14

Power, Politics & The Media Session Three

Are UK-based megaindies pioneering a new studio model? asks Maggie Brown biggest production companies, 21st Century Fox-owned Shine and Endemol, are in a joint venture to form a £1bn-turnover mega-indie – wickedly parodied as “Shendemol” by RTS President Peter Bazalgette.

A sceptical Wark stirred the pot: “Is this simply opportunism driven by companies with excess cash, or are we seeing the next phase of the restructuring of Britain’s media?

“Does ITV have what it takes to be a global giant? What does it all mean for the UK’s independent production sector?”

Lygo, busy helping to reverse the US takeover trend, is consolidating ITV’s position as the largest producer of non-scripted programming in the US (he described the genre as the “bastard offspring of the docu soaps”).

“We spent a while looking, and we discovered, for example, that scripted drama is the domain of the studios, and so that was ruled out,” said Lygo.

Wark interjected: “People want scale.

Size is important?”

Lygo deadpanned: “Yes, size is important. But this was very hard as far as the UK went. We could achieve more scale in the US. We were impatient, so acquisition was the quick route.”

Indeed, ITV has spent over £300m on 10 deals since 2010 and shows no sign of stopping. Lygo took a plane to LA immediately after the conference.

Mahon, speaking publicly about the deal with Endemol for the first time (see box, opposite), said the M&A activity was “completely natural”. US channels and major players want to acquire content makers and are involved in an arms race to buy into UK companies.

Debt is currently cheap and the options attractive. “And there’s not many left” of the biggest indies, with turnovers in the region of £500m (the buzz at the event was that Tinopolis could fall next).

Heggessey added: “What Alex was saying, what we are getting now is beyond super-indies, we’re getting mega-indies.”

“Whatever size you are, you have

From left: Alex Mahon, Kirsty Wark, Kevin Lygo and Lorraine Heggessey certain problems, maybe too heavy an overhead. Merging Shine and Endemol makes complete sense – there are lots of economies of scale.

“The technological companies have spent a lot of money building platforms and they now need content to put on them and are starting to invest,” ­Heggessey continued.

“Plus private equity also has a lot of money to invest.

“What has happened in the UK, as Alex said, is a few companies are turning over £500m-plus, [but] there are a lot of companies turning over £10m, £20m…”

Heggessey called herself a consolidator. “What I spotted when I was building Boom was this gap in the market. My aim was to build a company that would be of an enterprise value of around £100m.

“I thought it would take five years, it actually only took two. There is money and a real appetite for this.

“The Americans won’t be looking at small start-ups. [They are] too small for the likes of Fox. That is why I was looking for smaller companies, to do that work for them, if you like.”

But Lygo stressed that ITV’s approach is fundamentally different to venture capitalists buying to sell on:

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

“We’re an end user. We do not intend to flog it and sell it later.

“We understand the television business – production companies are not on a smooth growth curve. We take a more benign view.”

Lygo cautioned that it would be “misguided to think of these mergers

Paul Hampartsoumian

WE HAVE HIGHER AND HIGHER QUALITY, LOWER AND LOWER PRICES

between production companies as [like] GlaxoSmithKline”.

Pointing to ITV’s purchase of UK indies The Garden and Big Talk, he said: “It comes down to a few people in companies who create programmes, one or two key people, best in class – really, really good at what they do. �

Who will shape ‘Shendemol’?

Kirsty Wark wanted to know which of the two big beasts, Shine or Endemol, would emerge as the winner in their merger deal.

Shine Group CEO Alex Mahon replied: ‘We won’t know until we come together as a company.’

Wark persisted: was this a defensive deal to stop someone else?

Mahon said: ‘No, it is definitely about scale. Both companies are full of really good, creative people. We [Shine] tend to be factual and scripted. They tend to be entertainment and game shows, but both are interested in really great content. That’s what you have to keep at the centre of how you run a company.’

Mahon insisted that since being acquired by Fox three years ago,

the group hadn’t really changed. It continued to operate a number of independent production companies, each with its own office and culture.

What had changed was ‘the ability to deficit fund’, backed by its US owner: ‘We wouldn’t have had the chance to do that before. We have a strong shareholder with lots of cash, who understands what television is.

‘We can deficit the US version of Broadchurch, which is tens of millions…

The world is going that way.’

As to whether 21st Century Fox’s Chase Carey would use the new entity as a scout for more UK takeovers Mahon said: ‘I think he said this is a big acquisition, then it is [about] organic growth from here.’

15

Channel 4 CEO David Abraham’s MacTaggart Lecture, ‘After the Gold Rush’, argued that US ownership of British broadcasters and producers threatens UK public service broadcasting, and that the terms of trade need to be ‘fairer’.

Kevin Lygo said: ‘The American thing was silly. I didn’t quite get it.

It seems to me, Americans make wonderful television all of us love, some of the best TV around.’

The former Channel 4 Director of Television and Content added: ‘I don’t see how you can equate size with a lack of creativity; again, a lot of the bigger companies own the best programmes.’

But he gave some credit for the focus on smaller independents.

‘Yes, it is great for Channel 4 to look after little companies. I see the creation of a good programme as something someone in their attic can absolutely do – and you see it in the US. ‘One of the reasons there isn’t an independent sector of the sort in the US as here is that if somebody has come up with something really good, they write a script [and] immediately one of the studios gives them a deal... these deals are good. People earn a lot of money. [The idea] gets immediate scale and backing.’

Alex Mahon suggested that Channel 4’s strategy ‘seems to be to punish the big indies by giving them the worst deals. The big indies tend to be already nonqualifying indies’ (not covered by the terms of trade because they are owned by broadcasters).

She added: ‘Channel 4 is asking to renegotiate those terms. I think it is somewhat illogical. It doesn’t seem wholly thought through as a strategy.’

Lorraine Heggessey agreed: ‘All broadcasters are feeling the squeeze. They get into a defensive position, and the easiest thing is to attack the terms of trade, because they think we are making loads of money out of them’.

16

IN THE US, LONG RUNS MEAN YOU CAN MAKE A VERY DECENT BUSINESS AS A PRODUCER [WITHOUT OWNING RIGHTS] � “The relationship there is not big ITV, which sits on them. They run their own shop. But they can talk to me and others… then we add the scale of investment.”

When it comes to success in television, he noted, “We’re talking about a few programmes. Fox has never given a presentation without The Simpsons coming up. It’s an extraordinary programme, on which a business is based. No one really knows how big a show can become”.

Mahon said that TV production UK-style had become a low-margin business. Net profit margins had fallen in the past five years from 13% to 5.3% in the UK sector, excluding revenue from foreign sales.

“As indies, [we have] less money to make the same show, while audience expectation… is going up.

“So we have higher and higher quality, lower and lower prices. And then this push comes from Channel 4 to get more of the theoretical billions and billions it thinks we are making.”

This was a reference to Channel 4’s recent announcement that it has taken minority stakes in four indies.

Meanwhile, valuations are high, with ITV’s buying spree also driving bids up.

On the other hand, Heggessey said, “What might be exciting about the Shine/Endemol deal is that it will be our first major studio.”

She added: “If we could get to that stage, [UK studios could have a market] like the LA Screenings, showing their wares, broadcasters bidding for them – that would be such a shift in the market.

Paul Hampartsoumian

Are dollars dangerous?

“At the moment we are the supplicants at the table... ‘Please take this programme.’”

Heggessey challenged Lygo on ITV’s US strategy. She suggested that ITV was buying US companies because its UK studios business was “stalling”, and pointed out that the US companies ITV that had purchased do not own their intellectual property.

Lygo brushed her off, deflecting the attack by debunking the “obsession with ownership of rights. Often, they are not worth that much. In the US, long runs mean that you can make a very decent business as a producer.”

He added: “When a company such as Discovery or A&E commissions you to make a programme, it pays you a very decent amount of money.

In effect, it is buying up your rights.

“You could hold them back, but the truth is that some of the big shows you wouldn’t sell for as much money as you are getting to make them.”

From the floor, Broadcast Editor Chris Curtis wanted to know “how powerful a rival a liberated BBC production arm would be”.

Lygo replied: “I don’t mind. I love the idea of how long it would take. I welcome more competition.”

Mahon agreed. Heggessey quipped: “It will be very complicated. There will be a manual!”

Session Three, ‘Tomorrow the World’, was produced by Alex Graham and chaired by broadcaster and journalist Kirsty Wark. The panellists were: Lorraine Heggessey; Kevin Lygo, Managing Director, ITV Studios; and Alex Mahon, CEO, Shine Group.

October 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

Digital debaters bypass TV

A

funny thing happened on the way to the Scottish referendum. As usual, people were out drinking and enjoying themselves in late-night watering holes across the country.

But there was one big difference in their nocturnal habits – as they drank into the early hours, the conversation of choice was the independence vote.

“They weren’t fighting each other.

They were actually having an intelligent conversation about politics – although it wasn’t always lucid.”

The speaker was Ross Colquhoun, Director of National Collective, a group of artists set up in 2011 to campaign for Scottish independence.

He was one of a three-strong panel dissecting the role that social media

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

Power, Politics & The Media Session Four

Steve Clarke discovers which media played the most powerful role in the Scottish referendum campaign – and some lessons for the general election played in the referendum campaign, chaired by Newsnight’s Chief Correspondent, Laura Kuenssberg.

Did the likes of Twitter and Facebook boost the yes campaign and

help turn the closing fortnight into such a tight race?

Was it the TV debates between Alistair Darling and Alex Salmond that galvanised those who wanted Scotland to remain part of the union?

Politicians and spinners from all parties are already analysing the course of the hard-fought campaign.

As well as the big messages, they are examining the parts played by social media and more traditional methods of mass persuasion.

Crucially, they are looking at how next year’s general election could be contested.

Colquhoun drew attention to the yes campaign’s readiness to embrace social media to spread its message.

He said: “From the beginning, yes campaign activists put faith in normal people disseminating information. �

17

� People are more likely to listen to somebody they know.”

National Collective began as a group of friends. “It was three people in a bedroom,” recalled Colquhoun. “As a group, our ideals were quite simple.

“We wanted to connect with artists in our country because artists are used to taking calculated risks. They are used to imagining what could potentially be better. They also understand how to disseminate quite complex information and make it understandable to the masses.”

When National Collective’s website was launched, no Scottish newspaper backed the yes campaign. “In fact, the majority of broadsheets were quite hostile to independence,” said Colquhoun. He realised there was a need for an alternative voice: “The views and hits we got on our website indicated that… We brought more and more local people to the fore and set up sessions across the country. “[We also created] a live space where artists could engage in the debate, make jokes, make music videos, meet people and, most importantly, have a conversation.”

He added: “I tend to think we attracted quite a lot of undecided people. These events have made it fun.

They override people’s resistance to politicians in suits. These are the people the media tends to focus on, but they are not always the best messenger.”

Kuenssberg asked how much digital and social had steered the debate in the campaign.

“People are always looking for the one tweet, but it’s never that simple: it’s a collection of lots of little things that build up to a larger thing,” observed Gregor Poynton, Associate Director, (International) Digital, at Portland Communications, who advised Better Together.

“In politics, digital does three things for you – message, money and mobilisation,” added Poynton, who also worked for the firm that led Barack Obama’s digital strategy and was Election Strategy Manager for the Labour Party in the run-up to the 2010 general election.

He explained that mobilisation involved getting people to “switch off their laptops and go out and work for you”, while money entailed getting thousands of people to make small campaign donations.

John Curtice, Professor of Politics at

18

DIGITAL ALLOWS YOU TO LOOK AT THE NUMBERS AS OPPOSED TO, ‘WE’VE ALWAYS DONE IT THIS WAY’

the University of Strathclyde and the ubiquitous pollsters’ pollster, agreed: “Think of digital as a way of being able to mobilise the traditional.

“It’s the ability to raise money, to create an organisation, reduce the cost of doing things; but if you really want to follow the referendum campaign in Scotland at grass-roots level, sit in a pub, a café or, if you can afford it, a restaurant and hear the conversations going on.”

Grass-roots engagement played a big role in generating the huge 84.5% turnout for the referendum vote.

“Two-thirds of people in Scotland say they have had a conversation in recent weeks with somebody else about the referendum,” said Curtice.

“In that sense, traditional face-to-face contact is still the dominant mode.

Behind it is the fact that you can begin to organise locally.

“The other thing to say is that it is also true that there is a very important asymmetry of activism. The yes side clearly was more active – whether it is knocking on doors or social media– and penetrating more than the no side.”

However, added Curtice, polls suggested that even on the yes side only 14% of those questioned said

campaigners had knocked on their doors.

He highlighted what he described as “two different streams of media narrative”.

“What was happening in Scotland came as a bit of a shock in London” because the national media presented the vote “as something that wasn’t really happening: ‘Nobody in Scotland’s interested’. It couldn’t be further from the truth.”

What impact did the TV debates have on social media, asked the Newsnight presenter? Around 1 million people had watched the debates in Scotland. Did that change what you were doing and what you were talking about?

“Social adds extra texture… There wasn’t a knock-out blow in either of the debates,” replied Poynton.

“There were around 75,000 tweets during the second debate, which showed it was not just the political classes talking on Twitter. There was a broader political discussion happening on Twitter.”

Kuenssberg’s $64,000 question was: is the role and influence of television diminishing?

“Clearly, as a viewer, you are getting a whole range of information from a

different range of places… people who use social media still look for trusted brands,” suggested Poynton. “You still look for people you can trust.

“But what it does allow is National Collective, or some other organisation with a range of voices, to come to the fore as well and give their perspective on the debate.”

Curtice added: “The reason why 1 million people watched the TV debates is not because people couldn’t find anything better to do… The reason why people are watching the telly is because they are already interested.”

Turning to Colquhoun, Kuenssberg enquired about the implications for his generation in terms of their engagement with politics beyond the results of the referendum. Would people want to start watching political programmes in greater numbers?

He answered: “I think, regardless of the results… it doesn’t mean that after the referendum the momentum will continue.

“If there is a yes, it will be much easier for that momentum to continue.

The key is to find another catalyst, a cause, a political idea that then enables them to feel motivated and to engage with politics.

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

ULTIMATELY, YOU ARE LOOKING FOR AUDIENCE… IF THAT’S A 30-SECOND VIDEO ON YOUTUBE, AS OPPOSED TO [A TV INTERVIEW] THEN THAT’S WHAT YOU’D HAVE TO DO “Whereas, if it’s a no vote, it’s much trickier as you’d get a mass of people quite disheartened by the political system.”

Curtice stressed that social media usage depends on motivation. He explained: “We know that the people who sat and watched the leaders’ debates for 90 minutes are disproportionately the politically interested. So, use of media depends on motivation.”

People had been motivated to follow the referendum online. Social media has not been very good at getting

Paul Hampartsoumian

From left: Laura Kuenssberg, John Curtice, Gregor Poynton and Ross Colquhoun

people involved in issues they don’t care about.

Would the lessons learnt from this campaign change the way next year’s general election played out and how the parties spent their money on promoting their cases?

Poynton said that parties were beginning to invest in social media in a way that was unheard of before, because of its ability to allow genuine engagement.

“A billboard is one thing, but sharing a graphic on Facebook and writing a message alongside it, that’s much more powerful: a mini-endorsement rather than just walking past a billboard.”

As a former strategist and campaigner, could he see the day when he or Ross would be sitting in an office and thinking, ‘What matters more, getting this space online and getting this app up and running or securing a brilliant interview on News at Ten or Newsnight?’

Will there be a day when online is more important than mainstream TV? “Ultimately, you are looking for audience…,” he replied. “So potentially, I think yes. It starts with the message and where the audience is to land that message. If that’s a 30-second video on YouTube, as opposed to going on Newsnight – God forbid – then that’s what you’d have to do.

“Digital allows you to look at the numbers as opposed to, ‘We’ve always done it this way, therefore we must do it this way this time’.”

From the floor, RTS President Sir Peter Bazalgette asked about the effect of digital on swing voters. We had seen a big swing during the referendum campaign – was that because of the impact of digital media?

“I think potentially it exacerbates it… it can add fuel to the fire,” said Poynton.

“Potentially, you can see the momentum that perhaps you would have seen in the papers, but now you can see it every minute of every day with people tweeting and talking about it.

“It can amplify that perhaps, but I am not sure it is necessarily the initial spark.”

Session Four, ‘Kingdom Not United’, was produced by Bobby Hain and chaired by Laura Kuenssberg, Chief Correspondent and presenter of Newsnight. The panellists were: Ross Colquhoun, Director, National Collective; John Curtice, Professor of Politics, University of Strathclyde; and Gregor Poynton, Associate Director (International), Digital, Portland Communications.

19

Have I T

still got news for you?

Power, Politics & The Media Session Five

Despite big challenges ahead, the leaders of BBC News, ITN and Sky News are bullish about their future, notes Matthew Bell

20

elevision news is going through a sticky patch, facing either cutbacks or audience flight – or both.

City University journalism professor and former ITN boss Stewart Purvis, who chaired the session, outlined the two biggest challenges facing news organisations.

First, providing more news for less money. Second, declining audiences, particularly among the under-35s, who, since the arrivals of tablets and apps, have migrated in large numbers to online and mobile platforms.

BBC News, which announced in July that it is to axe 450 jobs (although the losses are mitigated by the creation of 195 new posts), is most under the cosh, argued Purvis.

The corporation has been ordered to break more stories by Director of News James Harding and to build its global news audience to 500 million by Director-General Tony Hall – all on an annual budget that is shrinking by £50m.

If that’s not enough, Non Executive Director Sir Howard Stringer has called for more “character and personality” in the BBC’s web presence, while the BBC Trust wants better mobile and online news, a wider news agenda and an increased impact in current affairs.

And, concluded Purvis, BBC News has to meet stiffer corporate commitments on gender, ethnic diversity and disability.

Addressing Fran Unsworth, the BBC’s Deputy Director of News and Current Affairs, Purvis asked: “How could you possibly take £50m out of your budget and not affect the quality of the product?”

Unsworth pointed out that BBC News had already trimmed £50m from its budget, adding: “I challenge you and the audience to say you have particularly noticed a diminution of quality of BBC news?”

Cutting a further £50m would be tough, she said, but “the fact that we’ve done it before gives me some kind of hope”.

Purvis asked ITN Chief Executive John Hardie whether the cutbacks at the BBC presented an opportunity for his company, which provides news to ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5.

“The fact that they are going through a period of cuts doesn’t make life any easier for ITN,” said Hardie.

ITN had made economies in 2009, he recalled, and had introduced flexi-

WE DON’T DO CAMPAIGNS

ble working patterns and new technology rather than cutting its news coverage or key staff.

Noting the growing amount of news watched online, especially by younger audiences, Purvis suggested that, as TV news audiences decline, the commercial pressure on ITN from ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 would increase.

Hardie replied that in the past three months these three broadcasters had all awarded new licences to ITN, offering “a decade of significant commitment”.

But, responded Purvis, “Would there not inevitably be a push for a price reduction from your customers as they see the value of airtime around your programmes declining?”

No, reckoned Hardie, who added that in his five years at ITN he had “not yet had a conversation with broadcasters that [went], ‘The ratings are down, we’re losing advertising revenue, you need to cut the budget’.”

Turning to Head of Sky News John Ryley, Purvis quoted his Cardiff University colleague and ex-BBC Director

I LIKE CHANGE AND I LIKE A BIT OF DISRUPTION

From left: Fran Unsworth, John Hardie and John Ryley

Sky vs ITN: cash before coverage?

John Ryley: ‘On that rainy day in June 2012 when the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh were heading up the River Thames… ITV took the tennis from Paris, which I thought was a strange decision, whereas the BBC and ourselves… covered what I thought was an important national moment.

‘The funeral of Baroness Thatcher in April last year… ITV chose to [air reports during] This Morning, whereas the BBC and ourselves… covered that event in full. I was surprised by that.’

John Hardie: ‘Sky News is one channel [and] has all that airtime to fill.

‘ITV News – and this is a choice for the broadcaster – lives in the reality of a commercial world, and saying that, because [the news] doesn’t roll all day long for the [funeral] of Baroness Thatcher, it is somehow

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

abrogating its duty in news is ridiculous…

‘ITV and the other broadcasters live in that harsh [commercial] reality and very often when the news is big they will go open-end and they will go live, and we often supply that.’

Was BBC’s report of Cliff raid too tabloid?

Fran Unsworth: ‘Stories of this kind always give us problems… If a reporter came to you and said: “I’ve got this story that South Yorkshire Police are investigating a historic sex allegation against Cliff Richard and, what’s more, they’ve told me they are going to search his house tomorrow and they’ve even sent me an aerial photograph of the house” – do you think it’s up to me to say I don’t think we’ll tell the viewers about that, because it’s not the sort of story the BBC does?’

Paul Hampartsoumian

ITN… HAS TO AND DOES MAKE A PROFIT

of News Richard Sambrook as recently saying: “It seems unlikely that spending upwards of £60m a year on a closed satellite infrastructure that delivers the news late to 1% or 2% of the available audience will remain a sensible use of resources.”

“At the heart of a non-stop news organisation,” responded Ryley, “we need the bedrock of the service of a 24-hour television channel supplying video.”

That video is expensive, he admitted, but it is used for different outlets, including online and mobile platforms and, on the day of the RTS conference, it became available via Xbox 360.

The panellists discussed the impact of new players in the market, including Vice News, a channel aimed at the “connected generation”.

Vice News, said Ryley, “has lifted the lid on the slightly seamier side of life in the UK, which television news arguably doesn’t do enough of.

“I welcome Vice’s entry into the journalism market. It is going to be a tough competitor and I think that it will sharpen our game. I like change and I like a bit of disruption.”

Hardie, though, denied that organisations such as Vice were a threat to ITN. “They do something very different,” he said. “Last week, their lead item was a very interesting piece about an outbreak of cholera in Haiti. The next piece was headlined: ‘I got cocaine blown up my ass so you don’t have to’.”

Purvis pointed out that Vice was an increasingly respected news organisations – its reporters in the Ukraine had recently contributed to the BBC’s coverage of the crisis in that country.

“I didn’t say they were bad; I was saying they don’t do what we do yet,” replied Hardie.

The news chief said that to cover a story such as the shooting down of the airliner in Ukraine, ITN had people on the ground simultaneously in Ukraine, Amsterdam, London and in Washington… “bringing to our audience a full summary and editorially well-put-together piece. That’s not what [Vice] is doing.”

Speaking from the audience, RTS President Peter Bazalgette doubted whether TV news would survive in its present form.

“Looking at the stage,” he said, “I see one person running a news service paid for by the licence fee, another person providing news services to ITV and Channel 4 when those slots don’t �

21

Can television news ever accommodate activism?

Q

Stewart Purvis: Jon Snow came back from Gaza and he recorded in the Channel 4 News studio a video that ended with the words, “We can make a difference”.

This was not shown on Channel 4 News, but it was on the Channel 4 website. Do you believe that what Snow said online [would have] met the impartiality requirements of Ofcom had it been show on television?… Could it have been shown on TV? John Hardie: We would have scrutinised it more because it was Jon speaking without a script to camera, but we don’t open up television broadcast news to that kind of sentiment or expression… It was a ventilation from Jon who, after 40 years, if anyone’s earned a right to do that, I think he has.

John Ryley: We expect broadcasters… when they go on a story to almost neuter or cauterise their emotion to what they see… Jon’s seen a lot of suffering over the past 40 years and we should respect his emotions.

A

A

Q A A

Stewart Purvis: Would you have shown it?

John Ryley: I think I might have done, [though] signposted.

Fran Unsworth: Absolutely not.

And, if one of our presenters had done something like that in a private capacity on YouTube,

22

we would have had to have said, “Sorry, this isn’t appropriate in terms of your public-facing role as an impartial presenter of BBC news programmes.’’

Q

Stewart Purvis: [Sky] started a… service for younger viewers and you called it, “Stand Up Be Counted”. This is the language of activism. The campaign you’re running is to get young people to connect more with politics, which sounds admirable.

Before the last general election you ran a campaign for a prime ministerial debate. [Should] TV news organisations do campaigns?

John Ryley: They should do campaigns if they are in the interests of journalism… I felt very strongly that the time had come, given the disregard for politics in Britain after the expenses scandal and the economic woes of this country, that our three leaders should be scrutinised on television.

So, yes, I campaigned for it. Stand Up Be Counted is a campaign to encourage youngsters to get interested in news and current affairs and it is the right thing to do.

Fran Unsworth: We don’t do campaigns… Where they are matters of public debate we have to take a neutral position – that’s what our Charter says…

Having said that, we are allowed to campaign on matters of press freedom, broadcast issues and things that affect our industry.

A

A

Channel 4

Jon Snow in Gaza

WE EXPECT BROADCASTERS … WHEN THEY GO ON A STORY TO ALMOST NEUTER OR CAUTERISE THEIR EMOTION TO WHAT THEY SEE

� pay for themselves, and a third person who is a cost centre, not a profit centre, in Sky.” He continued: “You provide news services that we regard as the cornerstone of our democracy and you cost massive amounts of money – and there isn’t a commercial model to support you.

“Never mind about the next 10 years, what about the next 30 – are you [still] going to be there?”

Ryley put his faith in Sky’s new products, such as the Xbox 360 service, which “may make quite a big difference to our bottom line”.

Hardie argued that “ITN is an entirely commercial organisation”, a TV company that “has to and does make a profit” by supplying news to ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5.

He added that ITN, which is expanding its production and already provides news programmes for newspaper websites, would also be looking at new services.

Unsworth said that Bazalgette’s question illustrated the need for a public service broadcaster news service, however funded, “free from any commercial and political pressures. It would be a sad day for the UK if that were not to be the case going forward and we would be the poorer culturally for that.”

Session Five, ‘Have I Got News For You?’, was produced and chaired by Stewart Purvis CBE. The panellists were: John Hardie, Chief Executive, ITN; John Ryley, Head of Sky News, BSkyB; and Fran Unsworth, Deputy Director of News & Current Affairs, BBC.

October 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

OUR FRIEND IN THE

NORTH

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

During the referendum, STV’s digital partnerships benefited each platform – and Scotland, says Rob Woodward

STV

T

here are a few moments in a broadcaster’s history that remind us of our role and responsibility to our audiences. For STV, 18 September, the day of the Scottish referendum, was one of these rare occasions.

Around 150 staff joined forces to cover the event, from reporters and producers to camera operators and technicians, who all worked alongside our online team.

It was our most ambitious live production ever as we broadcast live from 40 locations across Scotland.

The aim was to represent the “voices of Scotland” and deliver a strong, impartial platform.

In an evolving media landscape, where television was recently nominated as a candidate for inclusion on the endangered species list, we saw a huge number of people tune in to TV. More than 21 million people watched the referendum coverage across the UK, according to Barb figures.

STV, along with the BBC, went live from all 32 Scottish counts.

Following a special STV News at Ten, STV’s Scotland Decides, anchored by Bernard Ponsonby and Aasmah Mir, was broadcast by ITV through the night until 6am.

Our referendum coverage for viewers in Scotland, presented by John MacKay and Andrea Brymer, subsequently continued in a special edition of Scotland This Morning – How The Nation Voted. By then, of course, there was no doubt that Scotland had voted to stay in the Union.

Around 96,000 online viewers saw events unfold on a live stream, while the STV live blog was viewed more than 150,000 times.

Twitter lit up like a glowing political constellation of stars - with an estimated 7 million tweets on the Scottish referendum worldwide. Whatever

happened to people being apathetic about politics?

Beneath the Twitter supernova, Facebook burned just as brightly, with 1.7 million people viewing an STV video clip in their timeline.

In the build-up to the vote, nearly 1 million TV viewers watched Alistair Darling take on Alex Salmond in Scotland’s first televised referendum debate on STV. It was estimated that more than 100,000 of the 3.6 million people who cast their vote were first-time voters aged 16 or 17.

We hope STV played a small part in helping to galvanise the youth vote by staging our Referendum Schools Debate, in which secondary school

pupils from all 32 local authorities had the opportunity to research and discuss the issues affecting Scotland’s future.

For STV, the referendum gave us an opportunity to make further forays into social media and embrace new partnerships. If content is king, then its marriage to the Twitter and Facebook queens is a powerful regal alliance in the media court.

And televised debates have been one of the driving forces behind the referendum conversation.

A collaboration with Facebook allowed us to broadcast the first and only official Facebook independence referendum between the Yes Scotland and Better Together campaigns.

More than 1 million people visited the STV News Facebook page on the day it was broadcast.

Watching the conversation unfold on so many interactive platforms in the run-up to the final vote was an education in itself.

STV’s aim was to join the people of Scotland wherever they were and wherever they needed us to be – on the streets and at the count. It was a privilege to have been able to give a stage to one of the biggest moments in Scotland’s modern history.

With next year’s general election looming, the challenge for broadcasters across the UK is to somehow help to recapture the passion of the independence debate.

As we learnt from the referendum campaign, social media, allied to the power of television, offers a way forward in helping to encourage people next May to use the power of the ballot box.

Scotland has shown that a political contest can be anything but bland.

Let’s hope that May 2015 also gets TV audiences and voters excited about the democratic process.

Rob Woodward is CEO of STV Group.

23

Power, Politics & The Media Session Six

Despite its spending spree in the UK, Liberty Global is still keener on pipes than poetry, finds Maggie Brown

I

The four pillars of Liberty

n a week when ITV’s share price was soaring in reaction to a rumoured Liberty Global takeover, Jim Ryan, the company’s Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, had many questions to field.

Kirsty Wark put it bluntly within the opening seconds of an intense session: “What is going on?” she asked, before adding, “And what is Liberty Global?”

Well, it’s the world’s largest international cable company, dominated by the US media mogul, John Malone.

Liberty has 24.5 million customers in 14 countries, mostly European, boosted

24

by the acquisition of UK cable operator Virgin Media last year. It is also pushing into mobile, with around 4.5 million subscribers.

But this year it moved into the UK content sector, paying £500m for All3Media, the UK’s largest independent producer, in a joint venture with Discovery; Malone is also a key long-term stakeholder in Discovery.

Then came July’s purchase of BSkyB’s residual 6.4% in ITV for £481m, the remainder of a stake bought eight years ago, in 2006.

As Wark commented: “They’ve got the pipes, now they’re after the poetry.”

Asked directly if Liberty would buy more ITV shares, Ryan (who previously served as Managing Director of Liberty Global Europe between 2000 and 2012) said there were: “No current plans now to build on that stake”.

What about the next 18 months?

“We weren’t in the UK 24 months ago.

Here we are in the UK. We do want to find some portfolio investments to enhance the Virgin Media position. So, for example, the ITV stake is perfect.

Think about it: it gives us a seat at the table in UK content discussions.”

But here came signs of a divergence of interests. Two days before the confer-

Public domain

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

Jim Ryan

Paul Hampartsoumian

ence ITV had published a strategy paper calling for retransmission fees – annual payments from cable and satellite platforms to public service channels.

Ryan replied: “In terms of endorsing the strategy, we… mostly support the ITV strategy. Retransmission fees are not something we will be actively supporting.”

Ryan added that the UK system was very different to the US: “In the UK we are set up differently. Public service broadcasters are obviously privileged assets and, let’s face it, they are not ailing. So, as far as we are concerned, I think it works fine.”

Wark challenged: “What are you going to do about it?”

“Well, for us, this thing came up two days ago. I don’t see why it is necessary,” Ryan responded.

Wark came back: “You have a seat at the table. Are you going to try and change it? You should be building up your shareholding so you have a greater influence!”

Ryan said: “That is one way, but it is not the only way. I think [you] have a political debate. By the way, we are not the only ones, I am sure Sky is wondering about it.”

Wark persisted: “What’s the next step? You want to build up a portfolio?

You are not after ITV at the moment?”

“I don’t want to go into speculation.

So speculate away,” said Ryan.

He explained that Liberty’s core cable business was very much about triple play (internet, telephony, video/TV) to both residential and business customers.

“Virgin Media was a fantastic acquisition for us. In our business, we are talking about scale – absolutely key for cable.”

The hunt for content, by comparison, had its place, but was secondary: “We have always seen content as [an] ancillary investment… it’s the way the world is going, everyone wants to watch everything everywhere.

“To give you the figures, we are a $70bn-$80bn company (the enterprise value). Our content is around $300m of that – the equity investment made by Liberty so far. That is ancillary.

It always had to be there, he said, to “enhance” and enrich services to consumers. “There are so many places you can go [to get content], so for us the key thing is to help the consumer; they can go where they like, but if they can’t find it, that doesn’t help, so the key thing for us is to bring it together.”

But Wark interrupted: “You bought All3Media on the rebound from Chan-

WE HAVE ALWAYS SEEN CONTENT AS [AN] ANCILLARY INVESTMENT nel 5?” Ryan replied: “We did look [at Channel 5] but you won’t be surprised to hear that Channel 5 didn’t quite have it for us, it didn’t have the production assets that ITV has. That’s why we think ITV is relevant to our strategy.

“Two things we have got to get right.

One is perfect platforms for our consumers; to [present] all of this content that is flying around, we have to be able to provide it in the home and [out of home] – that’s a big piece of technology.

“Second thing: no point having all that if you haven’t got the content to hang off it.”

Going forward, he added, Liberty had “identified four main themes” for the business. These were content production, sports, OTT (Over The Top streamed services), and free-to-air programming.

“All3Media is a perfect investment for us: 70% [of its output] is supplied to its core [UK] market; it is very local.

For us, local content is very much the key thing.

“If you look at where we want to go, it is [to be] closest to the content… closest… to the rights, to put on to that technology.”

“We are actually a big indie, we are a collection of 14 indies… serving [various territories], cultures, languages… we are not affiliated to any studio. We

are very interested in local content opportunities.”

Wark snapped back: “How does The Only Way Is Essex go down on Discovery?”

“Well, I think that is a fair question,” Ryan responded. “These are long-term investments; increasingly, good-quality producers are hard to come by – having a long-term position in production is absolutely spot on.”

Asked if All3Media could run independently, in the Shine and 21st Century Fox model, he said: “Yes. Over time, [we’ll be] looking to see how to get content maybe more relevant to pay [services]. But… that federal structure is a very successful one. It attracts the talent.

So we are not going to touch that.”

Discovery is in talks to acquire 49% of the racing car group Formula One from European private equity company CVC Capital. Speaking sparingly about the deal, Ryan said: “Formula One… sport for a pay-TV company is a very good asset. First, it is appreciating in value; second, it maintains live [viewing].”

Having dipped into the sports market in the Netherlands and Belgium, “we would like to invest more, maybe get closer to some of the rights. Of course, we are looking at it – but I don’t have anything else to say.”

He confirmed that Liberty would look for other acquisitions: “If they fit one of those four branches. But the acquisition can be through partnerships, commercial relationships.”

The future structure of Liberty’s business, he said, was tied to the integration of platforms. “Clearly, the boundaries have shifted. In the old days, pipe was pipe, wireless was wireless; those are all changing. The next step from the distribution side, [is to] continue to build scale where appropriate”.

During the coffee break following the session, many delegates discussed the question of how being merely “ancillary” to Liberty’s cable business would play with UK producers.

They were more forgiving of how Ryan dealt with Wark’s “What’s your favourite All3Media programme?” question.

His reply – “Oh, I don’t know. I do like the kitchen ones” – was greeted with (restrained) merriment.

Session Six, ‘Give Me Liberty’, was produced by Alex Graham. Jim Ryan, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, Liberty Global, was interviewed by broad-

25

Power, Politics & The Media Session Seven

Steve Clarke tucks in to a smorgasbord of ideas about how rewards for IP holders could be more fairly divided

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ut a broadcaster, a writer of hit shows, a highprofile veteran agent and a successful producer on a panel to discuss the thorny question of rights ownership in a changing and consolidating content market, and a tense, sparky debate is assured.

So it was in a session entitled “Whose IP Is It Anyway?”, ably chaired by Alex Graham, whose old company, Wall To Wall, was bought by Time Warner seven long years ago.

The core of the discussion inevitably revolved around who should get what and whether the spoils – aka “the pie” – were growing at a time when US giants, flush with cheap money, had bought up much of the British TV production business.

To add more spice to this most contentious of issues, the ante had recently been raised by Danny Cohen, the BBC’s Director of Television, and David Abraham, Channel 4’s CEO.

26

Both men suggested that the terms of trade – the rules that govern the relationship between the public service broadcasters and producers over rights retention – needed to be rethought (see box on page 28).

Many people maintain that it is these agreements which have enabled UK plc to become the dynamic global production hub that US investors want to grab a share of.

The discussion kicked off with Graham asking Liz Warner – whose own company, Betty, was bought by Discovery in 2011 in the pay-TV firm’s first acquisition of an indie – if IP should be shared out more widely.

In other words, should writers, directors and on-screen talent all get a piece of the action?

“It’s not that they shouldn’t, it’s a question of how big is this pie,” she replied.

“People are deluded about how big the slice of the cake is to share around.

“I can’t talk in terms of drama, as we’re a factual producer [Betty’s suc-

cesses include Channel 4’s The Undateables]… There isn’t a large, large share, not lots to go round. The margin in factual production is negligible; without IP, the margin is tiny. We don’t make a lot of money from production.

The money comes from foreign sales after the show is produced.”

Setting up a production company is not for the faint-hearted, she said; it isn’t like running a coffee bar where a level of business is guaranteed.

Warner emphasised: “All the risk is taken by the individual. Why shouldn’t there be some gain at the end?… People shouldn’t be punished for success.

The UK creative sector has been an amazing success story.”

Graham then brought Channel 4’s Director of Commercial Affairs, Martin Baker, into the fray. He asked him why talent shouldn’t see more of the pie?

“They do… The point about net receipts is that they’re net after those costs… Writers, talent, freelance directors already receive residuals,” said Baker.

iStockPhoto.com

Who ate my slice?

Foster agreed with Elsley. He said: “In America producers don’t get back end… [In the UK] new writers are probably only going to get one or two jobs a year, so you’ve got to pay them really well.

“It’s very easy to get a deal for a successful writer like Bryan, but for newcomers it is not so easy.”

Graham wasn’t finished. If production margins were tight and broadcasters were trying to claw in some of that back end, surely the money wasn’t there?

“If the money is not there, where do you find the IP to produce?” answered

THE CAKE IS GETTING BIGGER FOR THE FIRST TIME THAT I CAN REMEMBER It might be brutal, but is that not the nature of the market? countered Graham.

“That is right, but you can also argue that at the mid- to entry-level of writers, where there is a very high turnover on big, long-running shows, there is actually a skills gap.

“This emanates from the fact that people find it very hard to stay in the profession,” said Elsley, who recently formed his own production company, Balloon Entertainment, with Harry Enfield (see box, page 29).

How do you solve that problem?

“Ultimately, it is about paying writers a little bit more. This, of course, does speak to profit and share,” said Elsley.

Next into the ring was Michael Foster, whose clients have included Chris Evans and Sacha Baron Cohen, and who plans to stand as an MP for Labour next May. He was not known as a shy and retiring agent, observed Graham. Do these writers just need better agents?

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

the agent. “Unless you encourage people to come into the business… To begin with, you’ve got to pay for the IP. Broad­ casters can’t broadcast, producers can’t produce, unless they’ve got content.

“Whether they invent the content themselves or commission it, you’ve got to pay for the right to be in the chain.”

Warner pointed out that in recent years “wages have gone up quite dramatically”. She insisted: “We’re paying a lot more for entry-point researchers, assistant producers. We’re all paying as much as we possibly can. The money is going out the door as fast as possible…

“Broadcasters want an increase in quality and better ideas, but they are not paying more for it.

“The only way we can cover our overheads and run stable businesses is to own our intellectual property.”

Zeroing in on the question of talent setting up their own production companies, Graham asked Warner for her view of this practice.

“We do co-produce with on-screen

talent. Good luck to them if they want to set up their own production companies.

“Let them come up with the ideas, find the pitch and feel the fear like we do, because it’s a terrifying thing to own your own production company.”

She suggested that in some cases these “production companies” were not fully functioning programme-­ makers but vehicles “to hold their property and then we work with them and provide all the production”.

Graham asked Foster if this was a clever way of talent getting a bigger

From left: Martin Baker, Bryan Elsley, Michael Foster and Liz Warner

Paul Hampartsoumian

So, said Graham, turning to Bryan Elsley, the writer of Channel 4’s Skins and Dates: it’s not a very big pie and you’re already getting a fair share.

What’s the problem?

“At the top end of the market there isn’t a problem,” acknowledged Elsley.

“Agents have been very assiduous in the past 10 years at carving out percentages of profits.

“At the bottom end of the writing profession, however, it is very chancy and hard to make a living in a profession that requires an enormous degree of commitment.”

slice of the pie. “Bryan protects his IP because it’s his IP... Most talent that has a production company are at the high level,” purred Foster, who once owned a company called The Rights House.

“All producers have a choice of who they want to work with. My best friend Liz can say that people have an unfair piece of the pie, but it cuts all ways – everything.

“The great thing about showbiz is that it is about collaboration and you don’t have to work with anybody.”

Calling for structures to protect entry-level writers, Foster then drew attention to what he claimed was the lousy remuneration received by directors working in British television.

“I’ve never understood why directors in TV – and I am not talking about factual, because it is a different kind of thing – get paid as little as they do,” he observed.

“If you go on set and you’re in a production that shoots for 40 days, you’ve got somebody in charge of a �

27

QUESTION The terms of trade – & ANSWER overtaken by events?

Q

A

Q A

Alex Graham: What is wrong with the current terms of trade?

Martin Baker: What is the definition of independent producers? A lot has changed in the shape of the market…

The distinction between our primary and secondary rights… In many ways, these things are blurred to the extent that you can’t really tell the difference between them...

We think it is appropriate to ask the question [about] the return we get if we have fully funded a show…

Is the way the terms are currently expressed the right way?

Q

Alex Graham: In terms of David’s characterisation of big and small companies, most of the big companies that he is concerned about are no longer qualifying independent producers. So they fall outside the terms of trade. And they are already negotiating different terms with Channel 4.

Terms that, by and large, privilege Channel 4 compared with the terms

28

ask, “Is there an SME sector here that would benefit from intervention?”…

It doesn’t seem particularly illogical to say that you’d start based on size, as opposed to other criteria.

Liz Warner: How do you make yourselves continually attractive to the other end of the sector, which is still delivering some of Channel 4’s biggest hits – consolidated indies such as Studio Lambert (owned by Liberty/ Discovery) still doing Gogglebox; Betty (owned by Discovery) doing Undateables; Love (controlled by BSkyB) doing Benefits Street.

Martin Baker: They are all from very mature businesses, quite capable of looking after themselves and not lacking in self-confidence.

Bryan Elsley: I think what would have been great for me would have been to get terms of trade on Skins, which ran for seven seasons on E4, often attracting audiences bigger than the mainstream channel. I wouldn’t say it was a bad deal, but it wasn’t terms of trade.

Martin Baker: Terms of trade apply to the PSB channels, but not E4.

Bryan Elsley: They have significant consequences for writers, for example. Writing for E4 effectively halves your income.

John McVay (CEO of Pact, speaking from the floor): We do have an agreement with Channel 4 for terms of trade that applies to E4.

It’s not been implemented because we were in dispute about a number of other things…

It is spurious nonsense that the terms of trade have not been looked at for 12 years. They were looked at in 2006 by Ofcom, and in 2008 and 2010. This current review will be my fourth time asking if the terms of trade are fit for purpose.

Martin Baker: It’s certainly true that Ofcom has looked at the market since 2002… There’s been an incredible amount of change. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to say it’s a moment in time when we should say to Ofcom, “You need to have a look.”

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Martin Baker

Paul Hampartsoumian

Alex Graham: The BBC’s Danny Cohen thinks that the terms of trade should not be the same for a global studio as they are for a small independent company.

In his recent MacTaggart Lecture, David Abraham said that “smaller companies need a special level of support and protection when participating in a market characterised by big players”.

How would Channel 4 like to see the system change?

Martin Baker: It’s been 12 years since the ITC ran its inquiry into the UK programme supply market and whether there should be intervention and, if so, in what form. David was saying it is time to ask the question again. Should [the terms of trade system] continue… and, if it does, what job should it now do looking forward?

And, specifically… [asking what role the system] has in sustaining public service broadcasting. Ofcom’s duty is to defend and maintain PSB.

of trade. Therefore a change in the terms of trade is likely to damage the very small companies that David said he thinks need to be protected.

That’s the bit I don’t get.

Martin Baker: First of all, the definition now – whether you are an independent producer or not in your ownership structure – depends on who you’ve chosen to sell to. As we sit here today, Endemol is a qualifying independent and All3Media is not.

If that were sustained for any period of time, you’d have to say that it is entirely arbitrary. The distinction between these two is based on what? So it is time to look at it.

If you look at the history of state intervention in markets, it is a perfectly normal thing for the state to

A

BROADCASTERS WANT AN INCREASE IN QUALITY AND BETTER IDEAS, BUT THEY ARE NOT PAYING MORE FOR IT

A A A A A

A

Liz Warner � crew of 80 people, who’s shooting and getting it all done.

“They’re spending £60,000-£80,000 a day and they get paid most probably less than the cameraman.

“How many times do you look at something and say, ‘That is so beautifully shot, cast and lit.’ It’s the producer and the director.”

Baker suggested that the situation was more complex than Foster implied.

“In the past couple of years all broadcasters, through Pact, have recognised that freelance directors have rights, and there is a collective way of responding to that,” he said.

“The structures exist, whether or not you think the proportions are correct.”

Foster pointed out that in the US television directors tend to get a percentage of the back end.

Graham highlighted the fact that every show was different. In some, the writer was at the heart of the process, while in others the acting talent drove the commercial market.

Did you end up with an endless spiral of demands, he worried, such that the pie was divvied up in so many pieces that the returns were not worthwhile?

Elsley’s answer was worth listening to. “For quite a few decades there has been a centre line of arrangements,” he said. “There was a mainstream way of making TV. “Now, for the first time that I can remember, there is significant growth

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

in the market. There is a significant international presence, both incoming and outgoing.

“I think that’s why we’re discussing this. The IP is subject to change and that centre line is gradually disappearing, especially with the new platforms and new ways of doing things, and with significant investment by US companies.

“You can argue that is a good thing because it means we will become more market-led.

“The problem with that is that the US market has a very firm centre line.

It is not a free market.

“It is very, very prescriptive in how it operates. At the moment, a clash is going on in terms of how that is going to work and how IP is to be dealt with.

“In terms of cutting this cake, the cake is getting bigger for the first time that I can remember.”

Michael Foster agreed. The other panellists remained silent. Graham had opened a can of worms. Expect this debate to continue in what used to be called smoke-filled rooms.

Session Seven, ‘Whose IP Is It Anyway?’, was produced by Stuart Cosgrove and chaired by Alex Graham, Director, Big Eck Consulting. The panellists were: Martin Baker, Director of Commercial Affairs, Channel 4; Bryan Elsley, Writer of Skins and Dates; Michael Foster, Agent; and Liz Warner, Chief Executive, Betty.

Bryan Elsley

All pictures: Paul Hampartsoumian

Why a writer went in to production

THE MARGIN IN FACTUAL PRODUCTION IS NEGLIGIBLE… THE MONEY COMES FROM FOREIGN SALES AFTER THE SHOW IS PRODUCED

Q

Alex Graham: Was it creative control that made you want to become a writer-producer or did you want a bigger slice of the pie?

Bryan Elsley: To some extent, it was financial and, to some extent, it was to do with the ownership of the intellectual property that was created.

But much more, it was to do with being able to choose the people to work with and having the freedom to make those choices. Of course, you never have complete freedom: broadcasters need to have their say… I wanted more freedom of choice.

A

Q A

Alex Graham: Has setting up Balloon produced significant benefits for you?

Bryan Elsley: I think it would be hard to find any managing director of any production company who could say 100% it’s all a good thing, because it is incredibly stressful and difficult.

Sometimes you wonder why you do it and think it would be much easier to go and work for Andy Harries. But, in general terms, it is incredibly satisfying.

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BBC Strategy Director James Purnell is keeping his powder dry until Charter hostilities open in earnest, writes Matthew Bell Power, Politics & The Media Session Eight

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ith the recent appointment of Rona Fairhead as Chair of the BBC Trust, potential licence-fee decriminalisation and pressure building on Charter renewal, James Purnell had plenty of questions to answer on the “Future of the BBC”.

But despite the best efforts of writer and broadcaster Steve Hewlett, who chaired the session, the corporation’s Director of Strategy and Digital managed to sidestep most of them during a good-natured, one-to-one interview.

On the morning of the RTS’s London conference Fairhead had attended a pre-appointment hearing before MPs on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee.

She offered support for the present funding model: “I think there are some very, very significant benefits of the licence fee. It ensures independence, a universal service for a universal fee, which is very important and ensures creative freedom.”

Fairhead, however, was less enthusiastic in her backing for the BBC Trust: “If it continues in its current form, for me, that’s fine, if it changes – that’s fine.”

Picking up on Fairhead’s comments about the licence fee, Purnell also offered his support, citing BBC audience data: “Support for the licence fee is significantly up in this Charter period [and] perceptions of value for money is also significantly up.”

“We think the licence fee is the right way of funding the BBC,” he added, “but we’re not going to pre-empt the Charter review and start saying we know all the answers.”

Purnell argued that the licence fee was the basis for a BBC that “is universal, independent, which can provide

30

Threats to the good value for money because of the huge economies of scale that come from the licence fee, and which has got creativity and distinctiveness at its core.

“People sometimes say about the licence fee that, like democracy, it’s the least bad way of funding the BBC – we actually don’t agree with that.”

Nevertheless, Purnell admitted that the funding mechanism had been coming under more pressure. “It used to be very clear every five or 10 years that we’d have this discussion, but it feels more year to year now,” he said.

“There is a little bit more of a sword of Damocles over us than there was.”

Purnell, though, was quick to exonerate the current administration from blame for creating this uncertainty.

“The Government has gone about it very properly, in terms of saying that Charter renewal will start after the general election,” he said.

Culture Secretary Sajid Javid was due to speak later in the afternoon at the RTS conference, but he had already

trailed his announcement that the Government’s review of decriminalising non-payment of the licence fee would take place earlier than expected.

In briefings to the media the night before the conference, Javid said: “I don’t want to pre-empt the Charter review. I want to ensure that, when it begins, it has a solid evidence base on which to draw.”

Purnell revealed that the BBC was “very happy with the review being brought forward”.

He added that Fairhead had been “very clear” on the corporation’s view on decriminalisation at the select committee that morning.

“She was saying that it’s clearly important to have a deterrent that works – both in terms of getting everybody to pay, so there’s no free riding, and that works for the criminal justice system, but also that allows us to collect the money,” he said.

The review is promoted by the Government’s belief that the system isn’t working. It says that 10% of the cases

THERE IS A LITTLE BIT MORE OF A SWORD OF DAMOCLES OVER US THAN THERE WAS

Steve Hewlett (left) and James Purnell

BBC in magistrates’ courts involve licencefee evasion.

It is estimated that around 5.5% of households avoid paying, but could this figure rise if the offence was decriminalised, asked Hewlett.

“If there are any consequences on BBC income, either the Charter needs to reflect that, and we provide fewer services, or the other sources of funding have to go up,” argued Purnell.

Changing tack, Hewlett asked if the BBC was looking at “alternative or additional sources of funding”, and added a suggestion: “What about making iPlayer access conditional on having a TV licence?”

“I can exclusively today reveal that we are looking at advertising, [and] we are looking at download-to-own and subscription [with] UKTV and BBC Store,” replied Purnell.

BBC Store is a new online commercial service that will allow users to buy new programmes and some older content from the corporation’s archives on a download-to-own basis.

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

“Wouldn’t it be easier, relatively, to make iPlayer access conditional… you could maybe exclude news, which you might say should be universally available, come what may. But… to download programmes… at no additional cost, you need [to have a licence]?” persisted Hewlett.

Purnell pointed out that Director-­ General Tony Hall had promised to personalise the iPlayer in his speech in October last year at the BBC’s London Radio Theatre, when he set out his vision for the corporation.

“That will clearly involve people having to sign in to BBC services.

We’ve also said that we will want to look at modernising the licence fee, because we don’t think there should be a different way of treating people who watch programmes on catch-up and live,” he explained.

Turning to BBC cutbacks, Hewlett noted that the Director-General had “talked about the consequences of the last settlement, as he now understands it, being a 26% cut in UK services”.

If this was the case, he suggested, the BBC could not continue to offer the same level of service – could it?

Purnell agreed but said that simply cutting services across the board was not the answer. “We formed the view that you couldn’t just take another x% from everywhere, because it was getting too close to the bone.

“Things such as drama were being cut back in a way that was dangerous if we wanted to remain world class. We had to make some big decisions and that’s why we decided to close BBC Three,” he concluded.

Session Eight, “The Future of the BBC”, was produced by Martin Stott. James Purnell, BBC Director of Strategy and Digital, was interviewed by writer, broadcaster and media consultant Steve Hewlett.

QUESTION & ANSWER Q

Steve Hewlett: [At the select committee this morning] Rona Fairhead said that she would be “very surprised” if the [BBC’s] system of governance remained the same… She went on to say that it was not her role to defend the current structure. What’s your view?

James Purnell: We think that, as the regulatee, we need to be a bit circumspect in the debate… Our focus for the next few years, as [Rona] also said, is making sure that the current system works effectively.

A

Q A Q

Steve Hewlett: Is it your perception, personally, that the Trust is bust?

James Purnell: Our job is to make the system work.

Steve Hewlett: Some things went quite badly wrong… the executive pay-offs, the [failed £100m IT project] Digital Media Initiative…

What’s your diagnosis… was it the people, was it the system?

James Purnell: [I don’t] want to go back into what happened in the past.

A

Q A

Steve Hewlett: Well it might help us to fix it.

James Purnell: Well, you can look at what we said in terms of the review, and both sides thought there had been a blurring of responsibilities and that meant there was a lack of clarity in terms of execution sometimes. The best way of fixing that was to separate out those roles much more.

Q

Steve Hewlett: Is it your view that if that is fixed in the way you say, [the Trust] is sustainable?

James Purnell: It’s not for me to reply to that.

A

31

Voyage of Discovery

D

iscovery has become the world’s number one pay-TV operator by the inventive use of popular documentaries and factual entertainment formats – but “in the world of the future, non-scripted content may not be enough”.

So said JB Perrette, the London-based President of Discovery Networks International (DNI), a key division of Discovery Communications.

He oversees the operations and strategic development of DNI across 224 countries and 46 channel brands in 45 languages.

The division celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, and the past two years have seen a big upsurge in its investment programme. Owning more intellectual property rights, said Perrette, “broadly, that’s the North star” – alongside strong, growing channel brands.

32

Power, Politics & The Media Session Nine

JB Perrette explains the thinking behind Discovery’s investment in sports networks and UK indie producers.

Maggie Brown reports Since he arrived this summer, he has: finalised the £500m acquisition of All3Media in a joint venture with Liberty Global (itself a Discovery shareholder); increased its stake in veteran sports channel Eurosport to 51%; and taken a searching look at buying Channel 5.

So, how will the UK’s largest indepen­ dent, All3Media, fit into Discovery? It is on a different scale to Discovery’s previous, and rather more modest, purchases of Raw TV and Betty.

It comes down to future proofing, said Perrette: “We might need to diversify into different types of content.

What we like about All3Media is great content.

“Great story-telling will be the differentiator across all these different devices, so owning IP is a key for us.

Having a stakeholding in a company that also does scripted is valuable to us.”

He added: “Look, we are interested in a great team, incredible creatives.

“We believe in letting them operate as they do, running them as independent companies. And we will continue to invest.”

Perrette continued: “I don’t mean necessarily through additional acquisitions. The great team there, with the

Paul Hampartsoumian

right support and financing, can to do more creative work...

“We are going to nurture them as much as possible. It will be an independent company run by an independent board. Selectively, when it makes sense, we will do things together.”

His favourite All3Media Show, he said, was Gogglebox, which exemplified how Discovery approached local hits.

“A show [that is] working really well here, could it do well [elsewhere]?

Could it travel to the US? Maybe not Latin America. This is what the creative team does every day.”

Perrette’s interviewer, Shine CEO Alex Mahon, turned the conversation to David Abraham’s controversial MacTaggart Lecture, which had raised the question of reforming rights ownership.

She said: “We think of Discovery as one of the more aggressive rights acquirers. Now you own a very big independent. How are you going to square that circle. Isn’t there an inherent conflict?”

Perrette answered: “From a Discovery perspective, we will always be looking for rights, global rights; we need multi-screen rights, rights everywhere in the world.”

As for the fear of US takeovers undermining British broadcasting, he said: “I’m a basic thinker. At the end of the day, if more people are coming to invest in your community, you’re doing something incredibly well.

You’re now seeing capital flow into it.

“The beauty of creative industries is that they are very dynamic. Ultimately, if people don’t like a certain regime, they go off and start their own [company]. It is a very dynamic culture.”

Mahon noted that Discovery’s historic strength was that no one show was bigger than the channel – the opposite to the Breaking Bad phenomenon.

Could the Discovery brand survive as a genre-­based player, she asked.

Perrette countered: “Your average viewer wants to have infinite choice.

Choosing individual shows might be true of the highest scripted content, but [for] a lot of content, people still want someone to guide them. Brands become ever more important, not less.”

How could Discovery achieve that in each individual country?

“It has morphed,” said Perrette. “We started out heavily developing content for the US networks, taking that around the world. That was the first pillar of Discovery’s existence.

“Increasingly, now, the second pillar

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

is US-to-global, UK-to-global [content], from our international production team created here in London and launched three years ago. And that includes taking content back to the US. “So we have series, franchises [such as] Deadliest Catch. It is one of our biggest franchises ever; wherever we screen it, it works. We don’t have to do much tinkering with it, because it’s about the male pursuit of adventure.

team, figuring out what works best with content that comes out of the pipeline – US and local – to maximise audiences.”

Eurosport, he said, fitted into the non-fiction Discovery brand because it offered the potential for big live audiences. Therefore, “it will secure more value advertising”.

Perrette said that revenue was split 50:50 between subscription and adver-

[DNI] IS ABOUT THE [VARIOUS NATIONAL] TEAMS FIGURING OUT WHAT WORKS BEST WITH CONTENT THAT COMES OUT OF THE PIPELINE – US AND LOCAL – TO MAXIMISE AUDIENCES “Even if they are American shows, we think of them as having universal themes, great characters, great stories.”

Perrette conceded that the TV market is getting tougher: “Many view it as a dangerous landscape, but [we] continue to believe that if you invest in content, you can find the viewer.

“We had a 4% audience share of pay-TV in the US six or seven years ago, when we were investing $400m a year.

“We now invest $2bn in content and we have an 11% share.

“Those are US numbers, but that has been done, frankly, in all of our markets around the world.

“We have a brand, ID [Investigation Discovery]. It didn’t exist seven years ago. We created it, focused on non-fiction crime/suspense and we now have the number-four network for women in the US, in 75 million homes around the world and we are going to take it to 100 million in the next couple of years…

“So, for us, it is still about being creative, being able to develop brands, even in a fragmented world. We believe every market is different. What might work in the UK might be a little bit different to what works in Germany.

“So we believe in tailoring brand content as well with each of the local teams, and allowing a network to programme as it thinks meets the audience needs of that culture.

“So we have Discovery Kids in Latin America, which is not available in the US. In Eastern Europe, Discovery started a second, edgier ID channel, but toned down ID for Asia.

“This really is about the Brazilian team, the Turkish team, the German

tising, but in the mature Western European market there was a regional policy of offering free-to-air Discovery channels, too.

He stressed a sense of kinship with Eurosport. “The Discovery team decided early on that, instead of taking money out of the business, they would reinvest every dollar back into the business and, early on, in 1989, when Sky launched here in the UK, Discovery was one of the first channels, and Eurosport and Discovery both launched together.”

Perrette explained: “We obviously will invest in the Eurosport brand.

It has an incredible history: a pan-­ European channel, a strong brand, operating traditionally in the second tier of sports rights.

“Our strategy will be more aggressive. So, for us, the game will be strengthening selectively.”

For example, Discovery and Liberty Global have opened talks to jointly buy a stake in Formula One racing.

Perrette ended his first RTS appearance with an observation on one consequence of soaring tablet use that he feels is rightly spooking the TV industry.

“What doesn’t get talked about – but which is of a lot of concern [is that] the ratings we use to define TV are still in the horse and buggy age. We are making decisions on data that isn’t accurate.”

Session Nine, “Keynote – JB Perrette – The Voyage of Discovery”, was produced

by Alan Clements. JB Perrette, President, Discovery Networks International, was interviewed by Alex Mahon, CEO, Shine Group.

33

Reviews aplenty but few decisions before the election

W

e’re gathered here today to talk about “Power, Politics & The Media”. And I have a very clear view of what power politicians should have over the media.

As little as possible.

Politicians and government have no business controlling television. What we do have is a role to play in making the industry work for viewers.

That’s why we’re going to look at whether the time is right to remove Section 73 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, which could allow PSBs to invest more in high-quality content.

And that’s why, in the coming weeks, I will be taking a long, hard look at the balance of payments [retransmission fees] between broadcasters and platforms. In our “Connectivity, Consumers & Content” strategy paper, we set out our ambition for “zero net fees”, and a lot of progress has been made towards reaching that goal.

But I still want to know whether the amount of regulation around these transactions is really necessary.

And, of course, any changes here could have implications for other parts of the industry, such as EPG prominence. But, as you know, we’re also going to be consulting on that issue shortly.

This is a complex area and it’s a high-stakes game for everyone. But that’s not going to stop me asking questions whenever I see a highly regulated market.

We need a regulatory system that can meet the demands of a world that has changed – and continues to

34

Power, Politics & The Media Session Ten

In his first major appearance as Culture Secretary, Sajid Javid outlined the many areas where he believes regulation is in need of review change – in so many different ways.

Just look at the way Britain consumes television in 2014.

Almost a quarter of us have watched a TV programme on our mobile phone.

Twice as many have used an ­on-­ demand service in the past year.

Seventy per cent of young people watch television online, and half their media consumption is done on something other than a TV. Half a million households watch television through

THE SIZE OF THE BBC AND THE NUMBER OF AREAS IT IS INVOLVED IN SUGGEST THERE ARE MORE AREAS WHERE SAVINGS CAN BE MADE

catch-up services alone. And, for many young people, traditional linear viewing is a thing of the past. So much so that, last month, “binge-watch” was added to the Oxford English Dictionary.

But all this change doesn’t mean that television as we once knew it is dead.

As John Plunkett and Mark Sweney have pointed out, while Kevin Spacey was using his MacTaggart Lecture to deliver an elegy for traditional TV, more than 12 million Britons were tuning in to broadcasts of Emmerdale and EastEnders.

The vast majority of viewing is still linear, in the region of 90%. In fact, research published last year predicted that the convergence of technology might actually cause an increase in linear viewing.

Viewers still want to share stories and experiences, they just want those stories and experiences delivered in a way that suits their needs.

That means new platforms and new devices, something that presents new challenges in terms of spectrum.

Almost a century ago, Lord Reith wrote of broadcasting that, “It does not matter how many thousands may be listening; there is always enough for others.”

In 2014 that’s not necessarily true.

Spectrum is a finite resource. With more voices and more pictures and more data clamouring for space on our limited airwaves, we have to make decisions about how that space is used.

At the top of that list is the future use of the spectrum used by terrestrial TV; in particular, the frequencies below 700MHz. It’s an issue the ITU’s World Radiocommunication Conference will be looking at next year.

And I know many of you are worried

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

behind the scenes, the BBC is home to some of broadcasting’s most talented, hardest-working individuals.

Together, they create exceptional content that is enjoyed across Britain and around the world. Every week the average Briton spends 18.5 hours in the company of Auntie.

The number of TV channels has exploded in the past decade, but the

corporation’s audience share has only fallen by a few percentage points.

Through television, radio and online, the BBC regularly reaches 96% of people in the UK and a quarter of a billion more in 200 countries worldwide.

It’s a massive institution, it’s a vital institution, and it deserves the very best leadership. That’s why I was absolutely delighted to recommend Rona �

WE ARE LIVING IN A GOLDEN AGE FOR BRITISH TELEVISION… THE QUALITY OF PROGRAMMING IS REACHING NEW HEIGHTS

Paul Hampartsoumian

about the prospect of co-primary allocation potentially putting our digital terrestrial network at risk.

There’s still well over a year to go until the conference, so I can’t say too much about the details of the position the UK government will take. However, I agree with the core findings of Pascal Lamy’s recent report and I’m determined that we should not undermine our much-valued DTT network.

It’s going to take a lot to convince me that there is a case for making the lower UHF bands co-primary.

The challenges we face aren’t solely technological. The commercial landscape is shifting, too, particularly around the indies. The independent production sector has enjoyed explosive growth over the past decade, supported by government intervention on “qualifying indies” and the terms of trade.

But times are changing. High-profile buyouts have already led to the rise of the “super-indies”. Foreign investment is pouring into the sector. And the changes to the BBC’s production function proposed in Tony Hall’s recent speech could also have a significant impact.

I want the success of the independent sector to continue. I want to see talented entrepreneurs setting up production businesses. And I want to see those businesses flourishing on the global stage.

To ensure that happens in a changing world, we may have to review the terms of trade and the related legislation on qualifying indies.

That’s something we’ll be looking at once Ofcom has published its PSB review next summer.

Alongside changes in technology and business, there’s also the issue of training – of equipping talented people with the skills they need to compete in the 21st century.

I know that’s the subject of the next discussion, so let me take this opportunity to highlight the Sky Academy and 4Talent programmes run by Sky and Channel 4, respectively. Both aim to create new opportunities for young people, and both should be applauded for their efforts.

We’ve also just seen a major change at the BBC Trust. The past few years have been tough for the BBC. Too often, the corporation has been making the headlines instead of just reporting on them.

But let’s not lose sight of how successful it can be. Both on-air and

35

QUESTION & ANSWER Q A

Rob Woodward: Do you think the BBC Trust is the optimum regulator for the BBC? Sajid Javid MP: It’s a big issue and, rightly, it needs to be looked at through the Charter review process.

It’s fair to say that the BBC Trust has had a number of issues these last few years. No one can put their head up and say it’s worked perfectly. We need to look at it and see if there is a better way… Looking at governance will be part of the

industry grow. They were given this exception that they could retransmit without paying any fees.

At that time it made a lot of sense…

Now that we have a much bigger, more mature industry, the question is, “Is it still required?”...

It’s also linked in with other rules…

The PSBs do get things in return [for making their channels available free on cable and satellite platforms] such as EPG prominence… The two things go together. If you’re going to look at them, you have to look at them together.

minister because I am brown. I found that offensive…

In terms of diversity at the BBC, there could be more… The BBC recognises that more can be done. Tony Hall has made a big issue of this, and rightly so… It is something we closely monitor.

In my speech I mentioned Sky and Channel 4 as two other organisations that take this very seriously.

Many others do, but this is an important space in the media industry and I am glad so many are taking it seriously.

Q A

Q

Rob Woodward: What do you watch on TV? Sajid Javid MP: The last BBC programme I watched was

Ade Rawcliffe, Diversity and Talent Manager, Channel 4: Lenny Henry is calling for ring-fenced funding for ethnic-minority topics and companies. What is your view?

Sajid Javid MP: I’ve met Lenny Henry and discussed this and other ideas. Ed Vaizey has met him and others to discuss this and other issues…

I am pleased that ideas are being suggested. It’s a new way of thinking, but to pursue that you have to look at the evidence carefully and at whatever the potential cultural impact could be. It’s not something this Government is pursuing. But we are working on other initiatives with the industry… We will keep this area under review and see what can be done in the future, if required.

Rob Woodward (left) and Sajid Javid MP Charter review process, which will begin after the election.

Q

Rob Woodward: In your speech you refer to Section 73 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act – that’s retransmission fees. The ITV-sponsored report published earlier this week sets out a very strong case for retransmission fees.

Earlier today here, Jim Ryan expressed a different view. BSkyB is on record as saying that, if retransmission fees are adopted, you’re effectively asking consumers to pay twice. What is your position?

Sajid Javid MP: In my speech I talked about the relationship between PSBs and pay channels.

The rules that are in place at the moment… were set in a different age and had a purpose at that time…

They were introduced in the 1980s, when we wanted to help the cable

A

36

Doctor Who on Saturday. I love Game of Thrones. It’s great that it is made in Britain. I like The X Factor. Being a politician, I watch all of the PSBs’ news programmes and Sky News.

Q

Jane Martinson, Head of Media, The Guardian: Rona Fairhead was asked this morning if she was the preferred candidate because she was a woman. She was also asked whether she thought the BBC was diverse enough. What is your response to those two questions?

Sajid Javid MP: Unfortunately, I am not surprised that someone asked her if she is the preferred candidate because she is a woman.

If it was me, I’d find that question quite offensive. Her CV speaks for itself… The quality of her achievements is quite incredible. It reminds me of when I first became a minister, people asked me if I was made a

A

Paul Hampartsoumian

A

Q

John Plunkett, The Guardian: You said the BBC can and must make more efficiency savings, but the BBC has said it has come to the end of the road in terms of the efficiencies it can make and not affect existing services.

Can you give examples of where savings can be made and are you prepared to see the loss of services?

Sajid Javid MP: The size of the organisation and the number of areas it is involved in suggest there are more areas where savings can be made. It is not for me to decide where those savings must come from. That is up to everyone involved in running the organisation.

As someone who thinks hard about the burdens families face when they have to pay their licence fee, it is right that we ask these kinds of challenging questions.

A

� Fairhead as our preferred candidate to be the new Chair of the BBC Trust.

Rona’s arrival provides the opportunity for fresh thinking at the top of the BBC Trust, a new set of eyes and a new head full of ideas.

It was absolutely right that this Government took the bold step of freezing the licence fee in 2010. It provided the BBC with a stable funding profile for seven years and gave fee-payers some much-needed certainty; £145.50 is a lot of money for most people to find each year.

Thanks to our long-term economic plan, the British economy is growing again after the deepest recession in almost 100 years. But the hard-working families who fund the BBC are still finding savings wherever they can.

While I support the work Tony Hall is doing to find savings across the corporation, I believe more can and must be done to make the BBC more efficient.

For example, not long after I became Secretary of State I travelled to Jersey to meet the Commonwealth Games baton. What I found odd was the number of people representing one broadcaster. The BBC had 10 staff in attendance, three of them reporters. Is that really justifiable?

Of course, it’s difficult to talk about the licence fee without asking questions about the enforcement regime behind it.

In 2012/13, almost 200,000 people ended up in court accused of not buy-

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

WHEN OVER 10% OF MAGISTRATES’ COURT CASES CONCERN LICENCE NONPAYMENT, YOU HAVE TO ASK WHETHER THE CURRENT SYSTEM IS REALLY WORKING

ing a TV licence.

More than 50 were sent to prison.

When over 10% of Magistrates’ Court cases concern this one offence, you have to ask whether the current system is really working.

The Government is committed to launching a review of decriminalisation once the Deregulation Bill receives royal assent. But we can’t afford to wait that long. This needs to begin now.

Very shortly, I will be publishing the terms of reference for a review of TV licence enforcement. I expect it to begin taking evidence in the autumn, and to conclude early in the next parliament.

I don’t want to pre-empt the Charter review. I want to ensure that, when it begins, it has a solid evidence base on which to draw.

Whether at the BBC or in the commercial world, television is an industry

in which the balance of power is constantly shifting – where the number of players in the hunt for quality content has never been greater and where competition at all levels has never been fiercer.

But one thing is not in any doubt.

We are living in a golden age for British television. It is a time in which the quality of programming is reaching new heights and innovative platforms are reaching new audiences.

And whether in terms of economic impact or overseas ratings, all the facts show that the people in this room today are among the world’s best and most successful.

I want that success to continue, but I know it’s not going to be easy. After all, technology is changing. Audiences are changing.

The television industry is changing.

And, if we want to best support you in the years ahead, the way government works with the media has to change, too.

Some of you will welcome that, others will be worried about what it may mean for you and your organisations. So let me reassure you. This Government is listening to you, working with you, and delivering for you.

The business of broadcasting may be in flux, but our determination to support our world-beating television industry is not going to change.

This is an edited version of the speech made by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP, to the RTS London Conference.

He was interviewed by Rob Woodward, CEO of STV Group. The session was produced by Sue Robertson. You can watch the speech in full at www.rts.org.uk.

37

Power, Politics & The Media Session Eleven

Skills gap:

Invest today in tomorrow’s talent

Jeremy Darroch and Tony Hall find common ground in promoting ways to nurture the next generation of TV professionals, says Matthew Bell

T

he final session of the day brought to the stage two of the biggest players in British television to discuss how to recruit the best people to the sector.

BSkyB Chief Executive Jeremy Darroch and BBC Director-General Tony Hall buried their differences during a friendly discussion and reached agreement on the importance of nurturing the next generation of TV talent.

Lorraine Heggessey, former chief of TalkbackThames and ex-BBC One controller, who chaired the session “Enabling the Next Generation”, outlined the challenge TV faces: “Technology is rapidly changing our business.

Consumers want their programming on the go – they want it whenever, wherever – and we are now competing for the brightest and the best [with companies] in the technological field.” “[We have to bring] the right talent into Sky and create an environment and culture for them to thrive,” said Darroch. “This is right at the top of my personal agenda and it has to be led from the top because, unless it is, it’s never going to course through the business.”

Hall emphasised the importance of searching more broadly for new recruits. “I’m very keen to open up the BBC to wherever the talent might be.

It’s all very well if you have parents who have deep pockets or parents

38

Jeremy Darroch (left) and Tony Hall with connections or you go to the right Oxbridge or Russell Group university, but as I go around the BBC I’m struck by how talent comes in all different forms. It’s up to us to stand up for equality of opportunity,” he said.

Since returning to the BBC in April 2013 as Director-General, Hall has backed apprenticeships as a means of widening the recruitment net.

He committed the BBC to a 1% quota of its public-service workforce being made up of apprentices by the end of 2016 – in fact, this target has been met two years early. When he arrived, there were 37 apprentices employed at the BBC; now there are 180 and he said the number would rise still higher.

“Apprenticeships matter because it’s paid employment, it’s paid skills; it’s actually finding people from all sorts of backgrounds to come and work at our organisation,” Hall explained.

Darroch said that some businesses

narrowed their recruitment to elite universities, which meant that they “self-select their talent pool”. He added: “I reject that [approach]. We need to be broad and sweep the corners and we’ll get much richer, more diverse talent.

Everything I’ve learned over the years is that you will then build a better, more innovative organisation.”

Heggessey asked if moving to “university-blind applications” (that is, removing the name of the university the applicant attended from their application) would help broaden recruitment.

Describing this suggestion as an “over-engineered idea”, Darroch added: “It’s just not that complicated – you’ve got to decide what you want to do and then create the culture in the organisation to go and do that.”

One recent initiative Darroch was keen to discuss was Sky Skills Studios, a small studio built by the broadcaster

QUESTION & ANSWER Tony Hall on… decriminalisation

BBC

Q A

Lorraine Heggessey: Do you support decriminalising licence-fee evasion?

Tony Hall: It’s really good that we’re going to get data on how many cases [and] how long they take… The question is how can we ensure that we don’t lose the money without people going to jail… That’s part of the Charter [renewal] process – because it’s roughly £35m for every 1% of people who evade the licence fee.

Lorraine Heggessey: Do you believe people should go to jail for not paying?

Tony Hall: No, of course I don’t. But… our evasion rate is 5.3%-5.4%; for utilities it’s 10%.

We’ve got to work this through.

Q A

The BBC runs a career shadowing scheme open to all freelancers at its Osterley HQ that introduces 12,000 schoolchildren every year to making television.

The scheme is open to students from eight to 18, who have the opportunity to work with the latest technology, including cameras, green screen and editing tools. “They create their own news report, linked to the curriculum, on a topic such as cyber-bullying,” explained Darroch. “Hopefully, they leave with a much better impression of [what it takes to] create media.”

“There are also some really important benefits for us,” he continued.

“What do we know about kids? They all start talking to their friends and families and we get little advocates for Sky – and who knows where that will lead?

“We’ll have to find out in 10 years’ time whether they feel motivated and open to join an organisation like Sky. I think that will be the case.”

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

Darroch revealed that Sky plans to add more skills studios around the country, enabling up to 50,000 students a year to learn about TV. Turning to how broadcasters can compete for the best talent with tech giants such as Facebook and Apple, Heggessey said: “[Google chief] Eric Schmidt talked at Edinburgh a couple of years ago about a skills deficit in the UK, saying we teach our kids in school how to use software but not how to make it. Are you finding there is a skills gap?”

“Young people should all understand coding and understand the importance of it. I think this is being addressed now in terms of changes to the curriculum,” replied Hall.

“I think that if you wait for the system to change [in regard to coding], it’ll be too slow, so you’ve got to do more yourself,” said Darroch. “Sky has its own software company now, with �

Q

BBC

Paul Hampartsoumian

Jeremy Darroch on… retransmission fees Lorraine Heggessey: Both ITV and Channel 4 have called for Sky [and Virgin] to pay a fee to air their channels.

Earlier today, Culture Secretary Sajid Javid said he would examine whether a “free market” approach to fees should be adopted in the UK. Jeremy Darroch: I’m really supportive of deregulation… and I think it’s really encouraging that the Secretary of State recognises that this is a complex issue.

For deregulation to work, it needs to work both ways and look at the entirety of the problem, not just [allow] the commercial public service broadcasters to look across the pond [to the US, where free-toair broadcasters receive fees from cable operators] and cherry pick bits and pieces of an entirely different system.

[We also need to took at]…

EPG prominence, which is an incredibly valuable benefit.

A

39

QUESTION & ANSWER Q

Henry Mance, FT: Jeremy, do you think the British broadcasting industry would be more vibrant if the BBC was smaller?”

Jeremy Darroch: I think it’s pretty vibrant today. One of the great things about the sector we’re in is that there’s huge investment and innovation…

Where we disagree with the BBC is where they [enter] commercial areas – that’s pretty well known. The big [challenge] is… [for] the commercial broadcasters, pay or otherwise, to serve the market more broadly. The big opportunity here is to grow the pie – still only 50% of people in the UK choose to pay for some form of TV.

A

Q

Jane Martinson, Head of Media, The Guardian: Rona Fairhead at the select committee [this morning] was very clear about her role and said that you, Tony, will be the face of the BBC and she will be the face of the Trust.

How do you see that relationship working until Charter

40

review? She also said that the Lonely Planet deal [BBC Worldwide bought and then sold – at a loss – the travel-guide business] was a bad thing. Do you see any ambitions, in terms of global growth of the BBC, being curtailed by the new Trust Chair?

Tony Hall: We’ve had quite a long conversation… and we saw eye to eye on many things.

She brings from Pearson a huge amount of experience on how we can grow BBC Worldwide.

I’m clear about a number of things: we have to demonstrate the efficiency of the BBC… and that we’re using the licence fee properly before the Charter process begins…

Equally, under the great leadership of Tim Davie, we’ve also got to show that we are making as much as we can to contribute towards the licence fee from BBC Worldwide.

A

Q

Lorraine Heggessey: What’s your view on BBC Worldwide and what they should and shouldn’t be doing?

Jeremy Darroch: The BBC needs to be conscious of, and careful, when they butt up against the commercial sector – and particularly small organisations in the commercial sector.

A

Octavia Foundation

Sky Skills Studio � around 125 young people who have joined directly from school.”

The Sky chief added that these recruits have stayed with the broadcaster: “Two or three years into this programme, our level of attrition is very small.”

Widening the discussion, Hall said that he wanted the BBC to be “bold and original” in its programmes. To achieve this, he added, “you have to have a culture where people feel that they can fail. They can learn from that failure and then we all learn and move on. [We don’t want a culture where] you make a mistake and so heads must roll or, in the [case of the] BBC, junior heads must roll. You want to be in a culture that is invigorating, exciting and supportive.”

Wrapping up the discussion, Heggessey asked the two chiefs whether their broadcasting organisations were “competing against each other” for talent.

“We compete in lots of areas – that’s the nature of big business,” replied Darroch. “But in areas such as talent development, we have to recognise that we are two of the biggest organisations and, therefore, if a lot of what we can do can course through the industry, then that’s a good thing.”

Session Eleven, “Enabling the Next Generation”, was produced by Liam Hamilton and chaired by Lorraine Heggessey. The panellists were BSkyB Chief Executive Jeremy Darroch and BBC Director-General Tony Hall.

October 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

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BBC Worldwide

‘

Partnership is what it is about now

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

’

Paul Hampartsoumian

Tim Davie is keen to find joint-venture partners to share the cost of premium BBC content, learns Tara Conlan

im Davie once walked out of a Sky News interview while he was Acting Director-General of the BBC. So his interviewer, Channel 4 News presenter Cathy Newman, was keen to keep the BBC Worldwide Chief Executive in his seat for the duration of a lively RTS early-evening event.

Fittingly, since Davie has said Worldwide wants to take more stakes in independent producers, it took place on the day the corporation’s commercial arm announced it had bought 35% of Lookout Point, the producer of Ripper Street and War and Peace.

But first, Newman wanted to know from Davie what the BBC thought of its coverage of the Scottish independence referendum.

“The conversation was really: did we cover this impartially and in the right way? Generally speaking, in quite a tough situation where passions were running high, I think we can be quietly proud, along with other news organisations.

“Despite the emotion, the passion and the importance of that vote, it was covered impartially and rather well, I thought.”

What were the implications for the BBC of what Gordon Brown calls Scottish “home rule”, Newman wondered?

The BBC needed to give “voice to local communities”, Davie agreed.

But, Newman suggested, it surely meant that the 11% of the network TV programming budget which currently goes into programming in Scotland has “got to rise, hasn’t it?” Davie wasn’t so sure, replying: “I don’t know whether it has got to rise, we will need to think about this as we go through the Charter [review].”

BBC Worldwide last year delivered headline sales of £1.04bn, down from £1.1bn, though headline profits were up a shade (0.7%).

“Are times tough?” asked Newman.

“We’ve got very significant pressures now with Netflix, with Amazon Prime...,” he conceded. “Worldwide’s performance overall is steady...

Underneath, like many businesses, we’re having to change quite rapidly to deliver those results.

“You’ve got DVD in 20% decline, but in the UK you’ve got Netflix and Amazon Prime deals that are very exciting and very interesting, so you end up netting off these things.” �

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‘Globally, we’re strong, we’re really strong,’ said Tim Davie of UK content.

The creative industries, however, tended to be ‘less aggressive’ in exporting than those of some other countries: ‘I think we could be more forthright in terms of marketing and working on and developing IP. ‘The current export value is £15.5bn. This excludes some content. More work needs to be done on valuing creative exports.

‘The people who are making waves are the Americans. A lot of UK businesses tend to look at a point of scale for a sell-out.

In the US, they tend to talk with more missionary zeal about scale and changing the world. No digital ­aggregators of scale have come from Europe, not even a transactional platform.’

In the course of the discussion from the floor, music streaming service Spotify was raised – but it was the only such platform created in Europe.

‘We have a problem here. That’s a call to arms for us,’ warned Davie.

RTS CEO Theresa Wise asked whether the BBC is keen to adapt a ‘writers-room’ model to support drama series with many more episodes than is typical at the moment.

Although the BBC does this on EastEnders, it does not have huge appeal currently, as Davie accepted: ‘You’re right. There will be more flexibility in the UK about different models.

‘Volume is an overriding concern.

We’re not naturally good at it like they are in the US. It’s just different culturally.’

But he added: ‘There is an attractive siren call over there… and that call is, “Just make what’s working over the other side of the pond”.

‘What you’d end up with is a shadow of what they make over the other side of the pond. We want to become more fantastic at what we do. We need stories that can travel the globe.’

42

The Great British Sewing Bee � Davie added: “The strength of the pound was a pain in the backside last year. Underlying performance is good.

“I also closed down some parts of the business. We had units in video gaming in LA. “I felt that if you’re not investing big in video games… don’t bother. So there’s been a focusing on my part.

And although revenues are critical and important, underlying sustainable financial return and profitability is what it’s really about.”

One of Davie’s key themes was partnerships and he said there would be “increasing co-production” in Asia.

He was asked about rumours of a joint venture for BBC America.

“We are interested… In a market that’s consolidating rapidly, we are one of the only fully independent channels left. We keep getting record ratings; we can survive independently, we can prosper independently. Partners have always come to us… let’s just say, I am interested.”

Newman appreciated his candour but, despite her best efforts, he would not be drawn further. When she asked if he was talking to US cable channel AMC, he responded: “We are talking to lots of people regularly about partnership.”

“How many?”

“We are talking to people regularly,” he replied firmly.

Might the BBC’s joint venture, UKTV be sold, Newman ventured.

“We have a good partnership with Scripps. We are happy. It’s a really good business. I have no plans to sell down my stake in UKTV.” Returning to his theme of partnerships, Davie said: “We are having partnership discussions across the world”, pointing out that “most of the pro-

grammes are co-productions. They are stitched together with different funding streams.

“Partnership is what it’s about now… by and large, it’s quite a complex issue to get funding.”

One of the examples he gave was Andrew Davies’ adaptation of War and Peace made by Lookout Point, Worldwide, the Weinstein Company and the BBC’s public-service wing. He said it was one of his favourite books, adding, “We’d better not screw up that, you can’t screw up War and Peace!”

In the run-up to Charter review next year, Newman asked whether, post the general election, the government would expect BBC Worldwide’s contribution to increase to offset a fall in the licence fee?

“I’m not going to bite on that construct. I’m not going to speculate, it has to go through the process. I am expecting growth from Worldwide – we have grown, we continue to grow… This is a billion-pound-turnover business delivering £157m in profit,” but, he added, “we have to be realistic”.

Newman tried to draw him on predictions for how much Worldwide would grow.

All he would say was that he thought the global media market’s forecast, “is for around 4%-5%… that is the benchmark for success for all of us… We need to do a bit more planning as to where growth can come from.”

From the floor, former BBC Worldwide Director Jeremy Mayhew asked: “Your predecessor was quite keen on privatisation… are you prepared to rule out that?”

“I’ve got no plans to push for any kind of privatisation of BBC Worldwide,” was Davie’s response.

The thorny issue of the licence fee

BBC

Creatives’ contribution to exports

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

I’VE GOT NO PLANS TO PUSH FOR ANY KIND OF PRIVATISATION OF BBC WORLDWIDE

BBC

was raised. Newman tried hard but he would not be drawn on detail, saying only that this was what the BBC’s Charter review process was for.

But Davie was more forthcoming about how he would get those who watch BBC shows on laptops to pay their licence fee.

“The first thing is, if they are watching via tablet or other devices, we have to find a way to link,” he said. “I don’t think that jumps to subscription, it could be the scope of the licence fee – there’s a whole load of things we can do. Are we all over that issue? Yes.” The commercial equivalent of the iPlayer, BBC Store, should be available in early 2015, said Davie. He quipped that it would look “pretty” and be “straightforward” but added: “I have to get it right. It’s often not about being the first, it’s about being the very best.

“I’m interested in international markets for that, too… I don’t know if that’s well known, by the way.”

With the proposal by Director-General Tony Hall to revolutionise in-house production, “[would] BBC Production become part of BBC Worldwide,” asked Newman.

“Not necessarily. We don’t know,” Davie replied. “There’s lots of discussion. There are numerous ways in which you can structure it.

It’s really secondary.

“With regard to where, I think everyone’s moving a bit fast on this.

We’ve just said we want to have a debate about where it is best to have BBC Production, and it’s just too early to say where it is going to sit structurally.”

On programming, Davie said: “The French Sewing Bee is a particular highlight this year” and that the French Bake Off was doing well, though it was more about “choux and filoux pastry as opposed to a jam sponge”.

He added that there was “pretty much nowhere I wouldn’t give it a go” to sell Bake-Off – except perhaps Japan because of its penchant for sushi over suet.

Davie said that “working in China is not easy” but confirmed that the Chinese Top Gear is currently casting for the equivalents of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. “So, if you know a Chinese car aficionado who’s got opinions, then pass them my way.”

The Great British Bake-Off Tim Davie, CEO of BBC Worldwide, was in conversation with Cathy Newman, Channel 4 News, at The Hospital Club in central London on 23 September. The producer was Martin Stott, Head of Corporate and Regulatory Affairs, Channel 5.

Back to the top of the BBC for Davie?

If Tim Davie were a stick of rock, he reckoned it would say Croydon and BBC down his middle.

Not his former employer, Pepsi?

‘I feel incredibly blessed to work in an area I care about. I loved PepsiCo, it was a brilliant company, but… you can only get so excited about shifting a billion litres of sugar water.’

Talking generally about working for a creative organisation, Davie said: ‘It’s less rational in some ways and that’s what makes an organisation brilliant. If you want an easy life, you don’t manage a creative organisation.’

Asked whether John Simpson was correct to describe the BBC as ‘grotesquely managed’, Davie said: ‘Since 2009, we’ve taken down the senior management by 30%… and that’s not been easy… it’s still work in progress.’

Newman asked him if it was ‘grotesque’, to quote John Simpson, to be paid more than the DirectorGeneral?

‘My salary’s set by the Executive Committee and the Remuneration Committee. My salary passed them.’

He was asked if he is worth it.

‘That’s for others to say. It’s just quite distasteful for me to say, to make a judgement on my own performance.’

So, Newman asked him, is he so ‘addicted [to the BBC that] you’d like to be the next DG’?

‘I just like being at the BBC.’ Newman said: ‘That’s a yes, then.

That is the clearest answer you’ve given all evening.’

‘That’s quite harsh,’ said Davie to laughs from the audience. ‘You know what I’m going to say to this question, they know what I’m going to say to this question. I love the job I’m doing. It’s been a blessing to run radio.

‘The acting DG job was demanding but ultimately rewarding, and this job I absolutely love. I have got quite a lot of commercial DNA in me, so I like being in this job. I’m happy.’

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Documentary

I

n a TV landscape characterised by audiences demanding instant gratification and producers claiming that the commissioning process is killing creativity, Ken Burns stands out as a total anomaly.

Widely seen as one of the most influential documentary makers of all time – his landmark film, The Civil War, was watched by upwards of 40 million viewers in the US – Burns is in the fortunate and enviable position of being able to call all the shots on all the films that have his name on the credits.

“Being in control of a creative process is a good thing…,” he says. “If you don’t like the films I make, it is my fault. I take that above the team. I am the conductor of a little ensemble, but it’s my fault.”

He adds: “I like that. I’m free. No commercial sponsor can tell me, ‘We want more of this, less of that.’”

Burns is in London to promote his latest opus, the seven-part, 14-hour marathon, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, some seven years in the making and hailed by some US critics as his best yet.

For sure, it has all the usual Burns virtues – it is painstaking and exquisitely crafted; the auteur takes us through the complex narrative of Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt from 1858 to 1962 using carefully shot stills, talking heads, archive footage, emotive narration and haunting music.

Not really the thing viewers are expected to take a shine to in the age of YouTube.

And yet more than 9 million people watched the first episode of The Roosevelts when it premiered on PBS in the US last month; the series will be shown in the UK on PBS America from 19 October.

“The pace is at times fast, at times stately, contemplative, but I don’t see that as pejorative,” he suggests. “I suppose, in comparison with MTV or YouTube, maybe it’s demanding of people, but that’s OK.” Burns continues: “I think people are hungry for meaning. All real meaning accrues in duration.

“We’re buried in information with no understanding or real meaning, and no way to connect the dots.”

He is a dapper, diminutive man who looks younger than his 61 years,

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The history conductor

As Ken Burns’s magisterial The Roosevelts hits British screens, he tells Steve Clarke how he composes his epic documentaries erudite and scholarly: during our 40-minute conversation he quotes Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Blake.

Burns, the recipient of 12 Emmy Awards and two Oscar nominations, says he knew when he was 12 years old that he wanted to make films.

Family tragedy led to the epiphany.

His mother died when he was 11 after being sick for 10 years. “There was never a moment when I was growing up when she wasn’t dying of cancer.

As you can imagine, our household was a grim and demoralised place,” he recalls.

“I watched my father cry for the very first time, not at my mother’s illness, or her death or her funeral, but watching Odd Man Out, Carol Reed’s film about the Irish troubles, where James Mason gets it in the end.”

He “realised immediately what movies could do – provide a safe harbour to express and contain emotions that are difficult to express. It was that which made me want to be a filmmaker. At that point, it meant being Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock or, particularly, John Ford.”

But discovering social documentary stills photographers during his college

All pictures: Florentine Films

Ken Burns and stills from The Roosevelts

years had a profound influence – although there might have been a genetic one, too.

Burns’s father was a cultural anthropologist and an amateur stills photographer. He remembers watching him develop photographs in the basement of their Delaware home.

He was in his early 20s when he realised that making history films would be his destiny. “Within a few years of graduating, in 1975, I knew history was what I wanted to do,” he reflects.

His first documentary, Brooklyn Bridge, cost $180,000 to produce and

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

was Oscar nominated when it was finally shown on PBS in 1981.

He still keeps the “hundreds” of rejection letters he received in trying to get the film up and running to remind him that tenacity is an important part of any film-maker’s mental armoury.

Was it easier for him to get that first break than it is for today’s generation?

“No. Maybe doing what I’m doing, it would be harder – but it was so hard.

“I tell kids it is mostly about perseverance… As difficult as it is, there’s a kind of perfection to it. You sort of earn it.”

On the back of Brooklyn Bridge’s success, he was encouraged to uproot to the movie-making capital of Los Angeles. Instead, the academically inclined Burns quit Manhattan for New Hampshire and bought the converted barn where he still lives today.

His subjects have always been the defining events, people and places in American history. They have included the Statue of Liberty, Congress, the Civil War, baseball, jazz, the Second World War and the US national parks, plus biopics of Thomas Jefferson, Frank Lloyd Wright and Mark Twain.

From the beginning, Burns chose to distribute his work on public television. That way, he could maintain artistic control and his audience would be able to watch the films free from commercials.

“I make films for everybody… Our ratings are as good in Oklahoma as they are in New York City, sometimes better.”

Sooner or later, it was likely that Burns would focus his attention on the Roosevelt clan, but what specifically drew him to these aristocrats of American politics?

“They are three extraordinarily interesting, complicated, flawed, wounded people, so you’ve already got Downton Abbey, only true,” he replies.

“You also have a political family that has touched more American lives than any other family in American history that has not been done significantly together on television.

“There’s lots of stuff on Theodore and Franklin, some on Franklin and Eleanor, a little bit less on Eleanor, but nobody had put them together in a very complex narrative that intertwines their ultimate dependence and relationship to one another. Exponentially, that increases the complexity and the interest in it.” �

The Burns method ‘It is very labour intensive. We thank legitimately a couple of hundred people in the credits but these are handmade, even the long ones, by about a dozen people.

‘Most productions would have a research period followed by a writing period. We’d then produce a script written in stone that, with minor changes, informs the shooting and, again with minor changes, the editing.

‘We never stop researching and we never stop writing. We often start off with the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. We often interview before the script is written so that, when you see a talking head, it is a happy accident of trial and error where the placement goes.

‘This process allows you to be corrigible until the end…’

The power of music ‘Music is one of the most powerful forces on earth and is an equal partner. We record our music before editing or early in editing.

‘So we might be cutting a sentence to fit a phrase of music, or extending it to fit that same phrase of music, because we want it to be as organic and authentic a force as the still photographs, the newsreels, the talking heads, the live cinematography, the firstperson narration, the third-person narration, the complex sound effects...

‘In most films you run out of money before you start thinking about the music, so the music becomes something loud…

‘It’s no accident that the first time a documentary soundtrack went gold was The Civil War, and the first time it went platinum was Jazz.

‘Already people are coming up to me and saying, “I love that piece of music in The Roosevelts.”’

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� But will the series resonate with UK viewers? “Yes, absolutely. William Blake said you could find a world in a grain of sand… These are human stories and universal stories. That’s what I am interested in.”

As befitting his reputation as a workaholic, at any one time Burns is invariably juggling several different projects.

At the moment, films on the history of cancer (The Emperor of All Maladies), the history of country music (I Can’t Stop Loving You), a so-far untitled biography of Ernest Hemingway and a 10-part history of the Vietnam war (also untitled) are in production.

As, too, is a series about Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play in Major League Baseball in modern times.

Five or six other films “are threaten­ ing to start”. He says: “It’s like air-­ traffic control. I just go from one thing to another.”

In development are documentaries examining the East Lake community in Atlanta, transformed by a team of philanthropists, and a film on the history of stand-up with Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld.

The latter has been some 20 years in gestation and is a partnership with one of Burns’s four daughters, Sarah, and her husband, film-maker David McMahon.

Prolific he may be, but clearly Burns is not Hollywood rich. Do his films make money?

For once, he pauses before answering: “Many do not… I give the films to public television by virtue of their

46

THE INTERNS IN MY EDITING ROOM HAVE AN EQUAL SAY WITH PEOPLE I’VE WORKED WITH FOR 35 YEARS contribution to the budget. Or the requirements of some of the granting agencies, such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. There’s no money there.

“We sometimes make money in companion books that do well and if there is programme income, meaning DVD sales, we pay off those granting agencies that require a payback. And what’s left, besides points to producers, goes into development.”

He receives a relatively modest salary from Florentine Films, the company he co-founded back in the 1970s, according to a report in Forbes.

The Roosevelts cost $15m and was financed by PBS, the Corporation for

I THINK PEOPLE ARE HUNGRY FOR MEANING. ALL REAL MEANING ACCRUES IN DURATION

Florentine Films

The Civil War Public Broadcasting and Bank of America, plus money from wealthy individuals and small and large foundations. This, of course, all takes time to assemble.

Over the years, has finding backers become more difficult? “Funding has always been terrifically hard. It has gotten more difficult only in so far as I’ve taken on more projects at a time.”

His collaborators have remained constant over more than three decades. Burns might be a control freak (he bristles at the word “freak”) but his working domain sounds like a civilised place.

“I see people in my profession treating other people of lesser rank – I feel awkward even saying that – abysmally. I find them diminished by that.

“The interns in my editing room have an equal say with people I’ve worked with for 35 years.”

The Roosevelts is co-written by Geoffrey C Ward, a long-time member of Team Burns. Do they ever argue?

“We’ve worked together for 32 years and we’ve never had a fight.

There have been times when I’ve seen him put his head down because I’ve cut something he’s written.

Sometimes I’ve been impatient because I work at really high speeds…

Any disagreement we express right away and we work it out.

“I know a lot of other film-makers who are screamers and they get things done. I guess it works, but this is not brain surgery. You get to yell at somebody if they don’t hand you the right scalpel.”

October 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

Make it in drama

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here’s more than one way to succeed in TV, as the latest RTS Futures event amply demonstrated. The three panellists assembled to discuss their careers at “I Made It In… Drama” had taken far-from-conventional paths into television, but all are now at the top of their professions.

Guardian TV critic Julia Raeside asked the questions in front of an audience keen to find out more about working in British television drama.

Writer Chris Lunt hit the big time when Prey, starring John Simm as a cop on the run, aired on ITV earlier this year to critical acclaim and strong audiences. Lunt’s path to success, however, has been littered with failed treatments and scripts: he estimates that he has had more than 80 projects rejected by broadcasters or indies.

In fact, writing is a fourth career for Lunt, who is in his early 40s: “Since I was a little kid I had wanted to get into TV but I’m from a place called Horwich, not far from Bolton, and if you’d said, ‘I want to work in TV,’ you risked being burned at the stake. I said to my dad that I had plans to go to university and he asked me if I was gay.”

From the age of 16 to 24, Lunt worked in engineering – “I was the

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

RTS Futures

Three pros share their experience of establishing successful creative careers.

Matthew Bell takes notes world’s worst lathe turner,” he claimed – before joining a corporate video outfit in sales.

A lucky break took him to Prague in the mid-1990s to shoot a documentary at short notice after the cameraman booked for the job fell ill.

“I’d never even used a stills camera,”

THERE’S NOT ENOUGH SCRIPT EDITORS – IT’S A GREAT JOB BUT IT REQUIRES GREAT TRUST

BBC

Peaky Blinders

Lunt recalled. “All I had to do was point and squirt, which I learned reasonably quickly.”

Lunt then landed a job with Manchester-based production and graphics company Red Vision, where he remained for the next 10 years. “I had three careers – as a lathe turner, a cameraman and in CGI – and I blagged my way through all of them,” he said.

He wrote in his spare time and then full time when Red Vision went under in 2010. Prey was green-lit by ITV the same year. By then, Lunt had been writing, mostly in the sci-fi genre, and amassing rejections for a decade.

The writer received considerable encouragement from Red Productions founder Nicola Shindler. “She told me that I had potential, but as long as I was pitching dramas about aliens and bobbly-headed creatures, I was not going to get anything made,” he recalled.

Sensibly, Lunt changed track and, with the 1993 film and 1960s TV series The Fugitive as his inspiration, he pitched Prey, backed by Red, to ITV. The pitch was simple – “Imagine The Fugitive set in Manchester with a copper” – but effective. “Everyone was looking for a procedural cop drama with a twist at the time,” he said. �

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Chris Lunt on writing

‘I used to do a lot of amateur dramatics… so it seems obvious to me that when you write something you don’t just keep it in your head – you say

it. If you can say it and it feels natural, then it will to the actor, too.

‘You have to wholly commit to writing as a career… I love it. When you have been a lathe turner working shifts, sitting there making stuff up is never going to feel like a job.

‘Your first attempt is going to be rubbish, the second, third, fourth and fifth are going to be pretty rubbish, too, and then, over the course of a couple of years, you’re going to start getting good.

That’s when you revisit those first ideas, which were probably fine, and start to work at them again.

‘Agents are notoriously difficult to get signed to – they are highly subscribed and often have a set amount of people they are prepared to represent. If

you send them a script and it’s good enough… and the agent sees potential for making money out of you – 10% out of anything you make – they sign you up. Send scripts in [because] agents have people to read stuff…

‘Alternatively, speak to production companies. I had a really strong working relationship with [Red Production’s] Nicola Shindler and I had stuff in development before I picked up an agent.

‘Until Prey was being made, my agent – who is fantastic – had never got me a paid job. I’d knocked on doors and got myself [work] and then he had represented me and got the top money for that job. After Prey, people started knocking on his door and, since then, jobs have come to me through my agent.’

Roanna Benn on script editing and producing just aren’t enough good ones. These jobs require a multitude of skills: good judgement on scripts; coming up with ideas; having a good visual eye; being a good people person…

‘If you’re interested in script editing … long-running shows are the best training ground. They have to trust you with the writers straight away.

‘Most people I’ve known who’ve gone into script editing have been asked to script read first. Offer to read a couple for free and, if people like what you do, they’ll hire you. The bigger companies, such as Tiger Aspect, hire script readers.’

‘There is a very simple trajectory to becoming an executive producer: mostly it’s script editing, producing, then executive producing…

‘There’s not enough script editors – it’s a great job but it requires great trust: you’ve got to trust them not to [mess] up the relationship with the precious writer, they’ve got to do great notes on the script for the producer and come up with great ideas themselves.

‘If you do it well, you’ll be [quickly] asked to produce. If you’re a good producer, you’ll be asked to be an exec because, believe it or not, there

‘It has to be an all-consuming passion … You have to love directing, but it’s not really a vocation – it’s more a personality defect.

‘You have to go and just direct stuff.

Now that’s easier than it’s ever been before, but it’s also more competitive because it’s easier for everyone else, too. If you direct good stuff and put it out there, keep being productive and you’ll become a director.

‘Most short films you see are shit and the number-one reason for that is because somebody who wants to be a director felt that they had to write the script. Find somebody who wants to write.’

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YOU HAVE TO LOVE DIRECTING, BUT IT’S NOT REALLY A VOCATION – IT’S MORE A PERSONALITY DEFECT

All pictures: Paul Hampartsoumian

Colm McCarthy on directing

Prey � The RTS audience watched the powerful scene from Prey when Simm’s character discovers his son is dead, notable for its spare dialogue. “That scene is written in more detail than some of the big action and dialogue sequences. I wrote every thought that went through his head,” explained Lunt.

“It freed me up to tell a story without using dialogue. As a writer, you should never underestimate what a really good actor can do with silence.”

With a hit behind him, Lunt is in great demand. In the pipeline is Prey 2 and a period crime drama set in Margate (to be made by Roanna Benn’s indie, Drama Republic) called Dreamland, both for ITV, a Formula One drama for the BBC, and a film version of The Saint.

Drama Republic Managing Director Roanna Benn went to drama school

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

and worked as a theatre director with 7:84 in Glasgow. She then moved into developing radio plays before shifting to TV in 1995 as a script editor on EastEnders. “That was a brilliant training ground,” she recalled.

A job as script editor on Kay Mellor’s women’s football drama Playing the Field followed. There she met producer Greg Brenman. The two have worked together ever since, first at Tiger Aspect and then at Drama Republic, the drama indie founded by the duo in 2013.

Her indie has a new five-part serial about infidelity coming to BBC One, Doctor Foster, penned by Mike Bartlett, whose play King Charles III is a West End critical success.

My Mad Fat Diary and Secret Diary of a Call Girl are among her executive producer credits; her production credits include a Mark Haddon-penned

ITV

AGENTS ARE NOTORIOUSLY DIFFICULT TO GET… SEND SCRIPTS IN [BECAUSE] AGENTS HAVE PEOPLE TO READ STUFF

drama, Coming Down the Mountain, about two brothers, one of whom suffers from Down’s syndrome.

The RTS Futures audience watched a scene from the latter. “I heard it as a play on the radio,” she recalled. “I met up with Mark, he was up for it and he adapted it for telly. We took it to Ben Stephenson at the BBC and it was a pretty straightforward [commission].”

Director Colm McCarthy, who is finishing work on the second series of BBC Two gangster drama Peaky Blinders, had always wanted to be a film director, but hadn’t done anything about it by the age of 25.

McCarthy’s first TV work was as a stand-in on Irish fantasy series The Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog in the late 1990s. “I quit my job for it, even though I didn’t know what a stand-in was. It turned out to be the person who stands in while the actor’s back in the trailer to give the director of photography [somebody] to light,” he said.

“I was very enthusiastic and, by the end of the shoot, I was owed a favour by the production manager. I borrowed some equipment and shot a short film – which was shit – but I had made a film,” said McCarthy.

His first output, in the form of commercials and music videos, followed.

“With everything I’ve done, I’ve managed to open up things for myself by continually directing,” he added.

Emmy award-winning director Dearbhla Walsh, who liked one of his shorts, suggested McCarthy for Irish drama The Big Bow Wow and then, after finding an agent in England, he worked on Sky’s Dream Team and the BBC One series Hustle and Murphy’s Law. He has also directed episodes of BBC One dramas Ripper Street and Sherlock.

A scene from the latter, featuring Holmes’s speech at Watson’s wedding, was shown at the RTS Futures event.

“Sherlock is comparable to a low-budget movie – you just have less time [to make it],” said McCarthy.

He has a film in development that is “pretty much financed”, but he has no intention of turning his back on TV. “Television can do things that film can’t do narratively, such as tell very long, complicated stories,” he said. “I’d like to work between film and TV.” The RTS Futures event, ‘I Made It In… Drama’, was held at The Drury Club in central London on 22 September.

It was produced by Sasha Breslau and Anna Fern.

49

IBC delegates arriving at Amsterdam’s RAI Centre

Accelerator to the floor

I

BC attendees experienced a palpable sense of accelerating change at the Amsterdam television technology show. But the transition to a production and distribution environment supported by commodity IT hardware is not happening nearly fast enough for many of the high-profile speakers at the week-long conference and exhibition.

“I worry about the European broadcasting community not moving fast enough to embrace the digital world for the new generation of consumers,” said former Verizon Vice President Erik Huggers.

The man who nursed BBC iPlayer to launch warned his listeners that they needed to “compete with the coming onslaught of Google, Amazon and Apple, which think globally and can bring to bear innovations faster”.

To do this, live, linear TV needed to be “seamlessly combined into one

50

IBC review

Some television companies are still in denial about the tech tsunami washing over all areas of TV, reports Adrian Pennington experience” with catch-up, video over the internet and VoD services.

Even more impatient was Charlie Vogt, the vocal CEO of Imagine Communications (rebranded from Harris Broadcast under Vogt).

He urged fellow equipment developers to abandon the nearly ubiquitous SDI (serial digital interface) cabling that

links so much of the broadcast infrastructure. He wants them to migrate as fast as possible to the internet’s communications standard, IP (internet protocol).

“It’s termed disruptive, but actually it is positive because IP permits the industry to adapt to change at the pace of the web,” said Vogt. “Our customers can’t continue to spend the kind of money they are currently spending on proprietary gear that needs upgrading every five to seven years because of inefficiencies of the hardware.”

BSkyB Director of Information Technology Colin McQuade agreed that SDI would eventually disappear, but not in the next three years, given the absence of new industry standards.

As if on cue, Channel 4 CEO David Abraham unveiled plans to unite the broadcaster’s online and on-demand content in its All4 digital hub.

“Today, technological innovation in �

plus the software to stitch the images together into a single panorama. One of them, Jaunt, has investment from Google and BSkyB. ‘We are creating long-form narrative content at cinematic quality,’ claimed DJ Roller, co-founder of NextVR, a US technology and content company. Its VR process uses three pairs of Red cameras; the output is 3D in 4K resolution.

Atlantic Productions CEO and Executive Producer Anthony Geffen is in post production on several VR documentary projects, one of which features Sir David Attenborough.

‘Everything is about to change with

For less than the cost of a smart phone, consumers could soon be strapping headgear from Facebook, Sony and Samsung to their faces for what is promised to be the ultimate in immersive entertainment.

As with many other technologies, the first-wave virtual-reality products are likely to be rather underwhelming, with low-resolution displays and clunky interfaces. Facebook’s offering will allow users to invite friends’ avatars into the virtual world.

A growing number of camera companies provide rigs with multiple cameras for capturing video in 360°

Samsung VR headset

Samsung

Virtual reality Making the virtual a reality

VR,’ claimed Geffen in an IBC conference session exploring the future of natural history film-making. ‘There are massive breakthroughs in camera technology and headsets almost daily.

‘My worry is that it can’t be like 3D. You’ve got to have really good content or VR will make people feel dizzy.’

Broadcasters need the same agility to launch new services, argued IT network supplier Cisco, as completely IP-based players such as Amazon. The company claimed the Cloud can simplify almost every aspect of bringing content from multiple sources to multiple devices.

‘Take something as simple as the settop box,’ said Yvette Kanouff, Senior Vice President of Cisco’s Service Provider Group. ‘Manufacturers keep having great ideas, which need more set-top box software and drive a need for more powerful hardware – but they can’t keep upgrading the box.

‘However, suppose the functionality

of that box was in the Cloud and could be managed remotely? Imagine what that would mean in terms of simplifying operations.’

Pay-TV broadcasters are already doing this. BSkyB, for example, is developing a 4K-compliant set-top box to serve

VoD from the network. And Ericsson’s MediaFirst platform, demonstrated at IBC but commercially available only in spring 2015, offers pay-TV companies the software tools to make their services act like apps.

Ericsson believes this will appeal particularly to millennial-generation subscribers used to interacting with video on YouTube and social media.

‘Pay-TV companies have to innovate or they are going to die and disruptors such as Netflix and Google are going to figure out the business models,’ said Pete Thompson of Ericsson’s Mediaroom Business Group.

Audience measurement Tracking the device hoppers

IBC’s Content Everywhere zone

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

IBC

IBC

The Cloud Set-top boxes join libraries in the sky

The merging of linear TV with catch-up services and VoD across multiple devices leaves ad agencies in a bit of a quandary. They need to figure out how much attention at any one time viewers are paying to the TV versus their other connected devices. Several IBC conference sessions examined this issue.

‘There are different measurements for different devices and we need to connect the dots,’ said Denise Turner, Chief Insight Officer for Havas Media Group.

Combining digital viewership data with Barb’s audience-­panel figures is complicated, but it is a target that the ratings company has set itself to achieve in Project Dovetail.

‘The reality is that nobody has ever

delivered a data fusion of this scale and ambition anywhere in the world,’ claimed Barb CEO Justin Sampson, who admitted there would be some delay before data on time-shifted viewing was blended with panel metrics.

‘We are talking about a new fusion every single night. Inclusion in [published overnight and consolidated ratings figures] could be two years away.’

Sky said it would beef up its ability to target ads across multiple platforms and devices, starting this autumn. Jamie West, Director of Sky AdSmart, said: ‘We can compete on a level footing with digital media – they [are not] the only market that can offer addressability, reporting, targeting and understanding return on investment.’

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IBC

YOU’VE GOT TO HAVE REALLY GOOD CONTENT OR VR WILL MAKE PEOPLE FEEL DIZZY

Ultra-HD Fazed by TV-set makers If broadcasters had a choice, probably none of them would be planning an Ultra-HDTV service with four times the resolution of HD (4K for short) any time soon. Few have amortised their investment in HD; indeed, most of the world has yet to upgrade from standard-definition pictures at all.

Many of the debates at IBC centred on how and when a ‘phase-1’ implementation of Ultra-HD might be funded. By common consent, phase 1 lacks the features that might make phase 2 a compelling proposition for consumers.

While the DVB (Digital Video Broad­ casting) standards body approved phase 1’s technical description in July, it will 2017 before it approves the additional features that will comprise phase 2. The new features that will have most impact on the perceived quality of 4K pictures are extra colour and contrast data (high dynamic range, or HDR) and higher frame rates.

‘An HDR version of HD 1080p [the current full-fat implementation of HDTV] would deliver more bang for the buck [than phase-1 Ultra-HD] and is a more realistic technical target,” said Jim Helman, CTO of MovieLabs,which represents the interests of the major studios. ‘But the marketing and product side would argue that there is a already lot of value in the 4K brand.’

It is certainly being pushed by consumer electronics manufacturers, struggling to cope with razor-thin

52

margins on mere HDTV sets. As IBC ended, Sony predicted a staggering $2.15bn loss for the year ending March 2015.

As Ultra-HD-capable displays flood the market, pay-TV broadcasters feel they have to act. BT Sport’s Director of TV, Alex Green, confirmed at IBC that BT would launch an Ultra-HD service during the 2015-16 football season.

Stephan Heimbecher, Head of Innovation at Sky Deutschland, said: ‘We like Ultra-HD and, technically, we could launch today, but we also don’t want to jeopardise the market with a substandard service, given the consumer experience with 3D.’ At the conference session ‘Go With UHD-1 Or Wait For UHD-2?’, Andy Quested, the BBC’s Head of Technology for HD and 3D, said the corporation wanted to go back 30 years: ‘We’d like to be in a medium where natural history and drama are shot on a camera that has 16-18 stops of dynamic range.’

BSkyB Chief Engineer Chris Johns summed up the dilemma: ‘4K is a bit like an airline. HDTV is obviously economy class. Everyone has it and they can fly anywhere in the world.

But it’s nicer in premium economy, where you can get Ultra-HD phase 1.

In first class, it’s Ultra-HD phase 2.’

To get the 8K Ultra-HD service with 16 times the resolution of HDTV planned by Japanese broadcaster NHK, ‘you need your own executive jet’.

� TV is continual, pervasive and direct to the consumer in a hybrid environment of linear and IP-based delivery,” he said. “Broadcast TV is highly relevant, but viewers want mobility and connectivity, and there’s no reason why broadcasters should lose that relevance.”

IBC devoted a whole new section, dubbed Content Everywhere, to companies geared towards video over IP. The format will be exported in the form of a standalone market to Dubai in January and to Brazil later next year.

The hardest area to displace SDI from will be live television, where its rock-solid reliability underpins broadcasting’s traditional commitment to quality and continuity of service.

However, IP’s exponents are assaulting even that citadel.

At IBC Sony demonstrated a live broadcast feed of a 4K Ultra-HD ­signal conducted over IP networks.

Meanwhile, Gearhouse Broadcast, which specialises in renting equipment to cover large-scale live events, announced that it would be equipping itself with IP technology from EVS subsidiary DYVI. “A production director can be located anywhere in the world and still have complete control of all key switcher functionality, making collaborative remote live production a reality,” claimed Joop Janssen, CEO of EVS. “What is phenomenal about the broadcast industry is that it has built up a heritage of super availability and super quality,” he added. “What I would like to see is that quality and that super availability applied at scale to some of these Cloud platforms.”

Speaking at the wrap-up session, “What Have We Learned From IBC?”, Lieven Vermaele, former EBU Director of Technology, said: “I am trying to be controversial, but IBC could become a software-only show, a sort of huge App Store, by 2020.”

October 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

RTS NEWS T

inopolis Group Executive Chair Ron Jones pulled no punches in questioning the accountability of Wales’s public service broadcasters at an event during the National Eisteddfod in August. The meeting was organised jointly by the RTS and Cardiff University School of Journalism.

Jones called for a new BBC service licence for Wales as part of the next BBC Charter, saying: “It’s now or never.”

He was interviewed by Wales Centre Chair Tim

Hartley in Llanelli, the home town of Tinopolis, which includes Mentorn Media, Sunset + Vine, Daybreak and other production companies.

Jones is also chair of the Welsh Government’s Creative Industries Board.

Questioned about Charter renewal, Jones said: “We need to be careful during the debate and ensure that Wales gets a fair settlement.”

He said the outcome of the second public service broadcasting review, in which Ofcom allowed ITV to cut

Tinopolis

Jones calls for BBC guarantee

Ron Jones back its services, had been a huge loss for Wales.

However, this was refuted

by Huw Rossiter from ITV Wales. He cited the success of ITV’s nightly news service, which attracts more than 1.4 million viewers each month.

Jones praised BBC Director-­ General Tony Hall’s ambition to widen the BBC’s window of creative competition. In response to a question from

Huw Jones, Chair of the S4C Authority, Jones predicted the move would create significant opportunities for Welsh indies, provided they “behaved like businesses”.

He said Pinewood’s decision to open a new studio in Wales was a boost for Wales’s creative industries, which support more than 18,000 jobs.

Hywel Wiliam

Media archaeologists set out their stall

networked and broadcast.

Former S4C chief engineer Rasul said: “We’re set up to carry 19 separate services, but we have capacity for 40.”

Comux is getting £25m from the BBC to build and maintain the network. A further £15m over three years goes to local-TV operators to produce news content, which will also be used by BBC News.

“Each local-TV operator is required to supply up to 85 stories per month to the funder,” said Rasul.

Fan Wang

Television www.rts.org.uk October 2014

■ RTS Yorkshire supported a three-day international conference at the beginning of September that explored the new academic field of ‘media archaeology’. The sessions were held at the University of Bradford and the National Media Museum.

The Society sponsored a get-together for delegates in the TV galleries at the museum.

The event brought together academics, curators, practitioners and artists, who all draw on the history of mass media to connect the past, present and future.

RTS Yorkshire Chair Mike Best said: ‘In order to invent the future of a medium such as TV, we need to fully understand its past.’

Keynote speakers included Jussi Parikka, one of the leading lights of the field, who took on the tricky task

of defining media archaeology, and Thomas Elsaesser, a film and media studies pioneer, who demonstrated how media archaeology can bring together technology, science and art in new ways.

Photography theorist Peter Buse gave a fascinating talk about how the once-mighty Polaroid collapsed before being reborn with the help of new technologies and a new corporate vision.

The conference was organised

by Ben Roberts, Mark Goodall and Karen Scott from Bradford Media School.

Jussi Parikka

Garnet

■ At the end of June, RTS Wales members were shown around the Comux playout centre in Birmingham by the company’s Chief Technical Officer, Chris Romilly, and Broadcast Consultant Arshad Rasul.

“What’s happening here is something new for television,” said Romilly of the UK local-TV model. Ofcom has licensed Comux owner Canis Media to build and operate the digital transmission infrastructure for local-TV. Comux claims it has revolutionised the way TV can be

Comux

Comux opens its doors

53

OFF MESSAGE

T

hat was the month that was. On the domestic political front, there was the thrilling Scottish referendum and two party conferences that didn’t go quite according to plan.

In TV land a new chair of the BBC Trust was finally appointed, the first woman to hold the job. Off Message wishes Rona Fairhead well.

All this and a snappily attired Evan Davis getting off to a promising start on Newsnight. Davis’s elegant tie showed he means business.

For a few minutes, he managed to break down David Cameron’s perfectly spun performance by being smart, rather than going into attackdog mode.

And Paxo to look forward to on Channel 4 come May. What’s not to like?

■ Of course, one of the past month’s highlights was the RTS London Conference in which a galaxy of media leaders kept a packed auditorium at Kings Place enthralled.

There was entertainment, too, not least when Newsnight’s indefatigable Kirsty Wark (who, incidentally, also had a good referendum) chaired the über-lively session on production consolidation, “Tomorrow the World”.

Male-dominated panels are sadly often the norm at TV events. But here the sole man – ITV’s super-charismatic Kevin Lygo – was outnumbered by Lorraine Heggessey and Alex Mahon. Lucky man, did I hear you say?

54

Anyway, it was refreshing to see some of the British TV industry’s most able women discuss such a hot topic.

“What keeps you awake at night, Kevin,” Lygo was asked. “Bladder problems, I imagine?”

There really was no answer to that from the veteran TV executive, recently outed as a writer of crime drama. Maybe Lygo’s next incognito script will be a light-hearted feminist romp.

■ It was heartening to see Jeremy Darroch and Tony Hall on such good terms, speaking together in the final conference session, “Enabling the Next Generation”.

The love-in between the two men saw the BSkyB boss going out of his way to praise the BBC iPlayer.

Unlike Secretary of State Sajid Javid, Darroch declined a perfect opportunity to say the BBC needs to be smaller, when questioned from the floor.

■ Staying with the conference, how reassuring to discover that beneath their dressed-down styles, digital tyros are really just the same as the rest of us.

Panellist Kevin Sutcliffe, head of Vice News’s European arm, revealed there is nothing new in multi-­ screening. Well, sort of.

During a session on the threat to traditional TV from digital disruption, he admitted that, in the days before iTunes (hard to imagine, but they did exist), he used to watch Songs of Praise while simultaneously listening to heavy metal combo Led Zeppelin.

How cool is that?

■ Huge congratulations to Sophie Turner Laing. A better-qualified person to run the newly merged Shine, Endemol and Core content giant is hard to imagine.

Her inside knowledge of both BSkyB and the BBC won’t go amiss in what ought to be a world-beating producer. Turner Laing’s contacts at the Hollywood studios should come in useful, too.

But where next for Alex Mahon, reported to be standing down at Shine once the merger is complete?

Wherever Mahon eventually resurfaces, she can count on the job offers coming thick and fast.

■ Discovery’s JB Perrette was another star performer at King’s Place – and it is nice to hear from a senior executive gifted with a sense of humour.

“I’m half-French and half-­American.

I don’t know if that makes me doubly evil,” quipped David Zaslav’s righthand man.

Had he been present, David Abraham would have been delighted to hear Perrette nominate Gogglebox as one of his favourite All3Media shows.

■ Another industry luminary certain to land another big job is Ed Richards.

He leaves Ofcom as its CEO this December after eight years in the hot seat.

It is hard to imagine the regulator minus the cerebral and diplomatic Richards. Off Message wishes him well. And hopes the headhunters do their homework thoroughly.

He is a class act and won’t be easy to replace.

October 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

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 October 2014

55

RTS STUDENT PROGRAMME MASTERCLASSES

27 October 10:30am for 11:00am start

Comedy Comedy

Saurabh Kakkar

Factual Factual

Andrew Mackenzie

Drama Drama Venue Venue Booking Booking

Gwyneth Hughes

Head of Comedy Development, Big Talk Productions

Creative Director, Twofour Group

Award-winning screenwriter

BFI Southbank

Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XT

events@rts.org.uk l 020 7822 2820