Television Feb 2014

FEBRUARY 2014

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Journal of The Royal Television Society February 2014 l Volume 51/2

From the CEO I think it’s fair to say that the RTS has hit the ground running this January. As we all know from the media coverage of the Golden Globes and the Grammys, we’re bang in the middle of awards season.

Judges for the RTS Television Journalism Awards have been busy scrutinising the hard work of some of the best practitioners in the business. The winners will be announced at the London Hilton, Park Lane on 19 February.

Thanks to Richard Sambrook for chairing the juries and to all the individual jury chairs and judges who have found the time to take part in the process.

Our 2014 events calendar gets underway in February. Younger members should make a note in their diaries for ‘The Battle of the Broadcasters’ on 24 February, presented by RTS Futures, in which contestants pit their wits against one another on their TV knowledge.

The February edition of Television introduces a fresh, new look for the magazine. I hope you’ll agree that the redesign makes Television easier to read and more elegant in terms of the page layout. We wanted to give Television a cleaner, more contemporary feel as part of an overall RTS rebranding exercise.

Looking ahead to March, we are following up last year’s hugely successful early evening event, ‘Broadchurch:

Contents 4 9 10 11 14 16

RTS news

Listings and reports of RTS Centres around the UK and Republic of Ireland

Obituary: Jocelyn Hay CBE

Colin Browne salutes the redoubtable and tenacious campaigner for high-quality broadcasting, Jocelyn Hay

Emma Willis’s TV diary

Emma Willis believes the documentary format is ripe for reinvention in order to tell the big stories of modern Britain

London calling on Channel 8

If local TV is going to thrive anywhere, then it should be in London. Steve Clarke detects quiet confidence in the run-up to the launch of London Live

At the helm of Ofcom

Maggie Brown looks for clues to how the regulator will set its course under new chairman Patricia Hodgson

A serious man for serious times

Andrew Billen catches up with the energetic Tom Mockridge, who joined Liberty Global after 20 years as a senior lieutenant at its international rival, News Corp

Editor Steve Clarke smclarke_333@hotmail.com

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

Television www.rts.org.uk February 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’, with a similar session, this time devoted to the BBC’s stunning drama series, Sherlock.

This takes place at the Cavendish Conference Centre, a short walk from New Broadcasting House, on 4 March.

The panellists include the show’s writers Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, commissioner Ben Stephenson and executive producer Sue Vertue.

Book your places now. ‘It’s elementary,’ as the great detective might say.

Theresa Wise

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What would you pay to be Five?

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Tracking the ratings revolution

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Getting teens to turn on

What is Channel 5 worth and who would pay enough to make owner Richard Desmond part with it?

Raymond Snoddy runs the numbers

As viewing online gathers pace, Barb is having to look beyond the TV set. Torin Douglas reports

Barb’s gold standard

Barb’s Project Dovetail reaffirms the value of a representative audience panel, hears Matthew Bell

Win win for MTV UK

Viacom’s investment in local versions of its US formats is paying off for its UK channels – and for the British producers making the shows, learns Tara Conlan

Can broadcasters keep up with online players in the battle for teenage audiences? Meg Carter investigates

Mrs T’s whipping boy

Raymond Snoddy recommends a revealing account of broadcasting regulator John Whitney’s life in the firing line

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 FUTURES Monday 24 February

Battle of the Broadcasters quiz Venue: London Television Centre, Upper Ground, London SE1 9LT ■ Callum Stott 020 7822 2822 ■ callum@rts.org.uk RTS EARLY EVENING EVENT Tuesday 4 March

Sherlock: Anatomy of a hit

Speakers: Co-creators Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat; Ben Stephenson, controller, drama commissioning, BBC; and Sue Vertue, executive producer, Hartswood Films. Host: Tom Sutcliffe. 6:30pm for 6:45pm start Venue: Cavendish Conference Centre, 22 Duchess Mews, London W1G 9DT ■ Events 020 7822 2820 ■ events@rts.org.uk RTS AWARDS Wednesday 19 February RTS Television Journalism Awards 2012/13 Venue: London Hilton, Park Lane, London W1K 1BE ■ Jamie O’Neill 020 7822 2821 ■ jamie@rts.org.uk Tuesday 18 March RTS Programme Awards 2013 Venue: Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane, London W1K 7TN ■ Callum Stott 020 7822 2822 ■ callum@rts.org.uk Friday 16 May

RTS Student Television Awards Venue: TBC RTS/IET LECTURE Tuesday 13 May

Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future Speaker: Autonomy founder Dr Michael Lynch. Joint event with the Institution of Engineering and Technology Venue: TBC RTS LONDON CONFERENCE Tuesday 9 September

Power, politics and the media Venue: Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9AG

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Your guide to upcoming national and regional events

Uni prize goes to the dogs

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oung film-makers from Plymouth and Falmouth universities picked up the prizes at Devon & Cornwall’s RTS Student Television Awards in November.

The Fiction award was won

by Ben Hancock and William Jenkins from Plymouth University for To the Dogs. Falmouth University’s Helena Lewis took the Factual prize for Gustavo’s Corner, a documentary about a market stallholder in Lima, Peru.

No awards were made in the Entertainment and Animation categories.

The judges included the BBC’s Simon Willis and Philip Tuckett, former ITV producer Guy Pannell and ex-presenter Alexis Bowater, TwoFour Production’s Kent Upshon and Arezoo Farahzad from Devon-based indie Denhams.

The awards were held in

Local events BRISTOL Tuesday 11 February

Student Awards

Venue: Watershed, 1 Canon’s Rd, Bristol BS1 5TX Sunday 9 March

Annual Awards

Details at: www.rts.org.uk/bristol Venue: Bristol Old Vic Theatre, King Street, Bristol BS1 4ED ■ Andy Batten Foster ■ andrewbattenfoster@hotmail. co.uk DEVON & CORNWALL ■ Contact TBC EAST ANGLIA ■ Contact TBC LONDON ■ Daniel Cherowbrier ■ daniel@cherowbrier.co.uk

conjunction with the Devon and Cornwall Centre’s annual “Breaking into Media” event, which was again organised

by Karen Stockdale.

Following the awards ceremony there was a session on ITV daytime series The Storage Hoarders, which is made by TwoFour. In the programme, presenter Aggie MacKenzie meets people clinging onto possessions that they never see or use.

The audience watched clips from series 1 and 2, and heard series producer Maria Knowles and her team explain how they produced, filmed and edited the show.

The next panel discussion, “Getting in and getting on”, brought together TV and print professionals to offer advice.

“The day was a great success,” said Siobhan Robbie, who organised the RTS awards. The web TV produc-

MIDLANDS Thursday 13 March

Birmingham film and TV summit In partnership with Birmingham City Council Venue: TBC ■ Jayne Greene 07792 776585 ■ jayne@ijmmedia.co.uk NORTH EAST & THE BORDER Tuesday 18 February

An audience with Kay Burley The Sky News presenter in conversation with Joyn Myers.

Tickets for the event are free of charge, but need to be reserved in advance via Andrea Carl: andrea.carl@sunderland.ac.uk Pre-event drinks available.

6:30pm Venue: Tom Cowie Lecture Theatre, St Peter’s Riverside Campus, University of Sunderland SR6 0DD

tion manager from indie Living It Loving It added: “The students were eager, attentive and keen to take the next step in their careers.

“They already have the qualifications and they took advantage of the chance to meet and learn from some of the fantastic industry here.”

Matthew Bell

Fiction award winners Saturday 1 March

Annual Awards Hosted by Stephanie McGovern of BBC Breakfast Venue: Hilton, Gateshead NE8 2AR Tuesday 11 March

Big voices

Two of the most recognisable voice talents in Britain and the US, Peter Dickson (The X Factor) and Alan Dedicoat (Strictly Come Dancing) in conversation with John Myers about the impact of voiceover and narration on television. Tickets available via Jill Hodgson: jill. hodgson1.rts@btinternet.com.

This event is supported by The Radio Academy.

Venue: Live Theatre, Broad Chare, Newcastle Quayside NE1 3DQ ■ Jill Graham ■ jill.graham@blueyonder.co.uk

Awards hat trick for Red’s Last Tango in Halifax The stars came out in Manchester at the end of November as RTS North West Centre held its Annual Awards, celebrating the best of the region’s television talent.

Dan Walker, the presenter of BBC One’s Football Focus, hosted the evening and announced the winners across 24 hotly contested categories.

Red Production Company picked up three awards for the hugely successful Last Tango in Halifax, including Best Performance in a Drama or Continuing Drama for leading lady Anne Reid. BBC North comedy Citizen Khan bagged two gongs, while Granada Reports took home two awards for Hillsborough: The Truth at Last.

The other prize winners were: ■ Best Children’s Programme (Pre-School), sponsored by Timeline Television North: Old Jack’s Boat ■ Best Children’s Programme (School Age): Stepping Up ■ Best Current Affairs Programme: Licence To Kill ■ Best Production (Craft), Director of Photography (Tony Slater-Ling): In the Flesh, ■ Award for Innovation in Multi-platform: Doc You ■ Best Regional On-Screen Talent (Jayne McCubbin): BBC North West Tonight

NORTH WEST Wednesday 26 February

Student Conference and Awards Venue: Salford University and the Lowry Theatre, Pier 8, Salford Quays, M50 3AZ Thursday 13 March

TV Quiz

Venue: The Lowry Theatre, Pier 8, Salford Quays, M50 3AZ ■ Rachel Pinkney 07966 230639 ■ rachelpinkney@yahoo.co.uk NORTHERN IRELAND Tuesday 25 March

Student Awards

Venue: E3 Campus, Belfast Met, 398 Springfield Road Belfast BT12 7DU ■ John Mitchell ■ mitch.mvbroadcast@ btinternet.com

■ Best Regional News Programme; and Best Regional Story: Granada Reports: Hillsborough: The Truth at Last ■ Best Post-Production (Craft); and Best Sports Programme: Sports Personality of the Year 2012 ■ Best Live Event, sponsored by SIS LIVE: Blue Peter: Live in Leeds ■ Best Low Budget Programme: Crimes That Shook Britain: 20th Anniversary Stephen Lawrence ■ Best Comedy Programme; and Best Performance in a Comedy (Adil Ray): Citizen Khan ■ Best Performance in a Continuing Drama (Julie Hesmondhalgh): Coronation Street

REPUBLIC OF IRELAND Wednesday 12 February

Student Awards

Venue: RTÉ Studio 4, Dublin ■ Charles Byrne (00353) 87251 3092 ■ byrnecd@iol.ie SCOTLAND ■ James Wilson: 07899 761167 ■ james.wilson@ cityofglasgowcollege.ac.uk SOUTHERN Friday 21 February

Annual Awards/Student Awards Venue: Guildhall, Winchester Wednesday 26 March

Meet the professionals

An opportunity for media-based HE and FE students from across the South to meet a range of media professionals informally to discuss current TV issues and opportunities. 2:00-5:00pm

Television www.rts.org.uk February 2014

■ Best Single Documentary: Hillsborough: Never Forgotten ■ Best Single Drama or Drama Series; Best Performance in a Single Drama or Drama Series (Anne Reid); and Best Scriptwriter (Sally Wainwright): Last Tango In Halifax ■ Best Factual Series: Don’t Call Me Crazy ■ Best Factual Entertainment Programme: Racing Legends: Stirling Moss ■ Best Entertainment Programme, sponsored by Dock 10: Emmerdale Live: The Fallout ■ Best Continuing Drama: Shameless ■ Best Learning or Education Programme: You Too Can Be an Absolute Genius Vicky Owens

Venue: Bournemouth University, Poole, Dorset BH12 5BB ■ Gordon Cooper ■ gordonjcooper@gmail.com THAMES VALLEY Wednesday 12 February

Injest issues

Panel discussion Venue: Pincents Manor, Pincents Lane, Calcot, Reading RG31 4UH Wednesday 5 March

AGM

followed by:

The death of SDI Does AVB (Audio Video Bridging) – high bit-rate real-time video/ audio over IP – mean the end of SDI? Panel discussion with industry experts Venue: Pincents Manor, Pincents Lane, Calcot, Reading RG31 4UH ■ Penny Westlake ■ info@rtstvc.org.uk

WALES Friday 21 March

Student Awards Presentation of the winning entries at the Zoom Film Festival, Wales’s largest film festival for young people.

Venue: TBC March – date TBC

Getting into factual

Aimed at new entrants and aspiring young factual producers/documentary makers. Joint event with Media Academy, Wales ■ Hywel Wiliam 07980 007841 ■ hywel@aim.uk.com YORKSHIRE ■ Lisa Holdsworth 07790 145280 ■ lisa@allonewordpoductions. co.uk

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RTS NEWS Your future is graft not glamour RTS Futures Northern Ireland Committee members and local media students James McCrory and Orla Sharpe were given the opportunity to interview Phil Mount at UTV Studios, Belfast in November.

Mount, an executive producer at ITV Studios production company Potato, recounted his experiences of working in the media and gave advice to the RTS Futures audience.

At the event, ‘Phil Mount: runner to executive producer’, he said it was tough getting a start in the television industry, but added that a good work ethic and success went hand in hand. ‘It’s graft – it’s not glamorous,’ he said.

Mount studied public relations and then went to work in London, writing for rock magazine Kerrang!, before becoming a runner at MTV and working his way up through the ranks.

He then worked on Channel 4’s TFI Friday and on ITV Saturday morning shows SMTV Live and CD:UK before joining Endemol as an executive producer in 2003 and then Potato.

The executive producer was born in Northern Ireland and now works and lives in London, but said young people should not rule out staying in Northern Ireland.

‘There’s a wealth of opportunity here now and a lot of great homegrown shows,’ he said.

Rachel Martin

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The natural history of punks and pangolins

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ore than 100 RTS members and media students gathered at Southampton Solent University in November to hear the naturalist and wildlife presenter Chris Packham in conversation with BBC South’s Inside Out presenter, Jon Cuthill.

A reminder of just how long Packham has been on our screens came as the naturalist reviewed clips of his younger self, sporting a punk hairdo in The Really Wild Show from the 1980s.

Today, though, in his early fifties, Packham has embraced mobile technology and he shared a three-minute piece he’d recently shot in Namibia. It captured his first sighting of an endangered scaly mammal known as a pangolin. His obvious delight and passionate response was a clear reminder of how he engages audiences and draws them into his world.

Despite his willingness to shoot his own material,

Jon Cuthill (left) and Chris Packham Packham voiced strong support for traditional TV crafts people such as camera operators, sound technicians and editors, calling them the hardest working people in the programme chain.

In his view, such committed individuals are key to a show’s success. He’s constantly on the lookout for new talent to work alongside him. Packham also put forward a spirited defence of public service broadcasting.

Cuthill brought a lightness of touch to the RTS Southern

Centre event, as well as strong involvement from the audience, in discussing many of the big issues facing TV. On a more personal level, Packham admitted that he’d sometimes made mistakes in appearing on programmes outside his own area of expertise. The audience, though, thought his recent appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs was a good move.

The ever self-critical Packham said he hadn’t been able to listen.

Gordon Cooper

Our eyes put TV in the shade n Thames Valley’s last event of 2013 – featuring an intriguing demonstration by Professor Alan Chalmers and Josh McNamee from the University of Warwick – explained the mysteries of “high dynamic range” (HDR).

The December event, subtitled “Seeing is believing”, showed what this emerging technology can do.

In photographic terms, the accepted norm for dynamic range is 14f stops; the human eye, however, is capable of

20f stops. The difference means that we can see detail in the shadows as well as in bright areas, whereas standard video technology cannot follow a golf ball from shadow into light or, at Wimbledon when the sun is shining, from one end of Centre Court to the unlit end on the other side of the net.

HDR provides the solution.

The Warwick research aims to find a way to transport the HDR signal through the existing TV infrastructure.

Chalmers’ and McNamee’s demonstration used two Cannon digital SLR cameras to produce a stream of HDR video at 30fps; in layman’s terms, allowing one camera to over-expose and the other to under-expose, and then combining the two signals.

With the cameras running at 60fps, the final output is made up from four exposures. The results, when viewed on an HDR monitor, were truly impressive.

Patrick Woolcocks

The one place Palin cannot go

Paul Hampartsoumian

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World in 80 Days – Pole to Pole ondon Centre’s (1992); Full Circle with Michael Christmas lecture Palin (1997); Michael Palin’s drew a full house to Hemingway Adventure (1999); hear Michael Palin and his Sahara relive a quarter century of (2002), Himaglobe trotting for the BBC and reveal that it almost laya (2004), didn’t happen.

New Europe He was only the BBC’s (2007) and fifth choice to present Brazil (2012).

Around the World in 80 Days As a child – TV veteran Alan Whicker, living in Shefjournalists Miles Kington field, Palin and Clive James, and rememeven Noel Edmonds, were all asked first.

Fortunately, the recently resurrected Python got the gig and seven series have followed in the wake of 1988’s Michael Palin: Around the Michael Palin

bered “from very early on, that I loved the idea of other places. Just a mile away from my home were the Pennines and the Peak District, wonderfully exciting, adventurous landscapes with great crags and rivers.

“I wanted to travel and see all the parts of the world that were as dramatic as the Peak District and more so.”

In making his travel series for the BBC, Palin has visited more than 80 countries, offering viewers a winning mix of stunning sights and oddball moments.

Hong Kong-born stills photographer Basil Pao has accompanied Palin throughout. Among the photos Palin showed the RTS audience were stun-

Docu-soaps raise tensions Speaking at ‘What’s up doc?’, a panel discussion held by RTS Wales, Xavier Alford claimed: ‘Docu-soaps and ob docs offer a fingerprint of reality, preserving genuine, special moments that actually happened.’

The event was held in conjunction with Media Academy Wales and University of Wales Trinity Saint David. The Swansea-based faculty was an appropriate location given the success of the BBC Three series, The Call Centre, which depicted life at ‘Swansea’s third-largest call centre’.

Series director Alford took part in the discussion along with John Geraint, an independent documentary producer with Green Bay Media, whose recent credits include BBC One’s The Story of Wales, and Chris Buxton, a lecturer in digital TV production at the university, who chaired the discussion.

Following a compilation of clips from

Television www.rts.org.uk February 2014

John Geraint (left) and Xavier Alford recent docu-soaps shown at the start of the evening, Geraint suggested that television had come a long way in terms of ‘representing ordinary people on air’.

But he noted that docu-soaps, in popularising factual television, create ‘a tension between ratings and public service content. When [1997 BBC One series] Driving

ning shots of the Khyber Pass, Machu Picchu and the Sahara, as well as the stranger moments, including the presenter washing an elephant, travelling on top of a train and milking a yak.

Looking ahead – once the reformed Monty Python have performed at the O2 Arena in July – the presenter’s wish list of places to visit includes Madagascar, Mongolia, more of China and the US and, not that it would be currently possible, Syria.

“When people ask me if there’s anywhere I’ve never been, the first thing I say is Middlesbrough,” said Palin. “I just said it randomly the first time. People worry about why I haven’t been to Middlesbrough. Is there something about Middlesbrough?

“Of course, I can never go there now because it would spoil [the joke].”

Matthew Bell

School was screened it drew 11 million viewers, proving that drama-based techniques could be used in documentaries, delivering ratings and a favourable cost per viewer hour.’

For Alford, characters such as The Call Centre manager Nev are ‘intrinsically entertaining and extrovert’. But the series also featured less obvious subjects. ‘One person, who suffered from stuttering, thanked us for addressing his condition directly,’ he added.

The director emphasised the need for honesty and trust when working on location. ‘If something uncomfortable or bad happens, we need to be able to film that,’ said Alford. But this access comes with responsibilities: ‘You don’t want to screw up people’s lives over a TV programme.’

Geraint claimed that ‘there should still be room for documentaries that don’t chase ratings’. In his view, the success of the genre raises the danger of focusing on trivia and edging out more diverse, high-quality factual programming.

Hywel Wiliam

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RTS NEWS

Mixed signals on TV ageism

Channel 4

John McCririck John McCririck, however, recently lost his claim against Channel 4.

Ross, whose TV career began with a reporting job on BBC Two’s Man Alive in 1979 and who worked on Crimewatch from its inception in 1984, argued that “there is nothing wrong with discrimination. We discriminate when we go to a restaurant between good food and bad food.

What is bad is unfairness.”

“Television is intrinsically unfair – it’s not open access to everybody. It is still, even in a multi-channel age, something of a privilege to work in,” continued Ross.

“How do you make it fair?

Well, if anyone tells you the

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answer is simple, they’re simply being glib.”

Caroline Hollick, head of development at drama indie Red, which makes BBC One hit series Last Tango in Halifax and ITV’s Scott & Bailey, is well placed to talk about both ageism and sexism. Last Tango in Halifax stars Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid as a couple who find love in their seventies, while Scott & Bailey has three female lead roles – Amelia Bullmore, Suranne Jones and Lesley Sharp (arguably a first for a cop show) – as well as a woman writer, Sally Wainwright.

heart. Instead of chasing a younger audience for its drama output, she said Cohen decided “to focus on the BBC’s heartland audience”, which resulted in controller of drama commissioning Ben Stephenson greenlighting a show he had originally rejected.

The third panellist was director of photography Dominic Clemence, who numbers BBC dramas Inspector George Gently and Silent Witness and ITV three-parter Torn among his credits.

The 55-year-old DoP said: “My enthusiasm hasn’t gone.

I AM MORE CONCERNED FROM AN EMPLOYMENT PERSPECTIVE ABOUT AGEISM BEHIND THE CAMERA THAN IN FRONT OF IT Red took Wainwright’s Last Tango script to commissioners but was repeatedly turned down. “We were shocked by what was blatant ageism – it took us about three years to get Last Tango made. That first episode barely changed from the script Sally wrote,” recalled Hollick. “We were told by both major broadcasters that one of the reasons they wouldn’t do it was they felt that the protagonists were too old and it wouldn’t appeal to a broad enough audience.”

Hollick credits Danny Cohen, who become controller of BBC One in 2010, for the corporation’s change of

that is their comfort zone. It’s a [question of] a shared language,” said Clemence.

Working as a presenter, argued Ross, “You are paid a lot of money and part of that is because you are here today, gone tomorrow. To claim this is a life-long profession, that you should be able to stay until 65 or 75, is asking for your cake and eating it. I am more concerned from an employment perspective about ageism behind the camera than in front of it.”

He added that he was torn between “positive discrimi-

Miriam O’Reilly

You live for the camera, it’s part of your body, your spirit, your articulation and identification.

“As a cameraman you adapt and survive, you change your methodology of working…

“All I have ever wanted to be was behind a camera and that ambition is still there now, every single day.”

Nevertheless, he accepted that age might affect the decisions producers and directors make. “Choice doesn’t always seem to be meritocratic: age inevitably affects decisions, so young people might choose young people and older people often choose older people because

Trinity Mirror/Nick Bowman

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geism and sexism: fact or fiction? asked a London centre event late last year, at which three invited TV insiders debated this pressing question. They included presenter Nick Ross, who lost his presenting job on BBC One’s Crimewatch in 2007 amid suggestions that his age was a factor.

The score currently stands at one-all in the employment tribunal. In 2011 Miriam O’Reilly won a ruling against the BBC, which had axed her from its rural affairs series, Countryfile; racing pundit

nation and producer choice”.

On one hand, he argued, “producers ought to be able to have enormous freedom”, yet he believed positive discrimination had been instrumental in increasing opportunities for women in TV. Hollick said that successful dramas such as Last Tango in Halifax are proof that there is huge potential for dramas that embrace older viewers, adding: “We will be having a conversation in 15 years’ time about how everyone’s had enough of drama for older people.”

The event was chaired by University of Lincoln media lecturer Alexius Lewczuk.

Matthew Bell

Jocelyn Hay CBE

Guardian Newspapers/Frank Baron

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escribed by the radio critic Gillian Reynolds as “possibly the best lobbyist in the whole UK,” Jocelyn Hay was already a significant figure in the media world when she founded the Voice of the Listener in 1983.

It was her successful campaign against plans to turn BBC Radio 4 into a rolling news and current affairs network that persuaded her to form the pressure group; in 1991 the organisation became the Voice of the Listener and Viewer.

When I joined the BBC in 1994, there were many in the corporation who bore the scars of Jocelyn’s lobbying.

Some queried what a woman with only a limited background in the industry really knew about broadcasting.

They felt that it was best that such matters were left to the professionals; in short, what right had the “ordinary” viewer or listener to have a say in such issues?

But there was nothing ordinary about Jocelyn. Many in the BBC came to recognise that her commitment to quality in television and radio was a huge asset to all who really cared – as she did – about the future of British broadcasting and the quality of the national debate.

Under Jocelyn’s leadership, VLV, in the words of the academic and media commentator, Roy Greenslade, “emerged as the most important champion of television and radio consumers by consistently pressing for the retention and extension of high-quality public service broadcasting”.

Another media executive turned academic, Stewart Purvis, noted the importance of Jocelyn’s personal contri-

Jocelyn Hay

Colin Browne salutes the redoubtable and tenacious campaigner for highquality broadcasting, Jocelyn Hay bution: “When Jocelyn Hay [calls] you tend to listen. It is partly the voice.

“I wasn’t surprised to discover that she was once a senior official in the Girl Guides. And it is partly respect for the woman who is a kind of Florence Nightingale of public service broadcasting, supporting the hard-worked troops on the frontline while looking ahead to even more complicated issues.”

Jocelyn never defended the status quo for its own sake. While recognising the substantial and significant demand for traditional channels, she wrote in 2006 that in the future “we’ll be watch-

Television www.rts.org.uk February 2014

ing television in many different and totally new ways, through our computers in the office, through mobile phones, in all sorts of ways.”

She tirelessly advocated the cause of consumers in the many official and unofficial debates in which she was invited to participate, and not just in the UK. She was the first consumer representative to be invited to give oral evidence to a Hearing of the Council of Europe, and she was the founder president of the European Alliance of Listeners and Viewers’ Associations (EURALVA) from 1995 to 2007.

Having been appointed an MBE in 1999, she was made a

CBE in 2005 for her work with VLV. She was awarded the Elizabeth R Award for an Exceptional Contribution to Public Service Broadcasting by the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association in 1999; in 2007 Jocelyn was presented with a European Women of Achievement Award by the European Union of Women.

In the day or two between Jocelyn’s death (on 21 January at the age of 86) and penning this piece, I have been struck by the range of people and organisations who have written to us about her – from the worlds of broadcasting and the media, consumer and civil society groups, academia, politicians and the EU. All have been inspired in one way or another by Jocelyn.

BBC director-general Lord Hall said: “Jocelyn Hay had a huge impact on broadcasting in this country.

“She never stopped campaigning for better-quality programmes and for all broadcasters to put their audiences first.

“She always believed it was every broadcaster’s duty to make engaging programmes that captured the public’s imagination. She will be much missed.”

In 1993, Jocelyn wrote: “Ten years ago, the threats were vague and distant. Now they are real: in some cases overwhelming. We must redouble our efforts if the quality and richness of British broadcasting is to be maintained.”

As we face another period of intense media policy making, the VLV will be determined to ensure that the principles espoused by Jocelyn are maintained.

Colin Browne is chairman of the VLV.

9

TV diary Emma Willis believes the documentary format is ripe for reinvention in order to tell the big stories of modern Britain

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ife at New Broadcasting House is currently verging on the surreal because the team that brought you the comedy, Twenty Twelve, is now filming its next master work, W1A. As two BBCs go about their daily business in parallel, sharing the same lifts, open-plan offices and meeting rooms, you might be forgiven for not knowing which one is the reality and which is the comedy.

■ In the real world it’s going to be a big year for documentaries, with the revival of the acclaimed singledocumentary strand, Modern Times, on BBC Two and a host of exciting projects coming through the year, including KFC for BBC One, Protecting Our Parent for Two and another epic season of Storyville for Four.

Documentaries play a unique role in factual television – where life as it is lived in all its messy glory is captured and interrogated.

Innovation, risk-taking and purpose define public service television. We are driven by the desire to do things differently and to find new ways of telling the big stories of modern Britain.

■ Following the success we’ve had with observational documentaries such as The Tube and Iceland Foods: Life in the Freezer Cabinet, we’re thinking hard about what other factual genres might be reinvigorated.

The documentary format is ripe for reinvention and, although hard to get right, the key is to set out to find the 10

answers to the devastating questions of modern Britain.

Why is social mobility in this country in decline? Can a society have too much diversity? What are the effects of huge differences in earnings?

■ We live in an age of extremes – whether it’s wealth, health or education. It’s not surprising that TV seems to be more and more about extremes.

In tougher times it feels like you want to see life at both ends of the scale – witness the success of such wildly different series as Inside Claridge’s on BBC Two and Britain on the Fiddle on BBC One. ■ The past few weeks have been dominated by debate around Channel 4’s Benefits Street. With the rise of social media, it is harder and harder to distinguish between films as they actually are and all the noise that surrounds them.

The documentary mission is to interrogate and engage in the world as it is, rather than how we might wish it to be. It is only by this unflinching gaze that things can be understood.

■ Talent both on screen and off is the lifeblood of documentaries. We have an amazing array of people, including the return of Louis Theroux, Lorraine Pascale on The Truth About Fostering, Kate Humble’s return to Lambing Live, new talent Will Millard and Joanna Lumley Meets will.i.am.

Off screen, a fantastic range of directors, including Lynn Alleway,

Rob Farquhar, Vanessa Engle, Ursula Macfarlane, Sue Bourne and Henry Singer, are all making films for us at the moment.

■ Right now my head is deep in competitive format-land, with DVDs and links coming in thick and fast.

The Great British Sewing Bee returns to BBC Two this month and there’s a brand new series, Hair, for BBC Three.

Hair focuses on the process, skills and techniques of hair dressing.

When you see the amazing creations the amateur hair stylists come up with I hope you’ll agree that it’s a bit like baking on your head.

■ Ah, Bake Off. Intense meetings spent discussing the challenges and poring over pictures of cakes can be tough, but someone has to do it.

With casting underway for the next series and a move to BBC One, I can guarantee we won’t be making any changes to this much-loved prog­ ramme as it moves to its new home.

■ People often express surprise that Bake Off comes out of the documentaries department. But one of the key reasons the series is so compelling is that it is, in essence, two days of observational filming of real people baking in a tent.

There is no artifice, false jeopardy or ramping up of emotion. What you see on screen is what happened.

Audiences love it because, along with the baking aromas, they can smell the truth.

Emma Willis is head of commissioning, documentaries, BBC One, Two and Four.

February 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

London Live/Matt Writtle

London Live presenters (from left): Gavin Ramjun, Claudia-Liza Armah, Louise Scodie and Marc Edwards

London calling on Channel 8

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t the end of March the UK will see what is being hailed as the year’s biggest media launch and potentially the most lucrative new TV channel launch since Channel 5 made its brash debut in 1997.

London Live is backed by the Evening Standard and its Russian owners, Alexander and Evgeny Lebedev. It is, perhaps more significantly, the first big British TV station to arrive in a multi-platform age where the linear core channel represents only part of what is being made available to audiences and advertisers.

“Linear TV is an opportunity to create content that starts on linear but Television www.rts.org.uk February 2014

London Live

Steve Clarke observes quiet confidence in the run-up to the launch of London Live that you can distribute on many different platforms,” says Andrew Mullins, group managing director at the Evening Standard and CEO of London Live. “We came to London Live from the point of view that if you’re going to be a credible media brand and a multi-platform player, you’ve got to have video.

“London Live is a fantastic opportunity to achieve that.”

Yet, paradoxically, as Mullins acknowledges, “If we don’t get the linear component right, the model is not going to work.”

The Lebedevs’ bid triumphed against four other high-profile rivals.

They were competing for the biggest of the 19 licences advertised by Ofcom as part of a new generation of local TV services driven with evangelical zeal by the Coalition Government’s first media minister, Jeremy Hunt.

Mullins thinks London Live can be profitable by year four. Certainly, by the standards of TV, the size of the investment is extremely modest (the content budget is £15m a year), and � 11

12

modern, urban and celebratory”.

In other words, no catup-tree stories, but do expect Cook and her team to reinvent old staples of the news agenda that Londoners obsesses about, such as live traffic and weather updates.

Her main presenting team looks refreshingly multicultural. It consists of Marc Edwards, a presenter on France 24 and EuroSport, who voiced Danny Boyle’s London 2012 opening ceremony; Louise Scodie, a broadcaster and writer whose credits include Marie Claire, The Jewish Chronicle and shopping channel bid-up.tv; Claudia Liza Armah, who has presented BBC Three’s 60 Seconds news update and BBC News Interactive; and Gavin Ramjun, who has worked on ITV’s This Morning and Daybreak as well as CBBC’s Newsround and BBC Sport.

The accent on youth is evident from the kind of shows that Jonathan Bose­ley, the channel’s head of programming, has commissioned and acquired.

Rejecting “celebrity-driven formats” (cynics might suggest that the former Disney executive lacks the fees to lure big names to London Live), he hopes to create “a noisy, knowing, celebratory, vibrant platform for new creative thinking and risk-taking formats that puts young Londoners and the London creative community at the heart of our offering.”

This may prove easier said than done. On £15m a year, even the Lebedevs are not anticipating shows to match Sherlock or Downton Abbey – or even Benefits Street.

Output deals have been signed that guarantee London Live re-runs of highly regarded comedies such as Channel 4’s Peep Show, Smack the Pony Writtle London Live/Matt

� comes at a time when the Lebedevs are reportedly seeking to sell the loss-making Independent.

Among the advantages of the licence are a free slot on Freeview, channel 8 (favourably positioned between BBC Three and Four) and good prominence on Sky (channel 117), and the opportunity to reach 4.6 million homes in the most affluent part of the UK. Also in London Live’s favour are the huge cross-promotion opportunities in the Evening Standard (Mullins was the mastermind behind the Standard going free), and the ability to cut deals with advertisers across print and video.

But set against these undoubted pluses is the challenge of launching a new TV station in such a crowded and hyper-competitive marketplace.

London Live’s target audience of 16- to 34-year-olds is digitally distracted to a degree that is unprecedented.

Nevertheless, Mullins appears quietly confident that London Live can succeed and wrong-foot sceptics.

An earlier attempt by the Standard’s previous owner, Associated Newspapers, to launch cable service Channel One failed, but the venture lacked the distribution that the Government has secured for Live TV (it also overinvested in content).

This is something the cost-conscious management of the new venture is determined to avoid.

“Anyone who thinks you have to spend a fortune to create great content is wrong,” says Mullins.

So what’s the £15m-a-year content budget being spent on? The schedules being devised for London Live sound conventional enough: three daily blocks of live news and current affairs

LONDON LIVE’S TARGET AUDIENCE OF 16TO 34-YEAR-OLDS IS DIGITALLY DISTRACTED TO A DEGREE THAT IS UNPRECEDENTED (breakfast, lunchtime and early evening) totalling 5.5 hours; web coverage is intended to drill down to borough level.

London Live is making much of its multi-skilled video journalists, who Mullins insists are being properly remunerated.

Alongside this is entertainment, a mix of original and acquired material, with the biggest guns reserved for the evening schedule.

In charge of news and current affairs is Vikki Cook, a 20-year veteran of TV news. She worked at Channel 5 as deputy editor of news following 11 years at Sky News, including a stint as head of home news.

“There has to be an element of fun and cheekiness in everything we do,” she says. “I have a mantra: it cannot be ‘WBD’ – worthy but dull.”

She promises a tone that is “very

Television www.rts.org.uk February 2014

London Live owner Evgeny Lebedev Boseley promises between four and six new, 30-minute sitcoms within “a couple of months” of launch.

“All our content has to have a London angle,” explains London Live’s head of programming. “It’s really refreshing to be able to go to independents and tell them we want to make programmes for and about London.

Philip Bannister

and Spaced, plus the BBC’s Olympics caper Twenty Twelve and drama like Channel 4’s Misfits and the BBC’s The Shadow Line.

It is not surprising to hear that YouTube is being raided for London performers who have gained a following on the Googleowned platform.

“We’re not just taking what performers are doing online and putting it on TV,” Boseley insists. “We are working to retain the free-flowing creative energy, but in a more structured setting.”

Among the programmes already commissioned are: Food Junkies, a 30-part, 30 minute show made by Fresh One, looking at London’s hidden culinary scene; social networking game show FaceCrash, six one-hours produced by Nerd TV; and F2 Kicks Off, a 16-part, 30-minute series featuring young freestyle footballers made by urban specialist Renowned.

Late-night strand Raw plans to showcase fresh faces from online, urban entertainment and music across comedy, factual and drama.

“For years they’ve been told the regions are the new focus, but there’s finally a TV platform dedicated solely to London.”

Mullins, however, is a shade less positive on Ofcom’s insistence that everything shown on London Live must be linked to London.

“It was what we promised and is now a bit of a commitment that is quite tough… Over time we will try to push that as far as we can,” he suggests.

As the launch approaches, Mullins is convinced that, as a former marketing man, London Live has got its digital ducks in a row.

Finding and sustaining audience levels will be the hard bit, as he readily acknowledges: “If you are relying on advertising, you have to create clever multi-platform, flexible offerings that advertisers and sponsors will be excited by.

“That way, they can put print, digital, social and video all together.

“The fact that we are developing a business that can provide those opportunities is extraordinarily exciting for us. From a business model perspective we think we can crack it.

“The scary thing is, can we create great content that our target audience wants to watch?”

That is something the Lebedevs and Londoners will discover in the months ahead.

Few who’ve witnessed other big media launches expect the process to be either easy or straightforward – apart, perhaps, from Jeremy Hunt.

London Live will launch on 31 March.

13

At the helm of Ofcom

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n 1 April the formidable Dame Patricia Hodgson, who was once fancied to succeed John Birt as director-general of the BBC in 2000, will finally come into her own, as chairman of the powerful communications and media industry regulator, Ofcom.

After four decades of high achievement in broadcasting and in public life (see box), this consummate operator was handed the glittering prize. She was confirmed in the post by culture secretary Maria Miller on 18 December, following a light grilling by MPs on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee.

She is succeeding another powerful woman, economist Colette Bowe, who decided not to reapply – running Ofcom is a heavy commitment.

Hodgson, 67, will serve a three-year term instead of the usual five. But as the current deputy chairman of the regulator, she assured the committee that she would be “hit the road running”.

Her tenure – 2014-17 – will exactly coincide with a period of intense debate about the terms of the BBC’s next charter, involving its governance, regulation and funding.

Hodgson is the first non-economist to chair the competition-focused regulator. Asked by John Whittingdale MP whether this was a disadvan-

Profile

Maggie Brown looks for clues to how the regulator will set its course under new chairman Patricia Hodgson tage, she pointed to her experience as a non-executive at the Competition Commission (2004-11), adding with a careful smile: “I have undoubtedly brought a layman’s perspective. Asking the obviously stupid question is a great advantage.” But she then stressed the key difference: “I have a very strong broadcasting background.”

This is the reason why her appointment is so intriguing. Hodgson, in receipt of a £119,000-a-year BBC pension, is indelibly associated with the corporation, a fierce advocate of its public-service role and, most recently as a BBC Trustee, she has first-hand knowledge of its current structural weaknesses.

On the issue of BBC executive pay she told MPs: “I remain of a view [that] it is an issue,” but parried the question of whether she stuck to her view of

A life of public service Dame Patricia Hodgson DBE Education Brentwood High School; Newnham College, Cambridge 1968-70 Conservative Research Department 1976-80 Producer, Open University, BBC 1980-87 BBC Secretariat 1987-2000 Head of policy and planning, BBC, then (1993) director of policy and planning 2000-2003 CEO, ITC

14

2004-11 Non-executive director, Competition Commission 2006-11 BBC Trustee 2006-12 Principal, Newnham College 2011 Member of Ofcom, chairman of its remuneration committee 2012 Deputy chairman, Ofcom Other roles Chairman, Higher Education Regulation Review Group; member, Committee for Standards in Public Life (2004-08)

2008 that the licence fee should not be top sliced.

In the 1980s Hodgson first came to notice in the powerful role of secretary to the BBC Board of Governors, the crucial link between it and the BBC Executive Board.

In 1987 she was witness and facilitator to the decision, initiated by the new chairman, Marmaduke Hussey, to sack director-general Alasdair Milne after a series of libel actions and clashes with the Thatcher Government.

In the 1990s she flourished as director of policy and planning, praised

by Birt for her masterly grip of the BBC’s need to rebuild political support.

Alongside Birt, she was credited with the favourable 10-year renewal of the BBC charter and licence in 1996.

“She always took good advice, even though she can rub people up the wrong way by seeming to think she knows better than anyone else,” said one observer of that decade.

Hodgson also project managed the BBC’s switch to digital, and influenced the provision of “must-carry status” for free-to-air public service broadcasters on commercial platforms such as Sky’s, together with due prominence in the EPG. She even modelled a subscription alternative to the licence fee, just in case.

When Greg Dyke was appointed as DG she became chief executive of the Independent Television Commission, which was dissolved into Ofcom in 2003. One much-criticised ITC legacy is the Contracts Rights Renewal device that protects advertisers, but which also aided the creation of ITV plc.

Between 2006 and 2011 she was a BBC trustee, and pushed hard for substantial executive pay cuts, noting that some salaries had doubled since she left the BBC in 2000.

Her chairman, Sir Michael Lyons, was replaced after one term by Lord Patten.

She, meanwhile, burnished her establishment credentials and relaxed into a more public figure.

Her appointments included principal of Newnham College, Cambridge – where she was an undergraduate.

Born into an ordinary working family in Essex, Hodgson said Newnham College transformed her life.

Will her appointment pave the way for Ofcom to take over some of the regulatory duties of the BBC Trust?

One former Ofcom non-executive appointee says: “Patten is now weakened, so is the Trust; it has got to be a possibility.”

Broadcasting policy veteran David Elstein concurs: “It’s an indicator.

There was a time when the BBC under Mark Thompson so disliked Ofcom, it would have been inconceivable.” He adds that having two bodies ruling on unfairness and impartiality complaints in broadcasting confuses consumers.

Hodgson told MPs that she was pleased to see more powers given to the National Audit Office to check how licence-fee funds were spent.

“I and Ofcom have no ambition [to regulate the BBC],” she said. “Should Parliament require it… governance and regulation are part of charter review.

There are no tanks on the lawn. It is a matter for this place.”

She added that Ofcom had no desire to regulate the press, either: “My personal opinion [is that] you do not want a single regulator with too much power over the media.”

Pause.

“Ofcom never refuses if instructed.”

The Ofcom Hodgson will head is in strikingly good shape, considering that David Cameron marked it out for abolition before the Coalition Government took office.

Thanks to action early in 2010, before the Coalition’s public-sector cuts, Ofcom slashed its (currently frozen) budget by 28.9% to £117m. It now has 778 staff and an extended duty to regulate the postal service.

It can’t hurt her position that, on leaving Cambridge, she worked for the Conservative Research Department Television www.rts.org.uk February 2014

Ofcom

YOU DO NOT WANT A SINGLE REGULATOR WITH TOO MUCH POWER OVER THE MEDIA

Patricia Hodgson and unsuccessfully fought Islington South and Finsbury in 1974 as a Conservative. She then devoted herself to a 30-year career at the BBC, which required her to be impartial.

Hodgson says: “My father had no pension. I think I am very, very privileged to have one. It brings with it an independence of judgement”.

Chairing Ofcom pays £142,500 for a (technically) three-day week. As chair, Hodgson is reunited with one of her protégés, Ed Richards. Ofcom’s chief executive was part of her BBC policy and planning team in the 1990s; she remains a fan but, because he helped establish Ofcom, he might now have itchy feet.

Her agenda at Ofcom is tied to the draft 2014/15 plan, which proposes a continuity of approach.

She is determined to do more to open up markets to ensure fair competition in all the areas Ofcom regulates.

One of its pressing tasks is to give market assessment advice to the BBC Trust on two changes proposed by director-general Lord Hall. He wants to

set up an online BBC Store to sell content and to extend the iPlayer window to 30 days.

Renewal of the ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 licences is going ahead with little publicity and will be completed by the time Hodgson takes over as chairman. Local TV is underway.

One huge issue is spectrum allocation. The aim is to release spectrum around three frequencies – 2.3 GHz, 4GHz and 700MHz – to improve the availability of mobile broadband.

We should expect to see movement on one of her bugbears, the speed of redress. Hodgson said at the Culture, Media and Sport Committee: “One of the frustrations of recent years for Ofcom colleagues is not bringing in measures to mitigate problems for consumers fast enough.”

With the communications sector growing twice as fast as the economy as a whole and with telecoms prices falling over the past decade due to Ofcom’s emphasis on competition, she told MPs: “The challenge is to sustain this direction of travel”.

15

A serious man for serious times THE BILLEN PROFILE

Andrew Billen catches up with the energetic Tom Mockridge, who joined Liberty Global after 20 years as a senior lieutenant at its international rival, News Corp

V

irgin TV commercials currently feature the runner Usain Bolt multi-tasking so furiously that he has split into a whole family of Bolts: doddery granddad Bolt, mummy Bolt, baby Bolt and so on. The idea is to demonstrate that superfast internet lets an entire household enjoy the web at once.

My guess is that the complexity of Bolt’s comedy life is nothing against the reality of the very serious Tom Mockridge’s.

Virgin’s chief executive is not just new to the top job in UK cable television, but has twins back home, not yet three years old.

If you judge a man’s workload by the difficulty in setting up an interview with him – and I fear I do – Mockridge’s is heavier than Atlas’s.

It not only takes months to get him to agree a date, but as I narrow in on 16

my target, the hour and day changes three times, and the venue once.

To be fair, once I am in the Knightsbridge HQ of Liberty Global, which acquired Virgin Media a year ago, I wait only 20 minutes.

To be even fairer, the date moved from Wednesday to Thursday so that Mockridge could join a Virgin salesman door-knocking in Glasgow.

“This guy has been doing it for 15 years,” he says admiringly. “It used to be my experience that people syphoned out of it, and if they lasted 12 months, it was good.”

Mockridge does not know me, but I know him a little because the former print journalist was chief executive of News International, owner of my newspaper, The Times.

I liked him – partly because, however dark the news out of News International was following the resignation of Rebekah Brooks (the CEO he replaced), he ensured we heard it first.

His reign was short, however. After 22 years working all over the world for Rupert Murdoch, two Decembers ago he resigned, passed over for the job of running News Corp, Murdoch’s newly divvied up, global publishing operation.

He did not have long, however, to ponder how to spend the reported £7m in pay and compensation with which he left.

In June he joined Virgin and began answering, ultimately, to a new mogul, Liberty’s John Malone, an old rival of Murdoch’s in America.

At Wapping he was succeeded by Mike Darcey. Coincidentally, I interviewed him for this magazine in 2012 when he was Sky’s chief operating officer.

I tell Mockridge what Darcey told me back then: “Virgin and its predecessors focused on going bust a few times, but mainly focused on not doing stuff for themselves but complaining a lot. I

AFP/Carl Court

think Virgin has got itself into a much better place.”

“I think he was maybe being a little bit colloquial. You know, New Zealanders can sometimes be a bit casual with their language,” Mockridge says, which would be terribly racist were he not a Kiwi himself.

His own use of language is not particularly colloquial or colourful and, at times, he speaks so softly his speech is close to indecipherable. Perhaps this is why he gives so very few interviews.

He points out that there were originally something like 600 cable franchises in the UK. Many were local businessmen pitting themselves against the incumbent giants, the BBC and BT. The going was rough, but when they merged and rebranded as Virgin, it was upon their infrastructure that success was built.

One of those investors was Malone himself, at Telewest. But if I was hoping to provoke Mockridge into a scrap with Television www.rts.org.uk February 2014

his successor at Wapping, I am disap-​ pointed.

“At Virgin we’re a big partner of Sky,” says Mockridge. “We are its single biggest distributer, apart from itself, of Sky channels.”

That’s a change, I say. Back in 2007 Sky channels disappeared from Virgin homes in one almighty stand-off.

“And in the end it was an argument that probably didn’t do much credit to either side. It was an argument where people got into some monetary debate that, at the time, might have seemed emotionally important to people, but once settled became pretty irrelevant.

Both businesses since then have been very successful.”

Some of the recent good news for Virgin is that its TiVo boxes – Sky+ plus, you might say – are now in more than half of Virgin’s close-on 4 million homes.

Mockridge, himself, does not have one, however – Virgin’s cable does not yet stretch down his street. Instead, he

watches through the company’s internet service, Anywhere – and has retained the Sky box he received from his days as a non-executive director of Sky. As importantly, Virgin has arrived at a coherent position on content. Gone are the days of its own-brand channels and Richard Branson (who licenses the Virgin name to Liberty) claiming Virgin One could take on Sky One. A Virgin box is now a toll-charging portal to more or less any content you want, including, in recent months, BT Sport and Netflix.

“We certainly wish to have the most comprehensive choice,” says Mockridge. “I won’t say we will have everything, because that invites us to pay a price on behalf of our customers that’s irrespective [of value]…

“BT Sport is a good example. It obviously cost us money in addition to what we had in the plan, because it didn’t exist when we acquired the � 17

Philip Bannister

Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corporation

Tom Mockridge: transnational troubleshooter Born 1955; brought up in Auckland, New Zealand Married Lucia Baresi; twins Filippa and Rodolfo, aged two. Formerly married to Jacqueline Bullock 1977 Reporter, Taranaki Daily News 1980 Economics correspondent, Sydney Morning Herald 1980 Adviser to Australia’s treasury minister Paul Keating 1991 Assistant to CEO Ken Cowley, News Ltd 1997 CEO, Foxtel, 2000 Leads new-media joint venture between News Corp and Hong Kong Telecom, followed by roles at Star TV 2001 MD, Independent Newspapers; chairman Sky New Zealand 2002 Leads merger of Telepiu and Stream TV to form Sky Italia 2003 CEO, Sky Italia 2008 MD of European television, News Corp 2009 Joins BSkyB board 2011 CEO, News International following departure of Rebekah Brooks 2012 Resigns in December when passed over for promotion in company restructure Hobbies All Blacks Supporter, rooted for Italy in 2010 World Cup

18

Public domain

Chief executive, Virgin Media since June 2013

� company, but we took the decision that our customers wanted to see those games, wanted to see this new operator and how it would do the football, so yes, we put it there.”

But at a price passed on to subscribers? “I think it’s a genuine issue. There has to be concern about the pace of the rise of costs and sports rights, particularly in football.

“You’ve got to ask, ‘Is that reflecting the quality of the product? Is it reflecting the number of goals scored? Is it reflecting the quality of the coaches?

Or is it reflecting the method of sale? Is football on television becoming too expensive for people?’

“In the end, we want people to have the choice of being able to watch it.”

Is it an example of the market not really acting on behalf of the consumer? “Well, it depends what you call the market, because in this case, as you know, the Premier League has an exemption from normal competition law. It can sell the football rights collectively.”

Is he saying it is a rigged market?

“No, no, absolutely not,” insists Mockridge. “I’m not suggesting that for a second, but it’s a fact that the Premier League has an exemption from the normal competition law in order to sell its rights collectively and that obviously has a big influence [on price].”

Mockridge, who is 58, was brought up on rugby, not soccer, in New Zealand’s North Island. He is the son of an ex-soldier who found an “excellent” job in Auckland’s famous brewery, Lion Nathan; his mother was another member of the Anzac wartime forces.

Both are now deceased.

Mockridge, his brother and two sisters did not have a television until he was 13. His ambitions lay in print. He entered journalism as a reporter in the Taumarunui office of the Taranaki Daily News, sporting, it is said, a moustache, flares and a second-hand car.

“He had ‘I’m not hanging round here very long’ stamped all over him,” recalled one news editor.

Mockridge says he bought “a oneway ticket” north – or, at least, as far north as Sydney. After a stint on the

Public domain

John Malone, chairman of Liberty Global

Morning Herald, he became a press adviser to Paul Keating, the Australian treasury minister and future prime minister. The two still see each other.

His long relationship with Rupert Murdoch began in 1991, when he was appointed assistant to the CEO at the company that ran his Australian newspapers.

He was promoted to head of Foxtel, the pay-TV service, before moving to Murdoch’s Star TV group in Asia. He returned to New Zealand as chief executive of Independent Newspapers, another member of the News Corp family, and to chair the board of Sky New Zealand.

He and his wife, Jacquie, spent $4m on a spectacular, glass-fronted house with panoramic views on the North Shore.

“Then I got a call one midnight from Rupert and he said, ‘Can you come up to Milan?’ So I flew up to Milan and he said, ‘Look, we’re going to do this merger [between Murdoch’s Stream and former rival Telepiu] and I’d like you to lead it.’

Television www.rts.org.uk February 2014

“But it was a great experience. It was a big challenge because our main competitor was Mediaset, which was Berlusconi’s company, and Berlusconi was a great entrepreneur… It presented some particular challenges.”

Sky Italia faced not only President Berlusconi’s regulatory machinations, but high levels of fraudulent viewing.

In addition, liberals feared that Sky would increase the right’s media stranglehold.

In fact, says Mockridge, its news channel, TG24, set the standard for “straight news” in a country where news had traditionally been politicised.

That, football rights and better encryption, built a sound infrastructure. Subscriptions rose from 2 million to 5 million.

There were personal challenges, too.

The Mockridges’ marriage broke down a few years after the move to Milan. He then remarried – to one of his emp­ loyees, TV journalist Lucia Baresi.

Although the family is recently back from a holiday in the Alpine village where they wed, their children will have

few memories of an Italian childhood.

In July 2011 another phone call brought Mockridge to London.

In his resignation statement in December 2012, in which he explained that, “to be direct”, the new structure did not offer him a role he was “comfortable with”, he thanked Murdoch “for sending me to Italy, where I met and married Lucia and I am now blessed with Filippa and Rodolfo.”

“This family is my future,” he said, in a pointed reference to the family business he was leaving.

“It’s my first family,” he says. “These are the only children I have. I’ve been very lucky.”

So Italy changed not only his career, but his life? “It did. It did. But the irony is that my parents met in Italy because they were both in the New Zealand Army, both serving overseas and they met in Italy.”

I ask about some of the great figures he has worked with in his 35-year career. Keating he credits for Australia’s fully funded retirement pension scheme. He remains, at 70, “great fun and great company”.

Berlusconi? “At a personal level, he was very, very engaging. You can’t underestimate just the sheer charm and human element to that. At the political level, I think he’s a fundamental reason why Italy has performed so badly. But you couldn’t fault his personal politeness.”

And how would he compare Rupert Murdoch with his new proprietor, John Malone, the 72-year-old media billion­ aire once named Darth Vader by Al Gore?

“Look, one thing is for certain, they both respect each other a great deal.

Sure, they’ve competed a bit, but more often than not they have seen each other as very successful individuals.

“I think they’re personally quite friendly, they are ambitious for continuing success. It’s an interesting thing working for people who set the bar of success very high. It’s one of the joys of doing jobs like this.”

I am just about to ask who shouts the more when the PR tells me my time is up – although it really shouldn’t be.

Mockridge asks for my card and says he will ring me. Despite some prompting from the press office, he never actually does. I am grateful to have cornered him for even 40 minutes.

For my next trick I’ll attempt to catch up with Usain Bolt.

19

Business

What would you pay to be Five?

Channel 5

What is Channel 5 worth and who would pay enough to make owner Richard Desmond part with it? Raymond Snoddy runs the numbers

C5: the home of Celebrity Big Brother

A

round now, senior executives in 30 top media companies in the UK and abroad, will be sharpening their pencils and wondering whether to put in a bid for Channel 5 – and, if so, for how much.

They will have received a 100-page document from Barclay’s merchant banking arm, setting out the facts and figures about the Channel 5 business bought by the Northern & Shell chairman Richard Desmond in July 2010 for £103.5m.

The companies, which will certainly 20

include all the usual suspects, ranging from ITV, Channel 4, BSkyB and BT in the UK to NBC, AMC, Scripps, Discovery and Turner Broadcasting in the US, will have until the end of this month to submit indicative bids.

The bankers have tried to set the parameters of the auction by suggesting, possibly informally, that Desmond will be looking for at least £700m for the business, which groups three television channels plus one-hourdelayed versions of each one.

For Claire Enders, head of Enders Analysis and a former senior commercial television executive, the reason

why Desmond is testing the water is obvious.

“The timing is directly related to the credit wave that has washed the London market. There were more merger and acquisition deals last year than in the previous four. American media companies are looking for foreign earnings,” Enders explains.

In other words, Desmond, owner of The Daily Express, The Daily Star and the celebrity magazine OK!, has seen a window of opportunity to make an extravagant profit and might decide to seize the moment.

Another factor in the minds of the

Television www.rts.org.uk February 2014

C5: the home of the CSI franchise

Channel 5

bankers must be the hope that new rivals BSkyB and BT can be enticed into extending their bidding wars from sports rights into mainstream TV. The reason that Desmond is able to run an auction for Channel 5 at all is that, with a mixture of intense costcutting and programme deals such as Big Brother and Celebrity Big Brother, the previously loss-making business is respectably profitable.

Last year Channel 5 is believed to have made an operating profit approaching £70m.

Dawn Airey, a senior vice-president at Yahoo! who has been CEO of Channel 5 twice, believes Desmond has the skill of buying companies at the right time for bargain basement prices and then stripping out costs.

“He benefited from the rising tide of advertising growth, but he cleverly and critically made one brilliant move – commissioning Big Brother,” says Airey. “If only the board of Channel 5 had approved the commissioning of Big Brother when it was first pitched to me in the late 1990s, the trajectory of the company would have been so very different.”

Jeff Ford, director of content at Ireland’s TV3 and a former director of programmes at Channel 5, has a similar view.

“He [Desmond] obviously went into the business with eyes absolutely wide open, knowing what he could do to the business, cutting costs and using the synergies between newspapers, magazines and broadcasting,” says Ford.

“Hat’s off to Richard. He has done a fantastic job and he has delivered on making Channel 5 a success,” the TV3 executive adds.

But can that success really be worth seven times what Desmond paid for the business little more than three years ago, and seven times its annual profits?

Not many people, apart from Desmond and his bankers, believe £700m is a plausible figure.

The sceptics include David Elstein, the founding chief executive of Channel 5. “I don’t think Channel 5 is worth anything like £700m. I think Richard will do very well to get anywhere north of £400m,” Elstein told The Media Show.

He acknowledged, however, that

among the hard-to-reach 16- to 34-year-olds beloved of advertisers Big Brother scores highly.

Enders takes a similar approach to valuation: “A more realistic valuation for Channel 5 would be £400m rather than £700m. It’s not like ITV, which makes and distributes programmes such as Downton to the rest of the world.”

The channel has a 4.5% audience share, but is totally dependent on advertising and has no real programme assets of its own.

Desmond, or any new owner, will have to negotiate a new contract for Big Brother next year and the fee could rise.

Who among the 30 potential bidders, once they have scrutinised the sale document, will actually come to the party?

ITV is an extremely unlikely bidder, not least for regulatory reasons. Such a purchase would increase ITV’s existing dominance in TV advertising from 45% to 54%.

Some think Channel 4 should have bought the channel last time – but couldn’t afford it now.

A BSkyB vs BT battle is possible, and both parties certainly have the money, but this is probably unlikely.

INDICATING HE WANTS AT LEAST £700M, AMOUR-PROPRE MIGHT STAND IN THE WAY OF ANYTHING LESS THAN £500M

BSkyB has had opportunities to buy Channel 5 in the past and never did – and might have bigger fish to fry now, such as establishing a relationship with a big mobile operator such as Vodafone.

Sky might also want to save its spare cash for the real BT battle – the next round of bidding for Premier League rights.

BT could re-launch Channel 5 as the BT channel, but the company has no experience of advertising-funded television and the profile may be a bit down-market for what it is trying to achieve. BT seems focused firmly on using sports rights to drive broadband take-up.

If there is going to be a purchaser, their passport will probably be American.

US television companies have been wary about buying British public service broadcasters, even though Channel 5’s obligations are light.

AMC has just bought Liberty Global’s channel division, Chellomedia, and anyway it specialises in modern, edgy programming such as Breaking Bad. Turner appears to be more interested in acquiring production companies. And paying anything like £700m for Channel 5 would be difficult for Gerhard Zeiler, its international head, because he was the one who sold the business for £103.5m when running RTL. It is likely that Scripps, which bought Virgin’s stake in UKTV, Discovery and NBC will have a serious look. However, an asking price of more than $1.1bn might be a little daunting.

There could also be an unexpected wild card entrant from Asia, Russia or South America backed by a billionaire determined to get into the UK media market.

After all, nobody predicted that the owner of The Daily Express and Star would suddenly pop up and buy Channel 5.

It is more than possible, however, that Channel 5 will not in the end be sold. Desmond doesn’t need the money for any particular reason.

Having indicated he wants at least £700m, amour-propre might stand in the way of anything less than £500m.

And here Desmond has form. Three years ago he got bankers to test the water on a potential sale of The Daily Express.

21

W

hen I started writing about TV audience research 40 years ago, there were just three TV channels and only one of them carried advertising. There was no television in the morning or after midnight and most homes had only one TV set. The video cassette recorder had not reached the home; satellite and cable TV were a long way off; and the internet had hardly been imagined.

In those days, audience measurement was pretty straightforward. Yet there were still heated disputes about how many people were viewing at any one time, what they were watching and what sort of people they were, in terms of income and social class.

22

iStockPhoto.com

Tracking the ratings revolution

Audience measurement 1

As viewing online gathers pace, Barb is having to look beyond the TV set.

Torin Douglas reports Fast-forward 40 years and TV audience measurement is bafflingly complex. More channels, more boxes, more platforms, more devices, more socioeconomic grades, more household combinations, more out-of-home opportunities. And all those variables keep changing, multiplying the combi­

nations that need to be measured.

Add in purchase data, return-path data and social-media data (such as tweets per thousand viewers) and it’s clear that measuring viewing is not for the faint-hearted.

The Christmas and New Year ratings demonstrate just what Barb and its research contractors are up against – and why they are now gearing up for one of the biggest changes in audience measurement history, with a venture called Project Dovetail.

Christmas Day was once a pinnacle of the TV year, with some shows – such as Morecambe & Wise and Only Fools and Horses – attracting more than 20 million viewers.

In 2013 no Christmas Day programme reached even 10 million – or at least not on the day itself. The top show

was the BBC One sitcom, Mrs Brown’s Boys, with an average “overnight” audience of 9.4 million according to Barb.

Next came Doctor Who with 8.3 million and Coronation Street with 7.9 million.

But 2.8 million more viewers caught up with Doctor Who over the next seven days via “time-shifting” devices such as the Sky+ box, boosting its “consolidated audience” to 11.14 million.

An extra 2 million watched Mrs Brown’s Boys, confirming it in top place with 11.52 million, while Downton Abbey picked up an extra 2.4 million viewers, rising from seventh place (with 6.6 million viewers) to sixth (with 9 million).

Barb, which has been measuring the TV audience for broadcasters and advertisers since 1981, has been coping with consolidated viewing for years – ever since the video cassette recorder became a significant feature of our lives.

But something equally disruptive is now gaining ground: Barb is having to look beyond the TV set – towards viewing on PCs, tablets and mobiles.

Unlike the main TV channels, the BBC iPlayer had a record-breaking festive season. On New Year’s Day, it received nearly 11 million download requests, a record for a single day and 35% up on the first day of 2013.

The Christmas Day episode of Doctor Who attracted almost 2 million downloads (on top of the extra 2.8 million viewers in the consolidated TV ratings).

Another significant milestone was passed on Boxing Day. In a blog, the BBC’s head of iPlayer, Dan Taylor, wrote: “Boxing Day saw tablet viewing overtake computer viewing for the first time in iPlayer history”.

Some 2.2 million iPlayer requests came from tablets, compared with 2.1 million from computers – and across the festive period 941,000 people downloaded the mobile and tablet iPlayer apps.

Sherlock gave the ratings-crunchers even more food for thought. First, the producers created a mini-episode, not shown on TV, to whet fans’ appetites.

It was viewed over 1.5 million times on BBC iPlayer and BBC Red Button, with 5.6 million more views on YouTube.

Then the first Sherlock episode, on New Year’s Day, shattered records for catch-up viewing. Press reports said it had been watched by 9.2 million viewers on the day, and a further 3.5 million had time-shifted the programme, boosting the consolidated audience to 12.7 million.

Television www.rts.org.uk February 2014

But according to Chris Humpherson at Overnights.TV, the reality was even more remarkable. “The actual live audience was just 6.8 million” he says.

“Barb’s overnight figure included VOSDAL (viewing on same day as live) – which includes people who recorded and then watched before 2:00am following the day of transmission.

“Actually, 5.9 million people timeshifted – almost doubling the consolidated audience.”

So how is Barb going to integrate all this on-demand viewing on computers, tablets and mobiles with traditional viewing on the TV set – without risking the “gold-standard” currency status of its current ratings system, which underpins more than £7bn of TV revenue a year?

Barb has invited tenders from research companies to develop a

BOXING DAY SAW TABLET VIEWING OVERTAKE COMPUTER VIEWING FOR THE FIRST TIME IN IPLAYER HISTORY hybrid measurement system, to integrate the online data with the existing viewing figures.

Its Project Dovetail aims to combine real-time census data from websites, such as the BBC iPlayer and Channel 4’s 4oD, with enhanced information from the existing Barb panel, which tracks the viewing of a nationally and regionally representative sample of 12,000 people, minute by minute.

“For more than a year, all new Barb panel homes have had software that tells us what is being watched on desktop and laptop computers” says Barb CEO Justin Sampson. “Crucially, it also tells us who is watching.

“We’re also starting to measure viewing on tablets and smartphones, and we plan to extend our panel to include homes that don’t have TVs but do have a broadband connection - a small but growing proportion of the country.”

Later this year Barb will award the hybrid measurement contract and,

separately, it is expected to publish a regular table of broadcasters’ online viewing, as the BBC currently does for iPlayer.

But there’s a lot that Barb is not attempting to measure.

This includes most of the material on YouTube and the interaction between TV and Twitter, which firms such as Overnights.TV and SecondSync are now analysing.

Sampson, who previously worked at ITV and the Radio Advertising Bureau, is keen to keep things in perspective.

He points out that online viewing – like time-shifting – is still a small proportion of the whole.

“Twelve years ago, Sky+ was launched to widespread comment that this was the death-knell for live TV viewing” he says. “Spin forward and we see that around 89% of television viewing still takes place at the time of broadcast.

“The needs of viewers are still largely being met by the broadcast schedule, but we have to keep across online viewing, too.”

Thinkbox, the marketing body for commercial television, agrees. Its research director, Neil Mortensen, says: “Our clients are really surprised to hear that TV viewing is growing, not falling.

“Broadcasters are now getting an extra 1.5% of viewing on devices outside the TV set and it’s growing. That’s adding value for broadcasters and advertisers and needs to be measured.”

Toby Syfret of Enders Analysis says it’s important that Barb gets it right: “People are worried that panel research is no longer seen as relevant in the modern age of ‘big data’.

“If Barb succeeds, it will boost confidence in the panel mechanism – and also give a much better sense of the value that online viewing is really adding.”

But what Project Dovetail is attempting is not easy. “People assume it’s easy because there is all this returnpath data,” says Mortensen. “But it’s difficult to turn server logs into useable data, relating to real people. And then to combine it with the existing TV research... someone said it’s not like comparing apples and pears, but apples and sheep.”

Barb’s chairman, Nigel Sharrocks, puts it slightly differently. “It’s like changing all four wheels while going down the motorway at 70mph.”

Perhaps they should ask Sherlock.

23

Audience measurement 2

Barb’s gold standard

B

arb revealed details of its Project Dovetail initiative at RTS London Centre’s first event of the year.

Project Dovetail aims to develop a new measurement system that will give a clearer picture of today’s fragmented audiences across traditional and emerging platforms.

A full house heard Barb chairman Nigel Sharrocks and chief executive Justin Sampson explain how the ratings measurement organisation plans to integrate online data with information obtained from its trusted viewing panel.

“Barb has had a reputation as a bit of a secret society,” admitted Sharrocks, as he promised a new era of openness while the body grapples with the complexities of modern-day TV. “When digital first started to kick in, in the early 2000s, there wasn’t a paradigm shift – people just got content in lots of different ways,” said Sharrocks, who has been Barb’s non-executive chairman since last October. “But what we’re seeing now with connected devices, video-on-­ demand and [catch-up] players is a real convergence of content.

24

iStockPhoto.com

Barb’s Project Dovetail reaffirms the value of a representative audience panel, hears Matthew Bell

“That is a paradigm shift and Barb has to open up its mind to how it can do things differently.

“In this more complex world, trying to understand what Barb’s doing is a hell of a time commitment if you’re running a TV channel. But we do have to engage everybody. People have to understand what questions we’re trying to answer.”

Nevertheless, he added: “We can’t bugger up the basics, otherwise all hell breaks loose. In the 30 or so years that I was in the ad business, the Barb numbers only went wrong two or three times.”

Justin Sampson, Barb’s CEO since summer 2012, explained how Project Dovetail aims to combine the information gathered from the Barb panel with the “device-based data, or big data, which is distributed by the web servers that [send out] content thought the internet to tablets, computers, smart phones and connected TVs”.

Attempting to measure accurately the new ways of viewing is no substitute for the Barb panel, which has been providing gold-standard viewing figures since the body was set up in 1981.

“Big data doesn’t tell us who is

watching. This is where we have to recognise and celebrate the use of the Barb panel,” said Sampson. “For many years the panel has been able to answer the fundamental questions that advertisers and programmers alike want to know the answer to – very specifically: who was watching and how were they watching.

“Without these you can’t determine the reach of a programme. For advertisers, campaign reach and frequency are the fundamental building blocks to understanding the effectiveness of their marketing investment.”

Some 5,100 homes, balanced by age, sex, ethnicity and other factors, contain 12,000 panellists using 30,000 devices.

Running such an operation doesn’t come cheap: the TV industry has invested around £200m over the past 10 years to ensure the panel delivers accurate viewing data.

The panel can also keep pace with new technological developments.

Since September 2012, every new home joining the panel has software installed on their laptops and desktops as well as the traditional meters attached to the TV set.

Early results reveal that in any one week around 10% of adults (14% of 16- to 24-year-olds) watch at least some TV on desktop and laptops, although total viewing time is less than 1% of total viewing.

Barb will be in a position to measure tablet and smart phone audiences later this year. The research company has drawn up a shortlist of organisations to design and run the new hybrid measuring system.

“We’re looking for an organisation that can not only bring intellectual rigour to the task of how you fuse [the panel with big data], but also bring data processing expertise to doing that job day after day,” said Sampson.

Full hybrid measurement could be available in 2016, though he admitted this was a “best-case scenario”.

The RTS London centre event, “You watch it, we measure it”, was held at ITV Studios

PEOPLE HAVE TO UNDERSTAND THE QUESTIONS WE ARE TRYING TO ANSWER February 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

Congratulations to

on 25 years of broadcasting

Win win for

MTV UK Geordie Shore

W

hen Geordie Shore star Charlotte Crosby won Celebrity Big Brother last year it crowned a good year for Geordie’s broadcaster, MTV UK. Not only did it demonstrate that MTV could create a show that has spilled over into the mainstream, but the channel’s ratings last year were the highest for seven years.

How, in an era of increasing fragmentation and new entrants to the market, has MTV UK managed to do that and create intellectual property that has export value?

A lot of the success has been driven by a move into original UK production for young audiences. This shift is part of a wider trend across Viacom International Media Networks (VIMN), owned by US giant Viacom.

In the UK, over the past few years, the company has moved from commissioning sporadically to regularly commissioning original, British shows 26

UK original programming

Viacom’s investment in local versions of its US formats is paying off for its UK channels – and for the British producers making the shows, learns Tara Conlan for its key brands: MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon.

MTV UK’s average audience among 16-34s has increased by 86% in the course of five years, says Viacom International. According to Barb figures, the average weekly reach of the main MTV channel at the start of 2014 was around 2.2 million, compared with 1.4 million a year ago.

Instead of focusing on channel expansion, Viacom’s strategy has been

to own more of its own content and increase ratings.

A 5% rise in revenues at its media networks division to $9.7bn in the year to September 2013 was attributed by analysts to an increase in audiences at MTV and Nickelodeon in the US. VIMN does not provide figures for budgets or investment in UK content.

But as VIMN senior vice-president for youth and music Kerry Taylor says: “We’re investing more than we’ve ever invested before. If you look at the number of hours of content… percentage-wise it has been huge because of the shift in our commissioning strategy.”

For her, the success of Geordie Shore – a remake by Lime Pictures of MTV’s US reality series, Jersey Shore, that launched in May 2011 – is key to showing the parent company that investing in UK content works.

Geordie Shore is the most popular show in MTV’s history here, peaking at 1.1 million viewers, and has sold well abroad. Local versions have been made in Poland and Spain, with other countries in development.

MTV

The antics of Charlotte et al are a far cry from the music videos that led to MTV’s formation, but it has evolved as music channels playing endless pop videos have been overtaken by technology.

As Taylor says: “The biggest shift in strategy for MTV has been about wanting to make really big, noisy shows, and shows that have a massive impact in the social-media space.”

She goes on: “We’ve done seven seasons of Geordie, we’ve made Teen Dad, we’ve done three seasons of The Valleys, we’ve made Beauty School Cop Outs, we’re making Ex on the Beach (another reality show based around introducing people’s ex-partners week by week).

“While we’ve commissioned for the UK, we’ve also been commissioning for MTV internationally using UK production companies.”

Taylor adds: “Being a global brand, we are fortunate to have access to the MTV US pipeline.

“We’re not investing in hundreds of shows, so we have to minimise our Television www.rts.org.uk February 2014

THE BIGGEST SHIFT IN STRATEGY FOR MTV HAS BEEN ABOUT WANTING TO MAKE REALLY BIG, NOISY SHOWS, AND SHOWS THAT HAVE A MASSIVE IMPACT IN THE SOCIAL-MEDIA SPACE

risk around what we do. Increasingly, in a crowded marketplace it’s hard to launch completely new shows.

“It makes sense for us to leverage the really successful formats that we are getting from the US.” One of the most eagerly anticipated new shows from MTV UK is a British version by Renegade Pictures of the US hit, Catfish. The American TV version (itself spawned by a film) stars Nev Schulman and Max Joseph as they uncover the realities of people who have found romance online.

“Max and Nev are brilliant in the US original,” says Taylor. “We’re piloting British versions of them.

“It will be interesting to see if the audience is prepared to take an alternative Max and Nev. “That’s got a lot of potential to be a really strong part of our strategy, but of course we also realise that people need MTV to be brave and do original and exciting things.”

She says her team is committed to finding original production: “Our next wave of development is about finding � 27

� something new and groundbreaking.”

All of this is in addition to MTV investing in thousands of hours of music content each year that also plays out internationally.

It is key for MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon that the shows it makes in the UK have global appeal.

As VIMN’s senior vice-president for comedy, Jill Offman, explains: “What we’re looking to do is use the UK as a launchpad or production hub for shows that we’re going to make for the rest of the world.

“Viacom is making a big move towards owning as much of our own content as possible. Comedy Central, as distinct from Nickelodeon and MTV, has less of a global pipeline.”

Offman says that following the success of award-winning sitcom Threesome, which was sold as a format, Viacom “saw that comedy could travel out of the UK and into the US”.

Threesome, unfortunately, will not be returning for a third series. The reason, says Offman, is “it’s back to economics. It’s hard to sustain a comedy for the UK only.”

However, Viacom insists it is not backing away from comedy produced in the UK. There have been reports that, following the success of shows such as the BBC’s Mrs Brown’s Boys, the company wants to make populist, long-run sitcoms. One such show is Mummy’s Boys, about two adult siblings raising a younger sibling when their mother dies; the show is being made

by Threesome producer Big Talk.

Offman says the increase in investment at Comedy Central UK has been incremental.

28

MTV

The Valleys

WHAT WE’RE LOOKING TO DO IS USE THE UK AS A LAUNCHPAD OR PRODUCTION HUB FOR SHOWS THAT WE’RE GOING TO MAKE FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD She faced scepticism when she commissioned Dirty Sexy Funny (Olivia Lee’s show from Tiger Aspect) in 2010.

But it worked and following that came series such as Threesome and Big Bad World.

Things are slightly different at Nickelodeon UK, which is more established as an investor in local production. This goes back to the co-production deal Nick Jr did for its hit show, Peppa Pig, 10 years ago and which led to commissions for further shows, such as Ben & Holly’s Little Kingdom.

On the way are new programmes hoping to follow in Peppa’s lucrative trotter prints. These include two animation series, Digby Dragon and Puffin Rock, that feature the voice of Bridesmaids star Chris O’Dowd.

Nickelodeon UK’s senior vice-president and managing director, Tina McCann, explains that 55% of Nick Jr’s commissions are UK originations. This is partly driven by the high-quality competition in Britain from the likes of CBeebies.

“Pre-school is such a strong genre.

There has never really been a doubt that we would invest in it,” says McCann. “We are a very international company, so if it works globally, that’s great for us.”

She says that when it comes to the main Nick channel, it features predominantly live-action shows from the US, but “it is very important to have UK voices” in programmes such as Genie in the House.

McCann adds: “I think that on the IP front, a good idea is a good idea and we will always be investing in the UK.” One analyst who does not wish to be named says there are many reasons for VIMN to continue its investment in UK shows. “Across the group it tends to invest in entertainment, reality and children’s,” he says.

“It has had a lot of local production on Nickelodeon UK for some time.

“It is beneficial because local content gets better ratings, generally.

It also gives Nickelodeon a stronger position when negotiating with third parties.”

For UK producers, Viacom International’s determination to invest locally is a welcome development and has given them access to the group’s US channel commissioners as well.

As competition for audiences continues to grow, and the international appeal of British content shows no sign of waning, the hope is that Viacom’s commitment to UK production across all the genres it operates in will be for the long term.

February 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

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Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future by Autonomy founder Dr Michael Lynch 13 MAY VENUE TBC

Getting teens to turn on

W

hether TV companies still have what it takes to win the teen audience is a question occupying minds at both broadcasters and content companies.

Yet, paradoxically, the space where internet meets terrestrial TV is providing fertile ground for innovation by the emerging generation of young content creators – and by more traditional programme-makers, too.

Examine current TV schedules and you’d be forgiven for thinking broadcasters have “missed the boat”, says Callum McGeoch, creative director at youth-engagement agency Livity.

“Although the BBC has done a good job extending BBC Three’s appeal at the younger end of its audience and Radio 1’s efforts to become multi-platform are interesting, there’s little effort to fill the gap left by Channel 4’s T4 and BBC Switch,” he suggests. “Whether this is lack of confidence or a need to maximise ratings, it’s hard to say.

“Either way, much of the most popular teen content is now on YouTube. Teens spend more time consuming content via social media than on TV.” Widespread evidence does show a fundamental shift in viewing behaviour. The proportion of five-to-15s watching television on devices other than TVs rose from 34% in 2012 to 45% last year, according to Ofcom’s Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes report.

US research released in the same month by The New York Times showed YouTube as the most popular source of online video content for American 18-to-34s – accounting for 63% of online viewing, compared with the 29% of viewing via TV companies’ own sites.

Meanwhile, the growing importance of teens’ online TV consumption has been underlined recently by a number of high-profile deals.

In May 2013, YouTube-exclusive kids 30

Content

Can broadcasters keep up with online players in the battle for teenage audiences? Meg Carter investigates and teens channel Awesomeness TV was bought by DreamWorks for $33m.

In August, 21st Century Fox paid $70m for a 5% stake in Vice, the global youth media business and digital TV network that grew out of an edgy youth magazine. And last October, online youth broadcaster SB.TV – set up by Londoner Jamal Edwards when he was just 16 – was valued at £8m when Miroma Ventures took a minority stake.

The smart money clearly thinks chasing teens is worth the risk. Less clear cut is who is best positioned to create the content for this fickle, digitally-distracted audience.

For a start, there’s little evidence that teens have lost interest in TV per se, says Jeremy Pounder, client director at media agency Mindshare: “Catering for younger teens has become less attractive thanks to greater controls on food and drinks advertising.

“But the appeal of winning older teens is undiminished. Teens still love

IT’S ESSENTIAL TO EXPLORE HIGHER-VOLUME, LOW-COST AND QUICKERTURNAROUND PRODUCTION TECHNIQUES

celebrity and talent shows, comedy and younger-skewed drama and are still well-served by broadcasters across these genres.”

Both the BBC and Channel 4 are building digital initiatives aimed at teenagers. 4Shorts, for example, is a new Channel 4 on-demand brand for teens that serves up bite-sized TV that they can watch and share, typically via smart phones, while on the move.

“It’s not lack of teen content on TV that drove teen audiences online, but the natural swell towards on-demand viewing – a lot of which is additional to TV viewing,” says Channel 4 sales director Jonathan Allan.

He adds that the proportion of 16-to-24s in the channel’s audience has changed little in recent years.

4Shorts content straddles three strands: most-tweeted about moments from recently broadcast Channel 4 shows; specially commissioned, TV-show-related bonus content; and newly commissioned, experimental content.

“It’s all about the right content for the right context in the right environment,” says Allan. “And as today’s teens grow up, meeting this creative challenge will serve us well for the future.”

The BBC, too, is busy in this area.

BBC Three has a number of multiplatform initiatives intended to break fresh young talent and is collaborating more closely across platforms with Radio 1. It also has a multi-platform content strategy to break selected content first on non-TV platforms.

“We have to be realistic,” explains BBC Three controller Zai Bennett. “We are one of a huge array of media that teens are consuming, so we have to be sure about our mission for them.

“BBC Three is all about innovation and new British talent. We have the trust of our audience to try our new programming, and our content is of the highest possible quality – which is something audiences, even younger ones, expect from the BBC.”

Perhaps. Yet, suggest some observers, TV companies are still missing a number of tricks.

For a start, they should learn the lessons of high-profile, multi-platform teen flops such as ITV’s Britannia High.

And they need a better understanding of when to quit, claim others, who question Channel 4’s decision to let Skins run to seven series – by which point its audience was down from 1.2 million to an average of 409,000.

“It’s essential to explore higher-volume, low-cost and quicker-turnaround production techniques,” says McGeoch.

“Making successful content for the online teen audience is more a science than an art because you can’t separate community management from production [nor] writing from analytics – although this is also a powerful development tool.”

Then there’s the teen interests that TV companies don’t serve.

“Music is the largest content category for You Tube-watching teens. Gamingrelated content is a major draw online for teenage boys, and make-up and fashion for teenage girls. Yet these are areas TV companies don’t seem interested in exploring,” says Justin Gayner, co-founder of You Tube

multichannel network operator Channel Flip.

Another area where traditional TV players struggle is news and current affairs, says Al Brown, head of video at Vice: “Today’s teens are interested, but they’ve gravitated away from traditional TV news sources towards Twitter because they want news reported from the inside of the breaking story, not from people on the sidelines passing judgement.” What they want, he argues, are “young presenters and opinionated, first-hand accounts”.

Brown claims Vice’s news and current-affairs TV content, most of which is 25- to 30-minutes long, is its most popular online content. This is why Vice plans to launch a digital TV news channel later this year.

“We will only cover a story if we think we have something to offer to the conversation” he adds. “And we will have young people shoot, feature in and edit the content.

“We’ve already successfully applied this model across eight content genres, including music, arts and fashion – but it’s not something I see happening much, if at all, elsewhere.”

Developing different approaches to creating content for a younger audi-

ence is a challenge that BBC Three’s Bennett, for one, is happy to accept.

“We need to embrace all ways of making content. Just because something is expensive doesn’t make it good,” he insists.

But professionals who have honed their storytelling craft over years are probably better placed to create something engaging than someone in their bedroom, he believes: “This doesn’t mean it can’t happen – we all know it does. But in terms of truly great narratives it tends to be the very best content creators who, more often than not, have been trained and worked extensively in TV.” It’s all about finding the right approach for each piece of content depending on the intention behind it and how and where it’s likely to be consumed, agrees Gayner.

He believes that in the competition to win today’s teens the field remains wide open.

“The question is finding the right way to ‘own’ the teen audience,” he says. “The answer for broadcasters is not in trying to compete on niche content already well-served online, but creating great content with teen appeal that also has a wider audience.”

iStockPhoto.com

IT’S NOT LACK OF TEEN CONTENT ON TV THAT DROVE TEEN AUDIENCES ONLINE, BUT THE NATURAL SWELL TOWARDS ON-DEMAND VIEWING

Television www.rts.org.uk February 2014

31

Mrs Thatcher’s whipping boy

A

ll but the stoutest hearts would sink when confronted with 400 pages of a broadcasting regulator’s memoirs.

It sounds more like a specialist Mastermind subject than a book you’d want to read on the beach.

The title, To Serve the People, doesn’t lift the mood. To make matters worse, John Whitney departs as director general of the Independent Broadcasting Authority before things get really interesting with the auctioning of ITV franchises: the book covers the years 1982-89.

Thankfully, such first impressions could not be further from the reality.

Whitney has produced a sub-Pepysian diary without the sex and sack – his wife, Roma, is by his side constantly through a blizzard of lunches, dinners and then more dinners, all washed down by gallons of Perrier water.

In a self-denying ordinance Whitney gives up the demon drink for all seven years of his IBA reign, which perhaps contributes to the sharpness and precision of detail in his weekly diary dispatches.

The unfortunately portentous title was, in fact, the IBA’s motto. Whitney romps through his seven creatively lean years with waspish, colourful and sometimes bitchy descriptions of a cast of characters embracing television, politics and regulation.

He gets away with it because of the often casual, almost brutal, honesty about himself – the self-doubt, the paranoia, the amour-propre, the unselfconscious snobbery and the lack of political awareness.

He is forever banging on about “the gutter press” and the dreadful things they have done to his very good friend, Jeffrey Archer.

There is also the constant need to justify to himself the decision to give 32

Raymond Snoddy recommends a revealing account of broadcasting regulator John Whitney’s life in the firing line Book Review up being a creative, successful managing director of Capital Radio to become a bureaucrat.

At the IBA he is the whipping boy of everyone, from Margaret Thatcher and Mary Whitehouse to the more bolshie ITV bosses.

The intensely personal is given balancing weight and substance by Whitney’s ringside seat at significant television events of the era. Included are the botched launch of TV-am, the fiascos of Super Channel and BSB, and the launch of the Astra satellite that would eventually deliver Rupert Murdoch’s Sky. The causes celebres range from the row between the BBC and Thames Television over the poaching of Dallas to incendiary rows with the Thatcher Government over programmes such as

WHITNEY ROMPS THROUGH HIS SEVEN CREATIVELY LEAN YEARS WITH WASPISH, COLOURFUL AND SOMETIMES BITCHY DESCRIPTIONS

Death on the Rock to the run-up to the auctioning of the ITV licences. Dramatic revelations are limited because just about everything in the television industry leaks.

What you get is a unique, behindclosed-doors glimpse of a period when the BBC-ITV duopoly is beginning to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the coming world of multi-channel and unprecedented competition.

The underlying irony is the angst of a commercial soul trying to hold onto, through force of character and with an ever-loosening grip, standards of public life and public service broadcasting.

At least then, regulators were regulators and could actually stop things happening.

“Central Television will transmit Spitting Image for the first time this Sunday. More Trouble. Central’s board has rejected the sketch of The Supremes poking fun at the Royal Family and I have requested that one ‘bugger’ and one ‘arsehole’ be cut, as well as a sad and humiliating sequence showing Macmillan in a geriatric home slopping food over himself,” Whitney wrote in February 1984.

On the early troubles of the commercial breakfast franchise, TV-am, the IBA is repeatedly torn between supporting the venture and readvertising the licence.

TV-am managing director Bruce Gyngell is warned that is exactly what will happen if he insists on making significant programming changes.

“I am quite desperate about TV-am.

There can be little doubt that its performance, and our handling of the situation, have gone badly,” Whitney confides to his diary.

As for the plan by Thames managing director Bryan Cowgill to take Dallas from the BBC, the diarist has no doubts: “The method adopted by Thames in securing this ‘coup’ was nothing short of conduct unbecoming a gentleman,” says Whitney grandly. He went on to

Television www.rts.org.uk February 2014

but redeemed themselves by backing Death on the Rock, to Thatcher’s fury.

Whitney backed access for independents, but not the 25% quota.

Alas, he was destined to face many disappointments: the IBA lost radio – despite successfully launching a network of 50 stations – and then its very existence due to a vengeful Mrs T. And despite the many names put forward to succeed Milne at the BBC as director-general, the list did not include John Whitney.

Spitting Image and Margaret Thatcher were both challenges for John Whitney

“I would like somebody to have suggested I put my name forward, but no one has!” he says plaintively and unrealistically.

As the debate intensified over how ITV franchises should be renewed, Whitney picked up an important nuance about the way the wind was blowing from his boss at the time, IBA chairman Lord Thomson of Monifieth.

“A conversation that could have far-reaching consequences. [Lord Thomson] has had second thoughts about tendering for contracts and is now prepared to accept that the force of feeling is towards some form of competitive tendering,” says the surprised Whitney.

Across the seven years there is consistent paranoia about how he would be perceived in the press, and about leaks.

On the weekend before the decision on which group should win the DBS franchise, Whitney had the IBA dining room and boardroom swept for bugs.

“Ray Snoddy of the FT is without doubt a first-rate journalist, but I wonder sometimes whether he uses modern technology to aid his knowledge.”

No, John, no technology. Just talking to people.

And then at the end of the seven years, with the abolition of the IBA looming, it was off to be creative again and make lots of money at Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group.

On his last day John Whitney did something extraordinary.

In a farewell toast to the IBA he lifted a glass of Champagne and daringly swallowed the lot.

It was, he says, “the first time that alcohol has touched my lips in seven years.”

It was also farewell to a remarkably revelatory diary.

To Serve the People: My Years at the IBA by John Whitney CBE is published by John Libby Publishing, priced £25.00. ISBN: 978-0861967100

ITV/Tate

instruct Cowgill – successfully - to give the series back to the BBC. The launch by Margaret Thatcher in 1987 of Super Channel, the ITV channel (minus Thames) aimed at Europe, was a big deal for all concerned.

“Super Channel is called the ‘Best of British’… but I suspect the output will be pretty rubbishy,” notes Whitney.

His scepticism starts to grow about the prospects for BSB, winner of the IBA’s DBS franchise following a long-running saga: “BSB will be investing £1bn for three channels; Rupert Murdoch has invested £80m for four Astra channels. One or other is going to be proven right.”

Indeed.

As for broadcasting characters, Greg Dyke could be relied on “to place his mouth where his foot might properly be,” and Paul Fox might be a fine broadcaster but was stuck in the past and gave the impression of being “reluctant to face the future”.

BBC director-general Alasdair Milne “demonstrated a degree of arrogance that defied description”.

George Russell – the IBA, and later ITC, chairman – had little interest in the arts, except opera, and “shoots from the hip and seems to change his mind almost on a daily basis”.

Whitney’s main ire, though, is reserved for politicians. He castigates 20 Midlands MPs who came to a regional IBA buffet lunch, he says, just for the beer.

“What an unruly, crass, boring, bigoted, self-indulgent, bullying, pompous, self-satisfied lot they are. Full of wind and conceits,” says the mild-mannered Whitney.

There were many political battles over programmes. Whitney and the IBA were universally rubbished for banning a Channel 4 programme about state surveillance, MI5’s Official Secrets,

33

C

an you have too much of a good thing? Not, it seems, if you are a certain long-faced, cleanshaven, sixtysomething current affairs presenter fond of being caustic about, ahem, “BBC functionaries”.

Step forward, Jeremy Paxman. To say the Newsnight anchor was all over BBC TV’s schedules during a recent Monday night in January was something of an understatement.

As well as presenting Newsnight (his encounter with shadow chancellor Ed Balls was, admittedly, engrossing), Paxo appeared on our screens fronting BBC Two’s University Challenge followed rapidly by his BBC One history of the First World War, Britain’s Great War. At this rate he’ll win the Stephen Fry Prize for sheer small screen ubiquity.

■ Talking of which, the critical consensus is that The Great War is a triumph for the BBC. The four-part documentary is the curtain raiser to its marathon First World War centenary embracing television, radio and online.

Can the corporation keep up this high standard for the entire season?

One of the next items in the First World War extravaganza is the starry BBC Two drama documentary, 37 Days.

This examines the political crisis leading up the outbreak of war – the so-called July Crisis. The word is that this will be another must-see show.

It must have occurred to the powers that be at New Broadcasting House that if the BBC’s First World War centenary is a total triumph it will do the Beeb no harm as the debate over charter renewal revs up.

In other words, whatever you do, do mention the First World War. 34

OFF MESSAGE ■ Did Barb’s CEO, Justin Sampson, know what he was letting himself in for when he agreed to be interviewed for a recent Daily Mail article?

Headlined provocatively, “How those viewing figures TV bosses boast about are simply guesswork”, the feature, to its credit, did manage to give Mail readers some insight into the opaque world of ratings number crunchers.

What it left out was any mention of Project Dovetail, Barb’s new initiative aimed at getting on top of online viewing in its various forms – and so eloquently explained by Torin Douglas in this edition of Television.

■ Could Laura Kuenssberg’s decision to leave ITV News for the newly created role of chief correspondent at Newsnight end in tears?

The highly-regarded Scot is one of those tipped as potential successors to Adam Boulton as Sky News’s political editor.

Others include ITV’s incisive Tom Bradby and Boulton’s deputy Joey Jones plus, according to the Huffington Post, Martin Bashir. Remember him?

And given what’s happening at The Daily Telegraph, is the paper’s deputy editor, Benedict Brogan, keen for a move to Sky News?

After 25 years in the hot seat, Sky News sans Boulton will be like the Premier League minus Manchester United.

The old bruiser is a bracing voice in what, to outsiders, can sometimes seem the anodyne world of the political soundbite.

Boulton’s efforts at ensuring the live TV leaders’ debates took place in 2010 should not be forgotten.

Wonder how Alastair Campbell feels about the Sky veteran’s exit from the Westminster beat?

■ Staying with Sky, Rupert Murdoch was apparently furious at Sky Sports losing the Champions League to BT. Could worse be in store? The wellheeled Discovery is beginning to make aggressive noises regarding a Premier League bid now that it has upped its stake in Eurosport. It now controls the sports specialist.

Oh to be a Premier League footballer’s agent…

■ As Sir Howard Stringer starts examining how the BBC can increase audiences for global news channel, BBC World News, Off Message was intrigued to hear the head of a rival commercial news channel’s view of the service.

“If the BBC ever got its act together on its international news channel we’d be in real trouble,” opined the veteran news head.

Is that how other commercial competitors feel about BBC World News?

■ Attentive Today listeners would have recently heard the RTS’s exCEO, Simon Albury, making proverbial mincemeat of Justin Webb.

The occasion was a discussion on why so many black actors are crossing the Atlantic to find work in film and TV. The BBC’s poor record on diversity was brought into sharp focus by Albury’s description of what he described as an all-white newsroom.

The only non-white he saw on his visit to the Today studio was the Asian greeter, noted Albury.

Still, let’s welcome the fact that the new presenter of The Sky At Night is Maggie Aderin-Pocok. As The Guardian said, it’s gratifying to see a black, middle-aged female scientist being given a high profile by the BBC. More please – or there’s always Jeremy Paxman.

February 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

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35

RTS EARLY EVENING EVENT

Sherlock: Anatomy of a hit

With:

Mark Gatiss Writer and star

Steven Moffat Writer and producer

Sue Vertue

Executive producer, Hartswood Films

Tuesday 4 March Cavendish Conference Centre 22 Duchess Mews, London W1G 9DT Booking: 020 7822 2820 events@rts.org.uk

Ben Stephenson

Controller, drama commissioning, BBC

Hosted by:

Tom Sutcliffe

Journalist, broadcaster and Sherlock fan

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