RTS Television Magazine January 2015

January 2015

The legend looks back

Apply now for the 2015 Shiers Trust Award

d £2,000 e e n oury of television project? y Dor a histo

o £2,000 towards ant of up t e a gr k a f o ct the history of television an m on any aspe c t s k Tru wor The lishing b pu

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Objectives

The promotion of public education through the study and research of the history of ­television in all its aspects and without regard to country of origin, including the ­development and encouragement of publications and associated projects such as ­bibliographies and monographs on particular aspects, provided that the results of such study and research shall be published and that the contribution made by the Trust shall be suitably acknowledged in any publication.

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Criteria

Grants will be given to assist in the c­ ompletion of new or unfinished projects, work or literature specific to the objectives of the trust. ‘Literature’ is defined as including audio-visual media such as CD-Roms and websites.

The Trustees must be satisfied that the work they are supporting either could not be finished or ­published without the grant and that, with it, the work will be ­completed, or, the grant will provide the i­nitial phase of a project that will be ­continued and completed with other i­dentified funding.

Applications will be considered broadly in support of research, development, writing, editing or publication. Grants for research will require that the results of the work will be made known and accessible through appropriate means. In the case of literature, projects must have a real prospect of publication. Applicants must demonstrate that their work will have a clear e ­ xpectation of making a ­significant contribution to the objectives of the Trust.

Applicants will be required to satisfy the Trustees of the soundness of their projects, and identify any grants from other sources. The Trustees will not make commitments to support re­curring funding, nor make grants to cover fees or maintenance of students undertaking courses.

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George Shiers

George Shiers, a distinguished US television historian, was a long-­standing member of the RTS. Before his death in 1983, he and his wife May p ­ rovided for a bequest in their wills. The Shiers Trust grant, now in its 15th year, is normally worth £2,000.

Grants will be consid­ered and approved by the Trustees who may, at their d ­ iscretion, consult appropriate experts to assist their decisions. In assessing priorities, the Trustees will take into account the sums of money available.

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Application procedure

Applications are now invited and should be submitted to the Trustees by 31 March 2015 on an official ­application form (available from the RTS, address below). Applications should set out the nature of the project in not more than 500 words.

Supporting d ­ ocumentation may also be included. Details of your experience or qualifications should be provided. Applicants should ensure that their project conforms to all the criteria. Applications should be accompanied by a budget that clearly identifies the sum being requested for a grant and the p ­ urposes for which it will be used. Application forms are available from the RTS and should be returned to the same address:

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lare Colvin, archivist C Royal Television Society Kildare House 3 Dorset Rise London EC4Y 8EN clare@rts.org.uk

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Previous recipients

1 2 014: Shared between Dr Sheldon Hall, whose Armchair Cinema is a study of feature films on British television, and Marc Scott, whose research focuses on the unofficial development of TV in Australia 2 2 013: Barry Fox has built a website (www.tekkiepix.com) to present his collection of historical consumer electronics imagery and documents.

The picture shows a publicity still for Philips’s optical videodisc 3 2012: Paul Marshall researched a biography of Alan Archibald Campbell Swinton, the early visionary of all-electronic television 4 2 012: Simon Vaughan digitised the 300-page ‘Black Book’, the first manual of the Marconi-EMI electronic television system, installed in 1936 5 2 011: David Rose presented an illustrated retrospective of his exceptional career as a ground-breaking television and film producer to a large number of live audiences 6 2 008/2010: Steve Arnold digitised back issues of Radio Times to make a searchable online archive of articles and schedules 7 2 001: Simon Vaughan, archivist of the Alexandra Palace Television Society, printed a collection of 1,200 photos by the father of television lighting, Desmond Robert Campbell 8 2004: Don McLean compiled an authentically accurate audio two-CD presentation of the beginnings of television in Britain.

9 2 005: John Grist wrote a biography of Grace Wyndham Goldie, the first Head of BBC Television News and Current Affairs 10 2009: Ronald Sandell, a key planner of the analogue terrestrial transmitter network, conducted research for a book, Seventy Years Before the Masts 11 2 010: John Wyver conducted interviews on the presentation of theatre plays on British television

Journal of The Royal Television Society January 2015 l Volume 52/1

From the CEO The year 2014 ended on a high for the Society. The RTS Craft & Design Awards and a stunning RTS Futures session on presenting concluded what was an amazing year.

Thank you to all the RTS’s friends in every part of the British Isles for helping to make it happen.

To give an idea of the full breadth of our activities, in December we also hosted Cilla Black – recipient of the first-ever RTS Legends Award – reflecting on the 1960s.

Days later, and back in the 21st Century, David Abraham and Tom Mock-

ridge squared up for a passionate debate on retransmission fees and discussion of why the UK media market has such a great opportunity to grow domestically and internationally.

In November, the Society dissected the phenomenon that is Doctor Who. The third in our “Anatomy of a hit” strand, this was the most popular so far and set a new record for the number of people attending an early-­ evening event.

I am very excited about the prospects for 2015. One of television’s greatest humourists, Armando ­Iannucci, will be the star turn at an event early this year. And bookings are being taken for the first public

Contents 5

Paul Jackson’s TV Diary

Paul Jackson talks up business opportunities in China, wonders where the next big thing in entertainment is coming from and dines with a TV legend

6 10

Worra lorra talent

14 17

Stepping into the danger zone

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Retransmission: who benefits?

Steve Clarke hears how Cilla Black got to be the highest paid female performer on British television

Meet the natives

There was a time when we all sat down together to watch the TV. Not any more. Stefan Stern guides us through the jungle of today’s TV tribes

With the emergence of Isis and ebola, TV news crews are facing new threats to their lives, reports David Wastell

The entertainment guru

Danielle Lux believes the shows she makes, including Mr and Mrs and A League of Their Own, can be a force for good. She attempts to enlighten Andrew Billen

David Abraham and Tom Mockridge debate whether public service channels are subsidising pay-TV platforms. Tara Conlan keeps score

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

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

Television www.rts.org.uk January 2015

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

appearance outside the House of Commons by the BBC Trust’s new Chair, Rona Fairhead.

The RTS early-evening events programme in London gets under way on 20 January with “Fixed-rig documentary: the story behind the lens”. For details, go to the RTS website.

I hope everyone had a fantastic festive break and I wish a stellar New Year to all our members.

Theresa Wise

Cover illustration: Philip Bannister

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A new dawn for diversity?

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Doctor Who: anatomy of a hit

TV has been ‘hideously white’ for too long. Steve Clarke attends an RTS debate that signals change is on the way

Our Friend in the West

Laura Marshall celebrates Bristol’s success as a creative hub – but wonders why some London commissioners treat her as a yokel

Matthew Bell listens to the team behind the monster hit as they reveal how every episode constitutes a regeneration of the sci-fi legend

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Connected TV decoded

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How to make it on screen

The coming avalanche of mobile and connected-TV services will leave linear TV viewing largely intact, says Maggie Brown

Matthew Bell joins would-be presenters to find out what it takes to become the face of a TV programme

RTS Craft & Design Awards 2013/14

The winners and nominees, over six pages, of the awards presented on 1 December at the London Hilton Park Lane. The ceremony was hosted by Jennifer Saunders

Subscription rates UK £115 Overseas (surface £146.11) Overseas (airmail £172.22) Enquiries: publication@rts.org.uk

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

Legal notice © Royal Television Society 2014, 2015.

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 EARLY EVENING EVENT Tuesday 20 January

Fixed-rig documentary: the story behind the lens 6:30pm for 6:45pm start Venue: Cavendish Conference Centre, 22 Duchess Mews, London W1G 9DT ■ Book online at www.rts.org.uk RTS FUTURES Monday 26 January

RTS Futures Entry Level Training Fair Venue: Hallam Conference Centre, 44 Hallam St, London W1W 6JJ ■ Book online at www.rts.org.uk

RTS AWARDS Tuesday 17 March RTS Programme Awards 2014 Venue: Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane, London W1K 7TN ■ Callum Stott 020 7822 2822 ■ callum@rts.org.uk RTS AWARDS Friday 5 June RTS Student Television Awards 2014 Venue: BFI, Southbank, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XT ■ Jamie O’Neill 020 7822 2821 ■ jamie@rts.org.uk

Local events BRISTOL Tuesday 13 January

BBC

Formats lab

Rona Fairhead CBE RTS EARLY EVENING EVENT Tuesday 3 February Rona Fairhead CBE, Chair of the BBC Trust. The event will be chaired by Sir Peter Bazalgette.

6:30pm for a 6:45pm start Venue: Guildhall, Gresham Street, London EC2V 7HHC ■ Book online at www.rts.org.uk RTS EARLY EVENING EVENT Tuesday 10 February

Armando Iannucci

Venue: TBC ■ Book online at www.rts.org.uk RTS AWARDS Wednesday 18 February RTS Television Journalism Awards 2013/14 Venue: London Hilton, Park Lane, London W1K 1BE ■ Jamie O’Neill 020 7822 2821 ■ jamie@rts.org.uk RTS EARLY EVENING EVENT Week of 23 February TBC

TV advertising Venue: TBC

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How to create an international format, with Grant Mansfield, CEO, Plimsoll Productions Venue: TBC Thursday 5 February

West of England Student Television Awards

In conjunction with BBC Digital Bristol Week Venue: The Watershed, 1 Canon’s Road, Bristol BS1 5TX Sunday 8 March

Venue: London Television Centre, Upper Ground, London SE1 9LT Tuesday 3 February

Student Television Awards

Venue: London Television Centre, Upper Ground, London SE1 9LT Wednesday 4 February

Freeview connected-TV

Venue: London Television Centre, Upper Ground, London SE1 9LT Wednesday 18 February

Ultra-high definition TV and 4K Richard Salmon, Lead Research Engineer, BBC Research & Development. 6:30pm for 7:00pm Venue: London Television Centre, Upper Ground, London SE1 9LT ■ Daniel Cherowbrier ■ daniel@cherowbrier.co.uk MIDLANDS ■ Jayne Greene 07792 776585 ■ jayne@ijmmedia.co.uk NORTH EAST & THE BORDER Saturday 28 February Annual Awards and Student

Television Awards

Venue: Hilton Newcastle Gateshead, Newcastle upon Tyne NE8 2AR ■ Jill Graham ■ jill.graham@blueyonder.co.uk

Your guide to upcoming national and regional events

REPUBLIC OF IRELAND ■ Charles Byrne (00353) 87251 3092 ■ byrnecd@iol.ie SCOTLAND ■ James Wilson: 07899 761167 ■ james.wilson@ cityofglasgowcollege.ac.uk SOUTHERN Friday 6 March

Annual Awards and Student Television Awards Venue: The Guildhall, Broadway, Winchester SO23 9LJ ■ Gordon Cooper ■ gordonjcooper@gmail.com THAMES VALLEY Wednesday 21 January

Niche channels: IPTV delivery models Venue: Pincents Manor, Calcot, Reading RG31 4UQ Wednesday 11 February AGM and The future of QC Venue: Pincents Manor, Calcot, Reading RG31 4UQ ■ Penny Westlake ■ info@rtstvc.org.uk WALES Monday 26 January

Venue: Bristol Old Vic, King Street, Bristol BS1 4ED ■ John Durrant ■ john@bdh.net

An evening with Kirsty Wark

Technology and TV – a threat to traditional viewing or a challenge to the industry?

6:30pm Venue: Quay Five, BBC North, MediaCity UK, Salford M50 2QH Wednesday 11 February

DEVON & CORNWALL ■ Contact TBC

Student Awards

Joint public lecture with the IEE: Tim Hartley. 6:30pm-8:30pm Venue: Laleston, Bridgend Thursday 29 January

West of England Awards

EAST ANGLIA ■ Contact TBC LONDON Wednesday 21 January

MAM technology is dead: Long live MAM technology Chaired by Niall Duffy, Director, Seranno. Panellists include: Elgin Prince, Head of Engineering, Encompass Digital Media; David Hornsby, Content Delivery Applications Manager, ITV; Mark Forsythe, Sky Sports

NORTH WEST Wednesday 28 January

Presented by Louise Minchin Venue: The Lowry, Pier 8, Salford Quays M50 3AZ ■ Rachel Pinkney 07966 230639 ■ rachelpinkney@yahoo.co.uk NORTHERN IRELAND Week of 23 March, TBC

Student Television Awards Venue: E3 Campus, Belfast Metropolitan University, 398 Springfield Rd, Belfast BT12 7DU ■ John Mitchell ■ mitch.mvbroadcast@ btinternet.com

Visit to ITV’s new Welsh HQ in Cardiff Bay Members only, numbers limited.

5:00pm-7:00pm Venue: ITV, 3 Assembly Square, Cardiff Bay, CF10 4PL Friday 27 March

Student Television Awards

Venue: Zoom International Youth Film Festival, precise venue TBC ■ Hywel Wiliam 0798 000 7841 ■ hywel@aim.uk.com YORKSHIRE ■ Lisa Holdsworth 07790 145280 ■ lisa@allonewordpoductions. co.uk

January 2015 www.rts.org.uk Television

TV diary Paul Jackson talks up business opportunities in China, wonders where the next big thing in entertainment is coming from and dines with a TV legend

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am chairing a panel to discuss opportunities in China at the Televisual Factual Festival. China has become a fashionable market in the past year, with a substantial increase in the value of deals made by UK companies, albeit from a very low base.

And it can be a valuable market: the lead sponsor on the latest series of The Voice of China paid over $50m for the privilege.

The most positive sinophile on the panel is Paul Sandler, MD of Objective Productions. Paul has made five trips to China in the past 12 months and believes there is a strong appetite for UK shows and UK knowledge waiting to be exploited.

He has had success there with a version of The Cube, which ran for three series. We also hear from Liz McLeod, of True North Productions, who has long been making films in China for broadcast in the West but whose latest project is a commission from CCTV for domestic transmission.

Fiona Stourton, Creative Director at Ten Alps, is also working on a series for CCTV domestically, about the great global brand names. The final panel member is Rebecca Yang, who set up and is still CEO of the first ideas brokerage dedicated to taking ideas from the West into the Chinese networks, IPCN. ■ A big question not only for Chinese networks but for broadcasters

Television www.rts.org.uk January 2015

around the world is where ‘the next big thing’ will come from.

In the first decade of the century, we saw a time of almost unprecedented success for entertainment producers and format creators.

Juggernauts seemed to be backing up in the garage, just waiting to burst on to our screens.

Have I Got News, Millionaire, Survivor, Pop Idol and X Factor, and Britain’s Got Talent and, of course, Strictly all blazed out from their home territories and set fire to the world’s schedules.

And there was also Big Brother, a format for sure, if not exactly an entertainment show.

Interestingly, they all, with the exception of Survivor/Big Brother, confirmed the advice given to me many years ago by my friend and mentor, the great Bill Cotton.

When the schedules are feeling a bit stale, take a look backwards, he said. What was playing strongly 20 years ago, say, but is nowhere to be seen now?

■ On the subject of new global entertainment formats, we’ve had a couple of false starts: both Splash! and Rising Star generated huge excitement at the markets but ­neither proved to be the real deal.

The sizzle in the market is now clearly around drama. Suddenly, new and challenging dramas from many different markets and cultures are delighting the world’s television audiences.

■ I have the pleasure of chairing the RTS Legends Committee and today we are honouring our first RTS Legends Award winner at a lunch in the House of Lords. Cilla Black has been a true legend of British TV. Her career spans more than five decades and she built hugely successful, longrunning, prime-time, Saturday-night series with both the BBC and ITV. She demonstrates exactly what a professional she is during a very funny, and sometimes emotional, conversation with writer and producer Jeff Pope. A thoroughly entertaining event and I hope a nice Christmas warm-up for members lucky enough to be there.

■ I’m off to one of my last meetings before the holiday, a management review at a web company for whom I consult. Videojug runs a “how to” site that can tell you how to cook a quiche in 10 minutes or how to kiss passionately. And much in between.

It got around 56 million hits in November, with a very high retention rate of over 60%, but we now want to extend its stickiness and shareability.

It’s a whole new world and I love the immediacy of it. Budgets may be very small (about £300 per short film), but you do get things done. See an act, meet up and chat, and they can be on the site the next week. Makes a refreshing change!

Paul Jackson is a former Director of Entertainment and Comedy at ITV and Controller of Entertainment at the BBC.

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From left: Paul Jackson, Cilla Black and Jeff Pope

RTS Legends

Steve Clarke hears how Cilla Black got to be the highest paid female performer on British television

Worra lorra talent 6

Paul Hampartsoumian

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ifty years after it happened, it’s still hard to believe the extraordinary story of Cilla Black’s rise to fame. How Liverpool docker’s daughter Priscilla White became the most famous female British vocalist of the 1960s was the subject of one of 2014’s most successful TV dramas, ITV’s biopic, Cilla.

Her shared history with The Beatles and Brian Epstein, the tortured impresario, who died tragically in 1967, gives her story a compelling resonance fully embraced by the three-part series.

At an RTS Legends lunch the star talked amusingly and movingly of her early days on the Liverpool club scene.

And how, more than three decades later, presenting LWT’s Blind Date helped her to cope with bereavement, following the death of her much-loved husband and manger, Bobby Willis.

She was interviewed by Cilla’s writer and Executive Producer, Jeff Pope, who was deft in his questioning.

He began at the beginning. Pope reminded Black that her first “gig” was performed, aged three, on the kitchen table at home in Liverpool’s Scotland Road, then the city’s down-at-heel Catholic neighbourhood.

“They were having jars out, as families would,” remembered Black, who was presented with the RTS’s inaugural Legends Award at the lunch.

“It was Saturday night and somebody discovered me on the staircase and they stood me on the table and I sang The Good Ship Lollipop.

“That was my first round of applause.

I thought, ‘This is wonderful,’ and so it went on from there.”

Her parents wanted their daughter’s life to be better than their own. “I didn’t know I was poor until I was 14.

Everybody was in the same boat.

Everybody had an outdoor loo and ate fish and chips on Friday,” she said.

Did she have a dream to succeed from the start, asked Pope? “It was my parents’ dream, actually. You know, you only get out of life what you put into it… My father was a docker and my mother sold second-hand clothes in the market.

“She said: ‘There’s got to be something better than this.’ When they stood me on that table I thought, ‘This is what I wanna do.’”

Her singing ability, abundant self-­ confidence and empathetic personality

Television www.rts.org.uk January 2015

The two were married in 1969, the year after her first BBC One series, Cilla, was launched.

“Nobody in Liverpool had a suntan and he did... I thought, ‘Oh, I fancy him.’

“I thought he was either Norwegian, off the boats, or he had money, but he didn’t have any.”

Willis was tanned because he had just returned from a £48 Spanish package holiday to Lloret de Mar (wine included), Cilla explained.

In the early Liverpool days, Willis had ambitions to be a songwriter. But, from the beginning of their relationship, she made it clear that she was the one destined for fame.

“I was a cow [to Bobby],” said Black: “‘It’s me, Bobby. You’re supposed to look after me. I’m the star’ – more or less.”

She added: “Bobby was a great director. There could be a million people telling me how great I was, but I only ever listened to Bobby. He sometimes told me I could have done it better… At the end of day, I only ever listened to him.”

The turning point in her career came when Epstein signed her in 1963. “I fancied him as well,” said Black, to audience laughter. “I didn’t know what gay was. I do now.”

Her first audition for Epstein was a disaster: “I sang for The Beatles at the Majestic Ballroom in Birkenhead and I was very nervous… I flunked it.”

The next time that Epstein heard Black sing, she had no idea he was in the audience. Her performance was relaxed.

“He said to me: ‘Why didn’t you sing like that at the audition?’ I said: ‘I didn’t know you were there and wasn’t nervous, I was myself.’”

Her first single, Love of the Loved, written by Lennon-McCartney, made it to No 35 – but the follow-up, Anyone Who Had a Heart, originally recorded by Dionne Warwick, went to No 1.

Black remembered how Martin was determined that Shirley Bassey record Anyone Who Had a Heart. But Epstein insisted that “My Cilla” record the song.

“I was a rock ’n’ roll singer,” she said.

“I didn’t know I could do ballads.”

Pope wanted to know the secret of her intense, emotional performance on Anyone Who Had a Heart. Black explained that, in the early 1960s, singers would be expected to record three songs in a three-hour session, so they had to put everything into a performance. �

THE REGULATOR WAS WORRIED [BLIND DATE] WOULD BE TOO RAUNCHY FOR ITV AUDIENCES IN THE 1980S

I’M TOTALLY DEAF BECAUSE OF THE CAVERN DAYS

Liverpool Echo

made her stand out from the crowd.

Black’s red hair helped, too. She dyed it herself when she was 13, reputedly with a seven-penny rinse from Woolworths and a toothbrush. The red hair survives.

Cilla belted out numbers on Liverpool’s thriving rock scene at clubs such as the Iron Door, the Jacaranda, the Blue Angel and, famously, The Cavern, where The Beatles played lunchtime and evening sessions.

The first time she sang in a recording studio was a revelation. Black could finally hear her own voice via the studio headphones. “It was fabulous.

I couldn’t hear myself in The Cavern… and it was in the studio where I discovered my quiet voice…

“For the first time, I had light and shade. Now, I’m totally deaf because of The Cavern days.”

Her producer, head of EMI’s Parlophone label, George Martin, said her voice was like that of a corncrake, famous for its loud, rasping song.

“I remember the first time I did an audition for George Martin and Brian Epstein [her first manager] took me into a pub,” Black told the RTS. “I’d never been into a pub before, because nice girls did not do that in Liverpool. He said: ‘Have a brandy.’ I said: ‘No.’ He said: ‘It’ll calm your nerves.’ I said: ‘I’m not nervous, just get me in there.’”

Pope wanted to know what it was like being a young woman in Liverpool at the dawn of the 1960s and the start of a cultural convulsion that continues to reverberate today.

“We were just kids and we were enjoying ourselves… We were great and it was after the war and the ration books…

“A lorra my uncles went away to sea.

They brought home records from New York, which we then sang.”

Unlike The Beatles, Cilla appeared on stage for free, the Fab Four often encouraging her to perform. “They [The Beatles] were just mates… My friend Pauline went out with George [Harrison].

“We went down to the Iron Door.

She said to George: ‘Give Cilla a go.’

John Lennon said: ‘Come on, Cyril, she can knock yer ’ead off,’ and I did.”

Black remembered the first time she met Bobby Willis, the man who would later shape her TV career when he took over management duties from Epstein.

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Paul Hampartsoumian

Her one regret ‘I wish I wasn’t such a wuss. I’d be in New York and I’d always get homesick for my family and friends.

‘I had the fancy frocks, but I wanted to go home. The Beatles went home. They had performed at Shea Stadium and they left me all alone in New York.

‘I made several attempts to make it in New York but I always got homesick. If I had one regret, it would be that.’

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� “EMI was very much like the BBC. Time was of the essence. You had to do it and I sang out of key.

“I wanted to do it again, but George Martin said, ‘It’s soul.’ I said: ‘Believe me, it’s not soul, I sing sharp on the fade out.’”

It was Epstein, knowing the fickleness of pop stardom, who steered Black towards a career in TV and the prospect of long-term success.

Towards the end of his life, Epstein’s behaviour (he died from an overdose, aged 32) was becoming more of a worry to those close to him – including Black.

She said: “He didn’t like being gay…

At the time, being gay was illegal. It was dreadful. He had four different doctors and was telling each of them different stories to get pills.

“He would ring me up every Saturday and say, ‘You won’t see me tomorrow…’”

Black, backed by Willis, was reluctant to embrace a TV career.

“Television found me, I didn’t find TV,” she pointed out.

“In fact, at my first meeting with the late, great Michael Hurll [producer of the BBC One show Cilla] – he was doing The Billy Cotton Band

Blind Date Show – I was 10 minutes late and he tore a strip off me.”

Black and Hurll soon hit it off. When, years later, the producer needed work (his career had suffered after the death of a contestant on The Late, Late Breakfast, which he had produced and directed) Black got him a job as Executive Producer on Blind Date. “He was my crutch really…”

Cilla ran for eight series on BBC One. Hurll was fond of filming on location and arranging stunts. In one live broadcast, the star was hoisted outside a block of flats on a crane. The producer told her to stop at any floor and encourage people to come out and chat to her.

“I duly did this and a girl came out.

I said, ‘You can’t be on your own on a Saturday night, you must be with someone.’

“After a lorra, lorra persuasion, she brought this guy out. But little did I know that her husband was in the pub watching the show and I’m forcing this girl out on the terrace.”

The series, which was watched by up to 22 million people, ended in 1976.

At the time, Black had a young family and was unsure where her TV career would go next.

ITV

I THOUGHT IT WAS BEST TO USE LIVE TELEVISION TO HAND IN MY NOTICE

An appearance on BBC One’s Wogan, promoting a new album, The Best of Cilla Black, reminded the TV community of her unique, down-to-earth appeal, which bridged demographic and class divides. Overnight, producers were knocking on her door.

LWT won the battle to put Black under contract. Her first series for the ITV company was Surprise Surprise. “I’d never seen so many producers on a show,” recollected Black.

But it was her next LWT show, based on the Australian format Perfect Match, that propelled the star to new heights.

Blind Date ran for 18 years, an essential part of Saturday-night TV for millions of viewers.

LWT had bought the show but there were problems getting it approved by the IBA. The regulator was worried it would be too raunchy for ITV audiences in the 1980s.

Black was now reputed to be TV’s biggest earning star (Willis was noted for his business acumen) – and ITV’s most popular entertainer.

“If I knew I was the highest paid person on television, it would have frightened the life out of me. I was doing what I did best – going on stage and wearing the frock,” she told the RTS.

Television www.rts.org.uk January 2015

Liverpool Echo

Back row, from left: Brian Jones, Donovan, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, Cilla Black and Paul McCartney at a press event the band, Grapefuit (front row), in 1968 When Willis died in 1999, Black ­ ontinued to do Blind Date. “It was c my lifeline,” she said. “As Bobby says about football, it’s that 90 minutes where you forget about anything.

“When I did Blind Date, I forgot about the whole world and everything going on in my life.”

Unusually for a TV star, Black’s decision to stand down from Blind Date was completely her own – announced by her, live on air, much to the displeasure of her ITV bosses.

“I thought the public should know before anybody else. I didn’t want the public to read about it in the papers.

“I thought it was best to use live television to hand in my notice. I didn’t know what a furore it would cause.

“My life had changed. There was no Bobby sitting there in the dressing room. I’d had enough.”

Asked at the RTS lunch to choose between her singing and TV careers, Cilla Black was in no doubt – it was flexing those extraordinary vocal chords that had given her the most pleasure.

I’D NEVER SEEN SO MANY PRODUCERS ON A SHOW [AS ON SURPRISE SURPRISE]

The RTS Legends lunch with Cilla Black OBE was held at the House of Lords on 5 December. It was hosted by Baroness Benjamin and produced by Paul Jackson.

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Demographics for dummies

There was a time when we all sat down together to watch the TV. Not any more.

Stefan Stern guides us through the jungle of today’s TV tribes

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pectrum scarcity” was not the name of a 1970s prog-­ rock band, but it dates back to a similar era. We didn’t all realise it then, but the days of a three- or four-channel world, with most of us watching the same programmes, were already numbered.

No one, I think, would suggest reviving Ludovic Kennedy’s old BBC Two show Did You See…?, since these days the answer to the question in the title would so often be, “Well, as a matter of fact, I didn’t…”

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Few programmes can command the sort of mass audiences that were quite common 30 or 40 years ago. And only harrumphing old fools like your correspondent ask for quiet as the Greenwich Mean Time pips sound at the top of the hour, or plan their evening around an appointment with the Ten O’Clock News.

No – this has all broken down. Families may share a living room, but each member will often be consuming media in their own personal way.

Thanks to digital technology, we are “alone, together”, in the words of

Prof Sherry Turkle from MIT. New groupings have formed – TV tribes, if you like. They have their own tastes and preferences. If you were to unleash David Attenborough or Desmond Morris to investigate these new groupings, here is what they might find.

The soap opera set

All pictures: Russell Herneman

Meet the natives This traditional crowd still make time to check in with their favourite TV families and sagas at regular times in the week. The soaps remain influential, not least on speech patterns.

Did people always use the EastEnders

IT MAY HAVE BEEN ANOTHER SHIT DAY, BUT A FAMILIAR SIGNATURE TUNE SIGNALS RELEASE AND ESCAPE cries of “Yer ’avin’ a laugh, aintcha?!” and “It’s doin’ my ’ed in!”, or have they been popularised by the show? And as for the permanently rising intonations of Aussie soap viewers… don’t get me started. It is doing my head in.

To their fans, soaps offer something for everybody, a glimpse of a parallel world, and comfort that you are not struggling alone. You can see medics hard at work in Holby City and Casualty, saving other people’s lives while struggling to make sense of their own.

You can see chirpy Northerners (Corrie), whingeing Cockneys (EastEnders) or spunky youths (Hollyoaks).

The Scouse psychodrama of Brookside is, sadly, no more and is much missed.

Soap fans huddle up to create a sense of order and rhythm in their hard-pressed lives. It may have been another shit day, but a familiar signature tune signals release and escape, if only temporarily.

Of course, the startling fact for telly fans is that some people are still much happier listening to The Archers… [cue EastEnders doof doof doof sign-off music].

The highbrow set Some children were brought up in homes in which “commercial television” was banned. Perhaps they grew up to become the ultimate highbrows, favouring BBC Four, Alan Yentob, Sky Arts, and not a whole lot more.

To highbrows, drama serials are acceptable, but preferably they will be from Scandinavia, involve multiple deaths and be subtitled.

History and art programmes are OK, too, and the ancient world is a particular favourite, especially if it involves Mary Beard describing obscene Roman murals and talking about voracious prostitutes and oversized penises. The best filth is highbrow filth.

We should be sympathetic. Highbrows are deprived. They used to watch television to benefit from the

Television www.rts.org.uk January 2015

insights of Kenneth Clark and Jacob Bronowski. Today they make do with a Bragg or a Schama, which is a good substitute. But still they feel that something is lacking.

They want Huw Wheldon’s Monitor to come back. Instead of Richard Dimbleby, they get David and Jonathan. They miss Arena.

Perhaps the answer is to bring back Channel 4’s Voices, which famously registered a (technical) zero rating before it was finally axed.

If all the highbrows got together, they could interview each other for the show and guarantee an audience for themselves at the same time.

The ‘sporty’ set By their tracksuits shall you know them. And their beer.

And the shouting. The growth of multichannel TV has been driven by sport more than any other format. It has been the killer app. And, in fairness, sports coverage has been modernised and improved enormously in the new era.

Of course, hype is inevitable. A dreary, wet, midweek football match between mediocre teams may get pumped up as dramatic and important, but members of the sports tribe will be happy, as long as there is something to watch, action replays to enjoy, and lots of pre- and post-match “analysis” to wallow in.

The sporty tribe is made up of addicts. They need excitement (real or imagined), noise, “drama”, and hours and hours of extended coverage. They need stars, or wannabe stars, and lots of greatest matches/fights ever. Again, this is all overblown, but no one in the tribe seems to mind all that much.

For now, there is always another game to look forward to, and another world/European/UK championship of something or other to be watched. �

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� And, as the action starts, the sofa will fill up, and the cheering will begin again.

The box set set

HISTORY AND ART PROGRAMMES ARE OK… THE BEST FILTH IS HIGHBROW FILTH

Who needs a TV schedule anyway?

That is so yesterday. Schedules are for losers. Anyone who is anyone just grabs a box set for a weekend binge session, or creates their own schedule with an hourly dose of preferred viewing. You become the channel controller of your own life, ignoring whatever it is that the hoi polloi are watching.

Box setters are sophisticated. They know quality when they see it, and they don’t see it in today’s schedules.

For them, it is cooler to choose Breaking Bad, Orange is the New Black or Game of Thrones and settle in for the evening.

Also, as is clear from some of those series, the raunch factor in a box set is often much higher. As Ali G would ask of a box set: “Does it guarantee me muff?”

Nothing symbolises the breakdown of the old telly-viewing world more than the spread of box sets. It is almost as though the mainstream channels and networks have ceased to exist.

A rich archive of classic shows may be preferable to new productions. Box setters may also choose to download or stream a new series, such as House of Cards, direct from Netflix, an approach similar to that adopted by…

The online no set set “Daddy, what is that strange big machine in the corner?” asks the bewildered child who only ever watches programmes on a laptop, tablet or smartphone screen. Sitting down in front of an altar-like telly may come to be seen as an essentially 20th-Century activity.

Just as mass audiences have broken down, so the TV experience may be one to be enjoyed individually. You peer into your own gadget rather than gathering round a big screen.

For the online crowd, legacy TV channels and networks can mean little – and the licence fee can thus seem perverse.

YouTube, BuzzFeed and Vice News reveal and explain the world to them, not the British Broadcasting Corporation.

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The online crowd want it free and they want it now. “Live” is less significant to them, unless it really is a breaking news story that they want to follow.

For them “live” is when they want to watch something. They, too, have freed themselves from the schedules.

Different media blur into one. It is all social, news, entertainment. Facebook and Twitter provide as much infotainment as any other platform, as well as housing people’s social networks. This tribe lives online in every sense.

The Strictly X Factor Apprentice Celebrity MasterChef Baking set Along with sport and the soaps, this category of show also binds viewers together. Long gone are the quaint days of Opportunity Knocks and New Faces. But these programmes do bring audiences together in quite an old-fashioned way.

It turns out that people love a competition and (virtual) audience participation. Andy Warhol’s concept of “15 minutes of fame” has become a reality.

So what, if the claim that “Britain’s got talent” is not always borne out by the contestants on these programmes?

The contests provide some of those truly rare “water-cooler moments” for millions the morning after.

Do the viewers of these programmes become more enthusiastic or more active cooks/bakers/singers/dancers? It doesn’t seem likely. It’s still only telly, being watched passively from the sofa.

But Saturday-night entertainment has been reinvented for a tribe that perhaps didn’t even realise what it was missing.

Where will it end? Perhaps one day Britain will run out of “talented” contestants for these shows.

But, in the meantime, the opening titles start up, the regional heats continue, the judges offer their views, the crowds boo and cheer, and the audience numbers hold up.

Don’t knock it. Not many shows do so well in the ratings.

Television www.rts.org.uk January 2015

SO WHAT, IF THE CLAIM THAT ‘BRITAIN’S GOT TALENT’ IS NOT ALWAYS BORNE OUT BY THE CONTESTANTS ON THESE SHOWS?

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Television news

With the emergence of Isis and ebola, TV news foreign correspondents are facing new threats to their lives, reports David Wastell

T

he fear in the voices of the Kurdish peshmerga soldiers was unmistakable, as they shouted a warning to the BBC television crew taking cover with them in a shattered building in Jalawlā, 110km from Baghdad.

Not only were they under fire from outside, but now hostile fighters were entering the basement of the ruined house.

The terrifying minutes that followed made a gripping news dispatch and part of a Panorama film by reporter Paul Wood on the rise of Isis, the extreme jihadist force that has declared an “Islamic State” in a swathe of northern Syria and Iraq.

The encounter was particularly alarming because everyone knew what their fate would be if captured.

The peshmerga would have been swiftly executed; the television team – including camera operator and an accompanying medic – would have been held in a queue for beheading later, almost certainly on camera.

The attack fizzled out with the BBC team unharmed. But it illustrated the acute risks as broadcasters report some of the world’s most dangerous stories.

The past 12 months have been especially demanding for television news organisations trying to ensure that their staff and freelancers do not join the annual litany of those killed on assignment.

Of the 103 on the 2014 list by mid-­ December, according to the International News Safety Institute, 17 died in Iraq and Syria – among them the Western journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, beheaded by Isis.

All-out civil war in Ukraine was followed by the sudden advance of Isis – and, at the same time, the alarming spread of an unfamiliar, deadly disease in west Africa.

As Tim Singleton, Director of News-

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AFP reporter Sammy Ketz drops to the ground to escape snipper fire in Maalula, Syria in September 2013 gathering at ITV News, puts it: “With Ukraine, Syria and ebola all in one year, it has been a triple whammy.”

A week after Paul Wood’s team came under attack, Sky News Special Correspondent Alex Crawford was driving to a remote corner of Sierra Leone, where an ebola outbreak was out of control.

She took with her a stack of protective equipment, originally stockpiled in case of a bird ’flu outbreak. “We didn’t know what to expect,” she says. “It sounded like the disease was being

passed quite quickly, but it was easy to stop it with soap and running water.”

Television footage of her inside an isolation unit, sealed into white overalls and a respirator mask as she quizzed a nurse desperately sick with ebola, had such an impact that the country’s own health minister used it to convince sceptics of the gravity of the crisis.

The unfamiliar nature of the virus has made it a particular challenge – “completely different” to any other crisis story in recent years, according

Stepping into the

Anwar Amro/AFP/Getty Images

danger zone

to Stewart Purvis, former Editorin-Chief of ITN, now Professor of Television Journalism at City University.

It is unprecedented in its scale, in its impact and in the varying responses of medical authorities in three countries.

Early on, there was confusion over what precautions to take. “One has the feeling that there is no one set of rules,” says Purvis.

Fears were heightened when a cameraman, hired locally by NBC, contracted the virus – exactly when

Television www.rts.org.uk January 2015

or how was unclear. He was flown to the US amid strict biosecurity for treatment and survived.

Broadcasters have sought advice from medical aid agencies and from Public Health England throughout the crisis; and in November that organisation gave the first, large-scale briefing, at the BBC’s headquarters, for all interested media.

But broadcasters’ approaches have varied. Some, like ITV News, have ­simply kept staff well away from

any ebola victims in the full-blown infectious stage.

They have, instead, attached waterproof GoPro cameras to medics working inside high-risk areas. Afterwards, the cameras are immersed in chlorine solution.

The BBC, whose first coverage of the outbreak came mainly from its network of local staff, now sends in teams around once a fortnight, says Andrew Roy, Foreign Editor at BBC News. �

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Public domain

[EBOLA] IS A CONTROLLABLE RISK. IT’S QUITE UNLIKE… ISIS

� Each team of four, including a biohazard expert, is trained beforehand.

Even their tripods have protection: tennis balls, cut in half and placed under their feet to prevent contact with infectious material.

Reporters must stay two metres from ebola patients and further from highly infectious corpses. The broadcaster also uses GoPro cameras.

Alarm about the possible spread of ebola by teams returning home at first led to some being urged to stay off work for 21 days – the virus’s maximum incubation period.

Now there is confidence that ebola becomes infectious only well after a victim develops a fever, the rule has been relaxed.

However, returning staff must all be regularly monitored, says Roy, and are advised to be careful: “You don’t want to catch a cold. If you get a temperature, you will have to report to Public Health England.”

Those returning have not been universally welcomed. After Alex Thomson of Channel 4 News flew home from Sierra Leone in November he found himself disinvited from co-­presenting the Rory Peck Awards for freelance journalists, in case winners did not feel comfortable shaking his hand.

But for all that, the consensus now is that the dangers of covering ebola are manageable compared with close-up reporting of Isis.

“It’s a controllable risk,” says Dan Williams, Sky’s Head of International News. “It’s quite unlike the risk of a

16

mortar round landing near you, or a fixer turning bad – or of just turning a corner and discovering Isis approaching.”

Reporting in a war zone always involves some luck, no matter how careful the risk assessment – “like writing a book” is how one BBC insider describes the process.

Now the determination of Isis to use journalists as hostages has forced Western broadcasters to curtail almost completely their own reporting from within rebel-held Syria.

Instead, they have to cover it from afar: via officially sanctioned trips to Damascus, or from the Kurdish side in northern Iraq, or via social media and Skype – with only rare and rapid forays across the Turkish border.

During one of them, the BBC had to abandon filming after half an hour because it had received a “credible” kidnap threat.

The one notable exception has been the extraordinary Vice News documentary filmed by Medyan Dairieh, a British-based journalist of Palestinian heritage, who spent three weeks “embedded” with Isis in Raqqa, the Islamic State’s “capital” in northern Syria. It has had more than 14 million views online, many in the US, since August and has won widespread praise.

Some critics among mainstream broadcasters point out that the 42-minute film is largely unquestioning of Dairieh’s hosts, does not spell out the restrictions upon him (he was accompanied by armed Isis members

24 hours a day), and is not constrained by the impartiality and balance requirements imposed on mainstream British broadcasters.

But Kevin Sutcliffe, Vice News’s Head of News Programming, who previously ran Channel 4’s Dispatches, says: “That’s nonsense. It’s a piece of chilling documentary in which the material completely speaks for itself.

Nobody comes away from watching it other than utterly chilled and ­terrified.”

It took months of negotiation to secure safe access and to be sure of getting Dairieh and his film back out, he said.

Vice’s success poses a dilemma to other broadcasters. For the BBC, Roy doubts he would ever agree to an embed with the jihadist group. “I’m not certain that I would trust Isis, so I don’t think it would even get past that stage. The fundamental issue is that we would not trust them, or take the risk.”

This means that, for broadcasters, at least for now, there is no safe way to enter rebel-held Syria, making the Isis story even more toxic to report than ebola. Sky’s Alex Crawford effectively summed it up: “Although the virus is unseen, scary and very deadly for the local community, I felt the risks were not nearly so high for me.

“It’s nothing like going into Syria.

Right now, that is crazy, off-the-scale dangerous.”

David Wastell is a former Foreign Editor of the Telegraph.

January 2015 www.rts.org.uk Television

The Billen Profile

Danielle Lux believes the shows she makes, including Mr and Mrs and A League of Their Own, can be a force for good. She attempts to enlighten Andrew Billen

The

entertainment guru

S

he is, a senior executive told me, a “truly lovely person – and good, too”.

“I’ve never heard anybody bitch about her,” said a producer who once worked with her, adding: “I suspect she is a pretty decent human being, which is still a relatively uncommon quality.”

I am fully expecting, therefore, to discover a good egg when I meet Danielle Lux, Managing Director of

Television www.rts.org.uk January 2015

CPL Productions, the game-show company that once was mighty Celador.

I had not been, however, expecting loveliness, decency and good egginess to be at the bleeding heart of our interview. Want to know how All Star Mr and Mrs can change the world or how A League of Their Own enhances family life? Read on.

“It’s about,” Lux says, with only occasional apologies for sounding like a hippie, “being decent and moral. It

is a deeply felt thing for me that, whatever I do and we do, as human beings or professionals or as programme-makers, it is all about making life better.”

A striking woman with jet black hair and vivid lipstick, she gets to her garret office at CPL’s building in Covent Garden by 8:30am, having dropped off her son at school.

I arrive at 10:00am and she has thoughtfully laid out a second breakfast for me, fruit on one side, pastries �

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The life of Lux Born 11 May 1964, brought up in south west London Father Melvyn Lux, owner of a motorcycle-accessories business and later a financial advisor Mother Denise Husband Nick Day, clock designer turned landscape gardener Children Zac, 10; Talia, eight Education Putney High School; Oxford University (French and Italian) ‘Day husband’ Murray Boland, Creative Director, CPL. ‘We’ve known each other longer than we have known our partners. He was my best man. I was his. His son is my godson’ 1987 Reporter, BBC youth shows 1989 Researcher, TVF Productions (Dispatches) 1992 Producer, Planet 24 1993 Head of Young People’s Entertainment and Children’s, Granada and LWT 1997 Controller of Entertainment Commissioning, BBC 2001 Head of Entertainment, Channel 4 2003 Joint Managing Director, Celador 2006 Completes management buyout of Celador with Murray Boland 2012 Red Arrow buys controlling stake in Celador Triumphs Helping to bring Jonathan Ross to BBC One; commissioning Marion and Geoff for BBC Two; signing Jimmy Carr, Derren Brown and Vernon Kay to Channel 4 Disaster The £6m Chris Evans game show for Channel 4, Girls and Boys CPL hits You Are What You Eat, All Star Mr and Mrs, A League of Their Own, Off Their Rockers CPL misses The Taste; Wall of Fame First TV memory Adam West in Batman Watching now Peaky Blinders Not watching The Missing – ‘I was too worried about being utterly upset’ What’s next? CPL is working on feel-good dramas for ITV

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All Star Mr and Mrs � on the other. She is, she explains, an observant Jew but also a student of yoga, meditation and eastern philosophies: “I find it positively painful to be something I’m not. So I have to follow my compass.”

Although she went on to lead entertainment departments at ITV, BBC and Channel 4, her first jobs in television were working under journalists, including Janet Street-Porter, who promoted her from researcher to a producer of BBC youth programmes in a year.

The 1990s management style was “ball breaking” and she is glad that the world moved on. “I remember somebody on a show I was doing hadn’t done something I’d asked. I went to draw up in myself, apply the screaming technique that I had been subjected to – not naming Janet, but by loads of people – and I just couldn’t do it.

“I just thought, ‘This is a defining moment for me. My style is not that. I need to find something that I am comfortable with.’ And it was based on logic.

I said, ‘You haven’t done this. Look at the effect that this is going to have on the team. Please, consider how you have affected everybody else.’”

We agree that happy offices are productive offices and I can see that the bastard across the commissioning desk is probably a nice guy in a difficult spot.

What I find harder to get my head around is how this love-first rule can be strictly applied to her record as a programme-maker and commissioner.

For instance, she was an earlier champion of Paul Kaye, who, as Dennis Pennis, so traumatised Steve Martin by asking him why he was not funny any more that he stopped giving interviews.

ITV

Danielle Lux is Managing Director CPL Productions

“I know. I know. That is what I mean by the world having moved on. That was 20 years ago. I don’t think I have changed, but I am more at one with who I am. I’m not trying to be something I’m not.”

Yet CPL is right now working on bringing to British television Denmark’s Married at First Sight.

In this formatted reality series, complete strangers marry on the decree of a panel made up of a sexologist, a spiritual adviser, a psychologist and a sociologist.

It has found success abroad but, in the US, The Hollywood Reporter disputed its “loftier purpose” and said its appeal lay in the “train-wreck nature of the proceedings”. Lux counters that science underpins the experiment: “The best possible people are trying to find the best possible matches.”

But she wouldn’t marry at first sight, would she? “Would I marry on first sight? It depends what stage I was at in my life. I think a lot of people are saying to themselves, ‘I really want this, but I don’t know how in the modern world to find the person that I love.’”

And if the show ends up with divorces, will they be on her conscience? “I don’t think we’re doing anything wrong. I don’t think there’s anything morally corrupt about it.

These people are viewing marriage as a practical bond, rather than a spiritual bond, which I think is slightly different.

“A religious marriage is slightly different. I think if we get any success out of it, I will be utterly delighted. If, God forbid, we don’t, we’ve tried.”

In CPL’s efforts to ensure that “100% morality is shot through it”, the series

is behind its original schedule, but it will be delivered next year to Channel 4.

She left that channel as Head of Entertainment in 2003, after her predecessor, Kevin Lygo, awkwardly returned from Channel 5 to be her boss. Happily, she felt it was time that she experienced commerce.

“For me, Paul Smith [the founder of Celador] absolutely epitomised the balance between creative and business.”

Celador had grown exponentially since it launched Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? in 1998, and was looking for another hit before Millionaire’s fortunes waned. Lux, now Smith’s Joint Managing Director, helped come up with You Are What You Eat, the equally loved and resisted Gillian McKeith show.

Smith, meanwhile, sold the Millionaire rights to the Dutch company 2waytraffic and prepared his exit as a very rich man. It was here that Lux’s story became exceptional.

Instead of walking away from a Millionaire-less Celador, Lux, with her old Channel 4 colleague Murray Boland as Creative Director, bought it.

“I’d been there two years, when Paul came to me and he said, ‘We’re going to announce tomorrow that we’re going to sell Millionaire. Would you like to do a management buyout? You need to decide very quickly’ And I said, ‘Oh, God, I was just about to tell you I’m pregnant.’ It was a massive decision.”

It was all the more so given that, back then, she did not even know what “MBO” stood for. Pregnant, coping with a two-year-old son, she remortgaged her house and learned. Fast.

Within a week of giving birth to her daughter, she was back in negotiations.

Baby Talia and her brother, Zac, playing Thomas the Tank Engine on his computer, accompanied her to lawyers’ meetings.

“Breast-feeding was my lethal weapon. Sitting across the table with those lawyers, they’d go, ‘I think we’ll move on.’ I was changing nappies on the boardroom table.

“I turned up to the lawyer’s office with a pushchair looking like Waynetta Slob in a tracksuit, not knowing if I had brushed my teeth, my hair or neither. ‘Family law?’, they’d ask at the desk. ‘No, corporate.’”

Buying Celador, however, was one thing, sustaining it with hits another, and, although Red Arrow bought a controlling stake in the company in 2012, the pressure is by no means off.

The company’s bankers are All Star Mr & Mrs for ITV and Sky 1’s soccer

Television www.rts.org.uk January 2015

I TURNED UP TO THE LAWYER’S OFFICE WITH A PUSHCHAIR LOOKING LIKE WAYNETTA SLOB IN A TRACKSUIT quiz, A League of Their Own, but there have been flops, too, including 2014’s translation of the US cooking contest, The Taste.

She wonders now if it was more of an 8:00pm show than a 9:00pm one, if the other judges – Anthony Bourdain and Ludo Lefebvre – were as marketable in the UK as Nigella Lawson. “You soul search as to whether you made any wrong decisions, but we were very proud of the production values and the work we did to make it British.”

I ask if she shares the perception that the industry is holding its breath for the next big entertainment format, without a clue as to where it will come from. She says the business is cyclical but, yes, everyone is looking for the next big thing.

But are there enough free-thinking mavericks in the industry to come up with it?

“That is actually what I believe to be the strength of the genuine independent community. It’s hard to be a maverick inside a big corporation or inside a big, consolidated indie.

“Murray and I will work very hard to make sure that crazy, maverick person who has great ideas, but who most people can’t manage, can find a home here.”

CPL’s Creative Executive, Dawn Beresford, is, she says, actively looking for talent from new quarters. The so-called diversity “problem” is a “massive opportunity”.

Certainly, Lux’s own background as

WITHIN A WEEK OF GIVING BIRTH TO HER DAUGHTER, SHE WAS BACK IN NEGOTIATIONS

the daughter of a London motorcycleaccessories trader may not be typical of the media elite of her generation; her years at Oxford studying modern languages are more so.

Politically engaged in causes such as anti-apartheid and the 1984-85 miners’ strike, she watched friends enter current-affairs television hoping to change the world, and followed them with a brief stint as a researcher on Channel 4’s Dispatches.

“I was trying to be something that I wasn’t. The people who studied PPE and went into current affairs and ended up running Newsnight, that was their world.

“That’s right for them. This is the world that’s right for me. If I can’t expose racism in the police force, I can take the mickey out of it a little bit, and I can make people’s lives who work here better. There’s so many ways of changing the world.”

I glance at the framed Mr and Mrs poster behind her. I don’t want to be cynical, but how does Phillip Schofield change the world?

“I defy anybody to watch that and not feel better about life or feel like there’s love in the world, that there is partnership and togetherness and life is good. For me, that’s brilliant, that’s perfect.”

Even A League of Their Own passes this test of hers, a show that it is so like a family reunion to make that its compere, James Corden, wants to continue making it despite his schedule as the new host of CBS’s The Late Late Show.

“I genuinely believe it also chimes with making life better. I cannot tell you the number of people who say, ‘That’s the only thing I can watch with my 12-year-old son’.”

Talking of which, she realised that she might be working a bit too hard when her son, now 10, invented an imaginary friend and called him BlackBerry. “I thought, ‘That wrong.

When I’m with him, I need really to be with him.’”

So she turns the BlackBerry off?

“Yes, completely.”

But has all this work made her rich, I ask. “Not yet, no. Maybe it could have, if I’d been more of a shit. I don’t know.

“But I feel love coming into work every day. I love working with the people I work with. I love the broadcasters I work with. I know it sounds new-agey, ­hippie, but there is richness in other ways – and in ways that fundamentally matter to me.”

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T

he fault line that has opened up between commercial public service broadcasters and pay-TV platforms over their value to each other was laid bare in a lively RTS debate between Channel 4 Chief Executive David Abraham and Virgin Media CEO Tom Mockridge.

What began as a discussion about the uniqueness of UK television (see box, opposite) moved swiftly into a heated exchange.

Building on the case he made in his MacTaggart Lecture in August about retransmission fees – he argued that pay-TV operators should pay to transmit the five main PSB channels – Abraham said that a new study confirmed that the value of public service channels to pay-TV platforms was around £200m.

He explained that the recent Mediatique study, on behalf of Channel 4, asked 2,000 pay-TV consumers what they would do if they were denied access to PSBs on pay-platforms such as Sky or Virgin.

Abraham said that it was possible to “work out what the exchange of consumer behaviour would be between the platforms. Conversely, we also rely on distribution to the pay-platforms for advertising revenue.

“There is a gap between those two numbers and that gap is in the region of £200m for all the commercial PSBs.” He argued that, together, the commercial PSBs offer “huge value to pay-platforms” and that the £200m should be shared among them, with Channel 4 receiving around £70m, which would go “back into the UK independent production sector”.

Abraham said one of his main concerns was the “fair value” of Channel 4 and the other commercial PSBs. He added that “what we are saying is that we should negotiate” over what constitutes fair exchange of value between commercial PSBs’ services and the distribution provided by pay-TV platforms, but also that “we should have a regulatory backstop”.

There then followed a hammer-andtongs exchange of views on the issue.

Mockridge denied any suggestion that Virgin’s business had been built on the PSBs: “The big driver for demand for Virgin Media is broadband.”

Abraham countered that changes were needed, to ascribe “fair value” to the contribution PSB content made to pay-TV suppliers: “The system is bro-

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Retransmission: Economics

David Abraham and Tom Mockridge debate whether public service channels are subsidising pay-TV platforms. Tara Conlan keeps score ken… The point is that you have this fantastic business… [I’m] just saying it’s absurd to now behave as if the absence of [PSB channels] would not drive big changes in consumer behaviour.”

Mockridge suggested that “a regulated backstop by Ofcom… [is] in the language of ordinary people, the customers that we serve, called a tax” and

would have to be passed on to consumers in their bills rather than taken out of margins.

He said that the subsidised spectrum that Channel 4 received had huge value and the industry should beware of changing the current broadcasting ecosystem in exchange for “a reasonably modest sum of money to Channel 4”.

Mockridge also warned: “When you saw how quickly some politicians leapt on the BBC [in late November], opening up this debate at this time [as we approach] the licence-fee negotiations… is, frankly, reckless for those people who want to see a strong BBC in future.”

Abraham dismissed the Virgin CEO’s concerns about the vulnerability of the BBC as nothing more than a red herring: “It’s irrelevant to talk to us about the BBC, it’s a big diversion from the central issue we are raising.”

Mockridge argued that, if regulators were to look at what “broadband delivers to the creative industries”,

Tom Mockridge (left) and David Abraham

Both pictures: Paul Hampartsoumian

UK TV’s USP

who benefits? then they would come to a different conclusion to the one the commercial PSBs were looking for.

Once the debate was opened up to the audience, Sky’s Director of Policy and Public Affairs, David Wheeldon, took issue with an earlier assertion of Abraham, that the PSBs’ prominent place on Sky’s EPG was not up for negotiation or “in the gift of any pay provider”.

Wheeldon said Channel 4’s EPG position helped it “to sell a lot of advertising” and disagreed that the EPG was “a public good... It’s not, it is a private good appropriated,” and part of Sky’s “contribution to public service”.

He went on: “The idea that you can somehow exclude that from the argument won’t wash.” EPG prominence was part of the balance of payments between pay- and public service TV. “We’ve got to be careful about what we wish for,” warned Wheeldon. His view was echoed by Mockridge, who

Television www.rts.org.uk January 2015

said that, for commercial PSBs to “pluck one piece” out of the jigsaw of UK broadcasting and ask for it to be changed, risked “undermining” the whole system and walking into a “trap”.

Mockridge was questioned about Virgin Media lobbying Ofcom to investigate the spiralling cost of Premier League broadcasting rights – and the impact on prices for consumers. He confirmed Virgin’s current position of not commissioning content directly, and elaborated that it was not going to bid for the football rights in the forthcoming auction.

Mockridge warned that the cost of the rights could double, a prediction that – unusually, for the evening – no one seemed to disagree with.

The RTS early-evening event ‘UK television’s USP: just how unique are we?’ was held at The Hospital Club in London on 8 December. It was chaired by Kate Bulkley and produced by David Mahoney.

Channel 4 CEO David Abraham opened proceedings by suggesting that the continuing arguments about his James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture showed he had stimulated debate about a key issue.

In that lecture to the Edinburgh International Television Festival in August, he warned that, with ‘US entities queuing up to buy our producers and now our broadcasters’, if politicians and regulators stayed silent, the UK’s ‘special system may wither’.

Abraham told the RTS audience that ‘the US television market is vast’, with around 95 million homes, and much of what we see in the UK, when ‘we talk about great US TV, is the icing on the cake’.

He claimed that what made the UK unique was ‘decades of really enlightened frameworks’ and a balance between ‘enlightened regulation’ and a strong market; these have combined to produce ‘great creativity’.

The Channel 4 chief warned that, in a time of consolidation, where large US groups are buying British media companies, the UK television industry ‘can’t take [the regulatory system] for granted’.

Abraham explained that his MacTaggart speech ‘was concerned with balance’. He delivered it just after ‘the first PSB licence’ (Channel 5’s) had gone to a US company, Viacom, and when news had emerged that Liberty Global (owner of Virgin Media) could be interested in ITV. Abraham said that in the US he had observed ‘quite a high level of regulatory activity’, even in areas such as foreign ownership. So to describe the US marketplace as ‘somewhere without any market intervention’ was ‘frankly absurd’.

Abraham revealed that his views about the threat to the UK broadcasting ecosystem had ‘hardened’ since his MacTaggart speech.

British television, he said, was an important part of UK culture and a contributor to the UK tax economy, plus ‘there’s something that is about preserving the culture, about us speaking to ourselves’.

21

O

n the face of it, a privately educated, Oxford graduate Tory grandee and a black TV comic who left school at 16 have nothing in common. But the unlikely pairing of Ed Vaizey MP and actor Lenny Henry finally appears to be delivering a real change in approach to diversity within broadcasting.

For decades, television has struggled to transform its “hideously white” workforce and to embrace modern, diverse Britain on both sides of the camera.

There is now a decent chance of that happening, as the audience at an electrifying RTS debate, “TV diversity: who will win your vote?”, heard.

The discussion at the House of Commons confounded those sceptics who believe that TV will for ever be stuck in its white, male, middle-class mindset.

Vaizey, the Minister for Culture, Communications and the Creative Industries, was joined on the panel by his Labour shadow, Helen Goodman MP, and Liberal Democrat MP Stephen Gilbert.

Yet the omens weren’t encouraging as the pin-sharp chair, BBC News Channel Senior Presenter Clive Myrie, set the scene. He noted how BAME (black and minority ethnic) levels of employment across UK TV had worsened in recent years. His own experience as a black BBC foreign correspondent spoke volumes about the decline in jobs for non-whites.

“When I joined the BBC in 1992, there were two other Afro-Caribbean reporters, now there is only me,” he said.

While the legal profession has embraced diversity, the TV industry has been going backwards, Myrie reminded the audience.

According to Creative Skillset, BAME representation across the creative industries fell from 6.7% in 2009 to 5.4% in 2012, despite 12.5% of the UK population being non-white.

“What’s going on? Is it pure and simple racism?” Myrie asked. “Why are bosses only employing people in their own image – white, male, middle-­ class? Are minorities being put off because they won’t feel welcome?

“Are quotas the way forward? Should money be ring-fenced for BAME production [the Lenny Henry plan]?”

Under the terms of its Royal Charter, the BBC is obliged “to represent the UK, its nations, regions and communities”, the BBC journalist pointed out.

Charter renewal, due in 2016, repre-

22

Baroness Benjamin in the audience

A new dawn for diversity?

Equality

TV has been ‘hideously white’ for too long.

Steve Clarke attends an RTS debate that signals progress is finally under way sented “a golden opportunity for the BBC to lead the industry and actually fulfil one of its core duties,” said Myrie.

Few in the room disagreed.

The three MPs were then given five minutes to talk about diversity.

Goodman and Gilbert highlighted how unpaid internships favoured the white, middle class.

The Labour MP attacked the former media minister Jeremy Hunt for ending Ofcom’s brief to monitor diversity levels in employment at UK broadcasters.

She said TV was possibly “the most

important cultural force” in the UK. It was therefore vital that TV reflected the diversity of modern Britain on screen and in its employment practices.

With more SMEs and independent producers, concentrating on the human resources policies of big broadcasters was no longer enough.

Goodman praised the recent BFI initiative designed to address diversity in all films supported by the BFI Film Fund. In order to be eligible for funding, projects must demonstrate a commitment to diversity.

Television www.rts.org.uk January 2015

THE REASON THAT BROADCAST MATTERS IS BECAUSE IT IS THE RECORD OF OUR LIVES meaningful comparisons to be made in relation to the number of BAME people working at broadcasters.

“I hope the statistics will be shocking and continue to shock people out of their complacency,” warned Vaizey.

He said the BBC, ITV and Sky had all recently published new diversity initiatives: “Sky has set very ambitious targets, partly driven by Sophie Turner Laing [BSkyB’s former content chief] and now taken up by Stuart Murphy [Sky’s Director of Entertainment Channels].”

ITV’s proposals were “slightly more opaque”, while “some regard the BBC’s as very unambitious” because they are spread over a number of years. He awaited Channel 4’s plans with “eager anticipation”.

Vaizey said that he would not commit himself to Henry’s plans for ringfenced money to back BAME content, and ruled out legislation on the issue.

“For me, this is very much an active, watching brief. If necessary, government will have to push harder than I have in the past 12 months.

“The proof will be in next 12 months, if there are improvements.”

Myrie asked why had it taken Vaizey so long to address the lack of TV diversity. “You can criticise me for it,” conceded Vaizey. “Floella [Benjamin] has talked about this issue for years, but there actually comes a seminal moment when you realise the cause and effect.

“That came when I saw Lenny in The Comedy of Errors. That’s when I decided to take it up as a cause.”

He then posed a question: “Should government be imposing this from above or should it come from the �

WHY ARE BOSSES ONLY EMPLOYING PEOPLE IN THEIR OWN IMAGE – WHITE, MALE, MIDDLE-CLASS?

TV’s tendency to stereotype Afua Hirsch, Sky News: ‘There’s a lot of talk about numbers, but what about the quality of the roles? Black presenters often present late at night or very early in the morning.

‘There are also stereotypical ­expectations about what non-white presenters should do. You rarely hear a black person talking about politics, law or foreign affairs.’

Clive Myrie, BBC News: ‘When I joined the BBC, I refused to go to Brixton to cover riots. My first posting as a foreign correspondent was to Japan. They got the message.

‘I would like to think that when the public see me on screen they don’t see a black journalist but a journalist who happens to be black.’

Channel 4 on diversity

Dan Brooke

Paul Hampartsoumian

Gilbert drew attention to his own experience as a gay man raised in a working-class family in Cornwall.

“If you turn on the TV, I don’t exist,” he said. “I’m a gay man who happens to wear a suit, not something you see particularly in the programmes shown by our major broadcasters.”

He added: “We don’t see enough black, minority ethnic, disabled people or women on TV… TV does not reflect the nation it is serving and the people who are watching.”

But all eyes were on Vaizey, the minister who, in January, had hosted a diversity roundtable featuring Lenny Henry, among others.

“Our first roundtable was a great education for me and a lot of scales fell from my eyes,” admitted the politician.

His own Damascene moment came at the National Theatre, when he saw Henry defy the sceptics by giving a powerful performance as Antipholus of Syracuse in Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors.

“I noticed a fairly obvious thing. The audience was completely different when Lenny Henry was on stage… I’ve never been a great fan of slightly abstract notions of outreach and statistics,” said Vaizey. “If you get so many kids through the door, you must be doing something right. What we need are more ethnic-­ minority people on stage.”

One thing led to another. When Henry made headlines in May 2013 for criticising the Bafta Awards because of the black talent deficit, Vaizey sat up and took notice.

“The BAME community feels it has talked about this issue for 30 years,” said the minister. “Nothing’s changed.

If anything, it’s got worse. It is a truly shocking position to be in.

“The reason it matters, and the reason that broadcast matters, is because it is the record of our lives.

“When our children and grandchildren look back on what Britain was like in the 2010s, they may well see an exclusively white Britain and that is not the case.

“That is why intervention by broadcasters, giving people a leg up, is very important.”

Progress, however, had been made, he said. Under the chairmanship of ITV CEO Adam Crozier, the Creative Diversity Network had been transformed into a free-standing body with its own executive.

And it would soon introduce monitoring software. This would allow

Dan Brooke, Director of Marketing and Communications, said: ‘We are very proud of the fact that Channel 4 has championed minorities since it began. Today, you see it across things such as the Paralympics…

‘I know it has an impact because, when you ask viewers which of all the TV channels champions diversity, Channel 4 gets a score that is three times higher than the next-best broadcaster…

‘We haven’t published targets yet. There is a good reason for that, which is that we start from a position that is ahead of other broadcasters and we are extremely keen to get it right across all aspects of diversity and across all genres…

‘It’s not just a set of tick-box exercises, but something that will create genuine, lasting change across the industry.’

23

The Equality Act: the legal view Among the broadcasters and production companies for whom I act, there is a very real commitment to improving representation of under-represented groups – that includes, for example, increasing BAME representation, onscreen and off-screen, increasing representation of people with disabilities and increasing the representation of women in areas of broadcasting where they are currently under-represented.

Actions taken to ensure that onscreen and off-screen talent reflects the UK population as a whole are hugely important and must be compliant with the Equality Act. The Act prohibits discrimination, including ‘positive discrimination’ and use of quotas in selecting talent is not without significant risk. Consequently, it is very important to understand whether initiatives being considered by broadcasters can be implemented lawfully.

Broadcasters have been working for some time to improve monitoring of the protected characteristics of on-screen and off-screen talent. New monitoring currently being introduced will enable broadcasters to consider the effectiveness of these commitments over time.

I was asked at the APPG event how the speakers could actively assist the industry. I provided some examples of how the politicians might act: n Producing clear guidance on what broadcasters and producers can do.

The Equality Act 2010 Employment Statutory Code of Practice has examples of lawful action but they are not specific to the media industry. One approach would be for broadcasters to work with the Government to produce clear industry-specific guidance that wouldn’t require legislative change. n If there is a call for it, and I don’t think that there is at the moment, legislative change could be considered in a similar way as to the exemptions allowing UK political parties to use all-women shortlists to select candidates for various parliamentary and local government elections.

It is unclear whether there is an appetite for this, but it is important to understand that some of the initiatives being called for by the politicians would require changes like these.

24

Graham Green The current situation is summarised by the Equality and Human Rights Commission in relation to all-women shortlists for board membership: ‘We do not believe that it is lawful to address under-representation by longlisting or shortlisting only female candidates to the detriment of male candidates’. n Something similar to the Rooney Rule could be considered. Dan Rooney introduced a system in the US which requires National Football League teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching and senior football operations jobs.

Although the Rooney Rule does not impose a quota or require a preference to be given to candidates from ethnic minorities at the point of selection, it risks unlawful positive discrimination in that, as mentioned above, an employer ‘must not discriminate against a person in the arrangements it makes for deciding to whom to offer employment’.

This means politicians may need to be open to potential tweaks to the legislation, or at least (and perhaps more realistically) specific guidance, to enable broadcasters to confidently adopt such a rule without exposing themselves to risk.

Graham Green is an Employment Partner at Reed Smith in London and heads a global employment group focusing on the media, entertainment and technology sector.

From left: Helen Goodman MP, Clive Myrie, Ed Vaizey MP and Stephen Gilbert MP � broadcasters? I think we have made progress because we have worked in partnership… We’ve shown the broadcasters that we are serious about seeing change…

“I am pleased with what’s happened in the past 12 months. There’s been a real step change. I am not going to claim credit for it. Floella, Oona [King] and Lenny Henry have all been very helpful.

There’s been a meeting of minds.”

Speaking from the floor, veteran diversity campaigner and ex-RTS CEO Simon Albury praised Vaizey’s intervention.

He said: “I’ve been observing civil rights and diversity issues for 50 years and no minister has done more on this issue than Ed Vaizey.

“He has set a benchmark by which future ministers should be measured.

“Chris Smith tried to do it 15 years ago, but he underestimated the… broadcasters’ [resistance to] change and their ability to procrastinate.”

Despite the progress of the past year, Albury was alarmed by recent remarks by the BBC and ITV, which have both

NO MINISTER HAS DONE MORE ON THIS ISSUE THAN ED VAIZEY. HE HAS SET A BENCHMARK BY WHICH FUTURE MINISTERS SHOULD BE MEASURED

said the Equality Act (see sidebar, right) presented them with difficulties.

If the Act does prevent the broadcasters giving equal opportunity and better representation to BAME communities, would Parliament consider amending it, asked Albury.

“I haven’t seen the Equality Act cited to me by anyone saying they can’t deliver any of these initiatives,” replied the minster.

“I have made it very clear that Sky is far and away the most impressive with its can-do, get-on-with-it attitude...

“What I really do want to get across is… I don’t want to be here in 12 months’ time with people saying that nothing has changed. If that is the case, politicians will have to do some really serious thinking about what they can do to make change... It’s an appalling situation.”

But it does seem as if TV’s dismal record on diversity is set to change. As Baroness Benjamin, who has worked as a presenter, producer and TV regulator, said at the end of the debate, to loud applause: “I’ve been dealing with

Television www.rts.org.uk January 2015

this issue since 1973. I’ve seen it from all different perspectives.

“This is the most exciting time we’ve had dealing with the issue. Without Ed pushing the way he’s pushed… Real positive changes have been made, which I think will be lasting changes…

“People now get it, they understand what needs to be done and realise there is no going back.

“Young people are now saying, ‘We want something that’s different’… The people who used to be in charge are no longer there.

“Things are changing and people like me are not going to give up, because we can smell victory.”

Let’s hope this optimism is not misplaced and that, before too long, television can begin to be proud of its record on diversity.

The RTS All Party Parliamentary Group event ‘TV diversity: who will win your vote?’ was held at the House of Commons on 17 November. It was produced by Marcus Ryder, Editor of Current Affairs, BBC Scotland.

Diversity in the next Charter Ed Vaizey MP: ‘The negotiations over Charter renewal will start after the May election and I have no doubt at all that diversity will be part of those discussions.’

Stephen Gilbert MP: ‘You’re asking me if I think the BBC is getting it right. No, I don’t. There should be more money, it should be better targeted and the issue needs to be properly defined in the Charter.’

Helen Goodman MP: ‘Charter renewal is an opportunity… I think I’ll be satisfied that we are where we want to be when we have a member of the traveller community as a commissioning editor at Channel 4.’

25

OUR FRIEND IN THE

WEST

26

Icon Films

I

con Films is based in Bristol, and this febrile, effervescent hub out south west is a fine place to be an indie. It’s a dichotomous city, considered conservative and prosperous (think tobacco, Ministry of Defence and banking), but with a long history of innovation and dissent (think Cabot, Brunel and Wesley).

Bristol is home to some of the most innovative companies and institutions in the land. Quantum physicists and playwrights mingle here, using the formal and informal networks that exist – and, through this restless connectivity and constant hubbub, comes great work.

Independence is valued and encouraged – indeed, our elected mayor is an independent – and we have a Bristol Independence Day to celebrate independent traders. We even have our own currency, the Bristol Pound. And this year, Bristol takes on the mantle of European Green Capital.

How does this spirit support the creative industries? While we may be the third-largest production centre in the UK (after Manchester), we can’t ignore the fact that we are dwarfed by London and the commissioning power centred there. In Bristol, we know we have to punch above our weight.

And we do: we capitalise on the resources available to us. We engage with Creative England, which has one of its largest offices here, and with Creative Skillset, which recognises the growing importance of Bristol to the national landscape. We leverage the talent-pulling power of the BBC, and vice versa.

Indie producers are predatory, a bit piratical and, of course, pragmatic. We seek out the best and boldest people to work with in Bristol University and University of the West of England, the Pervasive Media Studio, Watershed, and the cultural institutions – Bristol

Laura Marshall celebrates Bristol’s success as a creative hub – but wonders why some London commissioners treat her as a yokel

Old Vic, Spike Island, St George’s and the brilliant Invisible Circus.

Add in the gamers, the explosion in digital companies and, of course, that extraordinarily rounded entity that works across digital, theatrical, TV and advertising, Aardman Animations – and you have the beginnings of a new way of working.

Bristol companies have long been adept at co-production and international sales. Our projects cross the Atlantic to gratifying success. It has not gone unnoticed by government that Bristol’s creative industries are growing.

Together with a functioning Local Enterprise Partnership that treats

media producers with the respect they deserve for building the region’s prosperity, the Government supports and celebrates our success. It also adds real cash to cover some essential costs (I write this from New York, where I am on one of my many trips to see our customers).

But it’s not all glowing in the west.

It sometimes feels harder to sell a show to a UK broadcaster than to a US network. There is a sense in London that regional producers don’t quite get it, and that there is a need to parachute in London-based producers to lead a team here in order to create the feel London-­based commissioners want.

Frankly, it feels patronising. But the customer is always right. So, often, we end up not with “Producer Choice” but with a Londoner’s choice. (“Lah, good sir… thank ’ee so much”, as we say here in the West Country, dusting the hay from our smocks.)

Icon Films will be 25 years old this year, and we think that starting our company here was a stroke of genius.

We came to Bristol because it had a solid TV industry, BBC and ITV hubs, and a nascent indie community, all backed up by world-class facilities and graphics companies.

Together, this meant that the city not only attracted talent but retained it. New companies arrive every year and, with each start-up, we feel the strength of Bristol growing, the talent pool expanding and Icon’s opportunities expanding.

We feel part of the city – involved in a huge range of initiatives – training, educational, charitable, cultural and civic. Each engagement with another sector of this great place broadens our horizons and we find more ideas for factual programming.

Bring on the next 25 years!

Laura Marshall is Managing Director of Icon Films, which is based in Bristol.

January 2015 www.rts.org.uk Television

Doctor Who: anatomy of a hit

I

n the decade since its revival, Doctor Who has become a TV institution. Time Lords and assistants come and go, but the popularity of the BBC One sci-fi series remains undimmed.

As Peter Capaldi’s first series as the Time Lord ended in November, show-­ runner Steven Moffat and key members of the production team – Executive Producer Brian Minchin, Producer Nikki Wilson, creature effects maestro Rob Mayor and Director Ben Wheatley – sold out an RTS early-evening event, “Doctor Who: anatomy of a hit”.

Since Russell T Davies regenerated Doctor Who in 2005, the doctors have been youngish (Christopher Eccleston) and positively youthful in David Tennant and Matt Smith.

Moffat revealed to Heat magazine TV critic and Doctor Who fan Boyd Hilton, who chaired the RTS event, Television www.rts.org.uk January 2015

Content

Matthew Bell listens to the team behind the monster hit as they reveal how every episode constitutes a regeneration of the sci-fi legend that he felt obliged to age the Doctor when Smith decided to leave at the end of the 2013 series. “[We didn’t want] to cast another attractive young man with entertaining hair – we knew we had to do something different,” he said.

Capaldi – who starred in the sci-fi series six years earlier as a Roman merchant saved from the lava and ash of Vesuvius by Tennant’s Time Lord – was made for the role, reckoned Moffat.

“The moment the rumour of Peter got out, everyone assumed it would be him. We unveiled him to a nation who already knew and, in a great act of mass performance, affected to be surprised,” he recalled.

Like the previous doctors, Capaldi has moulded his own character. “You write [the role] in a surprisingly similar way to the previous doctor and then that actor starts to create a new one. You want to be influenced by the performance hugely,” said Moffat.

“None of those guys are pushovers – trust me,” he continued. “Matt [Smith] may not have the scary eyebrows, but he’s every bit as emphatic.

You invite each doctor to have a huge � 27

Directing the Doctor Long-time Doctor Who fan Ben Wheatley jumped at the chance to direct two episodes – series opening period piece Deep Breath and the futuristic Into the Dalek – in the latest series.

The movie director, who wowed both critics and audiences with his macabre movies Kill List and Sightseers, discussed the challenges of working in TV at the RTS event.

‘Once I realised I was going to get to do it, I started to become terribly afraid. It was quite a big deal to do the first two with Capaldi. Initially, just knowing I was going to work with the new Doctor [had] a whole level of terror to it.

‘Then, reading the scripts and seeing how involved they were in terms of action and stuff… oh, God. Once I met the team, and they started to talk it through, it was fine,’ said Wheatley.

‘The show is different every episode, so you can drop different styles into it and it’s not going to damage the series. And I couldn’t believe I got a Dalek episode.

‘I storyboarded the episodes [heavily] because I was particularly worried about the level of effects work. There was not much margin for error. Basically, it’s about page count. The last film I did [we shot] three pages a day; Doctor Who is between four and 11.

‘On three pages you can do a lot of coverage; on 11, you can do none.

So you’ve just got to get it right. I planned it as much as I could and when I look back at my scrappy drawings, they are close to what it [became].

‘I thought there would be more pressure with the first two episodes, to be honest, but when I was making them [there was a lot] of freedom in terms of how I shot them. I think it was because everyone was in accord, which was good.

‘I’ve worked in other situations, where people are looking over your shoulder at the monitor and asking, “Why did you do it like that?”, which makes you go insane.

‘It was very open and free on Doctor Who.’

28

� input – that’s what you’re employing them for. I’m not employing them to act for me – that would be shit.”

Capaldi has brought a greater intensity and darker hue to the part – though nothing of foul-mouthed spin doctor Malcolm Tucker from The Thick of It – which Moffat admitted had “ruffled a few feathers”.

He added: “Shows don’t die by people saying, ‘I don’t like it now.’ Shows die by people saying, ‘Oh, it’s quite good.’ When people say, ‘I’m appalled by the new Doctor Who,’ [you know] they’re watching it.”

Moffat argued that the series “has been a reinvention; it has been difficult.

It has been designed to make people [say] ‘I don’t trust him yet’. That makes the show new again.”

Movie director Wheatley (see box, left) helmed the all-important first two episodes of the recent series. “Doctor Who, from the very beginning, has been a risk-taking show. You want to give it to [directors] who are going to be the most ambitious and bold – Ben was so clear and direct about what he wanted to do with it,” said Executive Producer Minchin.

The series also saw top-notch actors such as Keeley Hawes, Hermione Norris

and Michelle Gomez in guest roles.

“Doctor Who means so much to writers, directors and actors who normally lead their own shows but are happy to put their other careers to one side and come and do [it],” added Minchin.

Gomez starred as Missy, a female incarnation of the Doctor’s legendary foe, The Master, in the two-part series finale. “The idea came before the casting,” recalled Moffat, but the writer couldn’t find a way to develop the idea and make it more than just a gimmick.

Months later, he saw Gomez’s name attached to another part in the series, which other commitments prevented her from accepting.

Visualising her playing Missy helped the showrunner to write the script.

“She’s an amazing, inventive actress that you simply can’t cut away from,” said Moffat.

“We got an arch-enemy performance that matches the amazing Roger Delgado, who played the original, and John Simm, who played the new-series version – those are stellar performances.

Michelle is every bit as good – she’s alarming, scary and extremely funny,” he added.

Moffat was adamant that Doctor Who is written neither to a formula nor for a

A MINI-INDUSTRY HAS BUILT UP AROUND THE SHOW’S SOUTH WALES PRODUCTION BASE

Creating the creatures

particular audience. “You don’t know what other people want. You know what you want, so you write everything for yourself,” said Moffat. “You sit down and think, ‘What have I always wanted to see in Doctor Who? Well, now I can do it.’”

He added that the writing “is not targeted at anyone other than myself.

This is not a formula for huge success – I’ve written many other failures on the same basis, but, now and then, you write something that everyone else happens to be into at the moment and that’s great. It’s a lovely coincidence, but you can only ever write the joke that makes you laugh.”

In the decade since Doctor Who returned to BBC One, a mini-industry has built up around the show’s production base in South Wales.

“There’s a crew in Cardiff that has grown up with the show, so there’s an awful lot of talent and expertise that knows the show inside out,” said Producer Nikki Wilson.

The talent is available, but money and time are in short supply (a single episode is made in around two weeks).

“What is extraordinarily expert about the work of all branches of our effects department is how great they are within quite savage limitations,” said Moffat. “We have to conceal those limitations and work cleverly within them.”

“There isn’t a paradigm episode that you keep remaking. Every aspect of the script, effects, the sets and designs, the

Television www.rts.org.uk January 2015

cast and the style the directors bring to it, is different every time – that’s what makes it a great show,” The experience of the team is key to getting the programme made on time, within budget and to a quality standard. “You trust in those people to bring ideas to the table that are going to bring it to life,” said Wilson.

Millennium FX Director Mayor (see box, right) and many of his team are veterans of Doctor Who. Saturday-night ratings have dipped during the current series but, when catch-up views are added, total audiences are at the same level as the past few runs.

Over the course of series 8, the consolidated audience averaged 7.4 million viewers, an increase of 39% on the overnight figures.

“The headline, boring though it is, is that [the ratings] have barely changed since it came back,” said Moffat. “The way people watch it has changed.”

Worldwide, audiences have been growing, with ratings surging in the US during the Capaldi era – consolidated figures for the first 10 episodes were almost a quarter higher than the previous run on BBC America. “I would be working hard, even as a Scot, to be disappointed by that,” said Moffat.

The RTS early-evening event ‘Doctor Who: anatomy of a hit’ was held at King’s Place in central London on 11 November, and produced by Sally Doganis and Barney Hooper.

BBC

From left: Boyd Hilton, Steven Moffat, Nikki Wilson, Brian Minchin, Ben Wheatley and Rob Mayor

Paul Hampartsoumian

Millennium FX Director Rob Mayor and his team have provided the prosthetics and animatronics for Doctor Who’s weird and wonderful creatures since the series returned in 2005.

‘We have such an established team – many of us have been on the show since it came back. It’s hard to faze the team, because

we’re so immersed in the world of Doctor Who,’ Mayor explained.

‘Because it’s a TV show, turnaround times are quite tight, so sometimes the first time anyone has seen a finished creature is the first day of shooting, which is very scary from a production point of view.

‘I’ve been working at 4:00am spraying Cybermen suits, but, as far as I know, everything has turned up on the set dry, or at least touch dry.

‘The great thing about Doctor Who is that the monsters, scripts and environments are so varied that we get a chance to make a whole range of creatures and use a whole range of skills. Because we’re all big monster fans, to get the opportunity to make the mummy for the Orient Express episode was fantastic.

‘It’s most challenging when we get the chance to [work on] classic Doctor Who monsters. There’s an emotional attachment to those characters from past history – there’s a sense of anticipation as soon as we step out of the workshop, because we’ve redesigned something.’

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Multi-platform TV

The coming avalanche of connected-TV and mobile services will leave linear TV viewing largely intact, hears Maggie Brown

T

he implications of the rapid uptake of connected-TV and the explosion of mobile devices on which users can find and watch content were teased out at a packed RTS early-evening event before Christmas.

As panellist Dan Saunders, Head of Chromecast for the UK, Nordics and Netherlands at Google, put it with a dash of self-interest: “Lucky consumers… The UK is white hot right now. So many different choices. Awareness is soaring about the ways to find content.”

Google Chromecast is doing its bit as a modestly priced and convenient device: it plugs into your TV set and uses wi-fi to link programmes to your smartphone or tablet.

It is just one example of the avalanche of products and services from internet and telecoms companies and video suppliers such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Roku. They are all piling into different parts of the market.

The other four experts at the event were: Emma Lloyd, Sky Business Development Director; Ilse Howling, Managing Director, Connected TV, Digital UK; Richard Halton, CEO of YouView; and Stephen Taylor, Director of Redshift Strategy consultancy.

All are at the front line of internet-­ driven TV. Howling, for example, had just announced the award of major contracts to build and test an updated Freeview-branded, connected-TV service aimed at the mass market. She said we are in a “golden age” for viewers.

The debate focused on what connected television means to viewers, content providers and broadcasters.

In a scene-setting presentation, Taylor (who recently assessed connected-TV for Ofcom) said it seemed to be destroying the divide between pay-TV and free-to-air television, because it facilitated an alternative – “pay-lite”.

Moreover, he predicted: “This is

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Connected TV decoded going to be the biggest section of the market by 2020.”

Viewers are increasingly prepared to pay for specific content. As the evening’s Chair, Kate Bulkley, observed: “It is no longer a case of either free or all you can eat.”

Lloyd agreed, adding: “Now TV is an entirely new brand for Sky that has emerged over the past 18 months or so.

Four-fifths of the people who take Now TV from Sky have never paid for TV before. We are very much tapping into those who said pay-TV is not for me.” These viewers are buying shortterm passes for sports, movies and entertainment.

The second insight from Taylor was that linear TV viewing in the home, supported by the appeal of big screens, will remains resilient. This should prevent further fragmentation of audiences.

This might suggest that the dice are loaded in favour of the broadcasters.

By 2020, average TV consumption could rise to 4 hours 50 minutes per day,

from the current 4 hours 33 minutes, with total viewing driven by increases in mobile viewing as 4G spreads.

But linear viewing of scheduled TV would still comprise around two-thirds of total viewing – about 20 minutes less per day than now.

Forecasts that up to 90% of UK homes would have an internet-­ connected main TV set by 2020 (more than seven times current penetration) were not controversial. But the interpretation put on that figure could be.

Halton issued a caution on this point: “Be careful with those charts – that’s the average.”

The same charts for 16- to 34-yearolds would be radically different, he pointed out: “The end game is way beyond what we are projecting in 2020. News goes to mobile first, then sports, then kids. One by one, they go.

“In any genre of TV today, I would be looking harder. What are the opportunities to go into different formats? Be really careful.”

From left: Kate Bulkley, Dan Saunders, Emma Lloyd, Ilse Howling, Richard Halton and Stephen Taylor Regarding the forecast that twothirds of all TV watching in 2020 would be live, Halton simply said: “I find that hard to believe”.

Taylor added that we are in a confusing marketplace, because the players are in it for different reasons.

Manufacturers are struggling to sell hardware with special features. Broadband suppliers are trying to win us over on quality of user experience.

Vodafone and EE are talking about launching new TV services, following the lead of BT Vision, which has invested in sport “to defend itself”.

This could favour broadcaster-driven systems, because consumers first of all want content. How it is presented to them is less important, argued Taylor.

Halton, whose YouView offering combines live TV with a seamless catch-up service, agreed: “The critical thing [in developing YouView] was the integrity and simplicity of product and the focus on content discovery.

“The involvement of the broadcasters

Television www.rts.org.uk January 2015

gave it that focus… Its virtue is the ease of finding the programme you want.

Eighty per cent of TV is live. Having a device that gives you that core service and the extension into catch-up is a brilliant application.”

But there was gentle laughter when he said that sales of YouView boxes were “on the way to 2 million” homes.

The service has not been a retail success and is largely used by consortium members BT and TalkTalk.

“Any provider today launching a set-top box without a distribution partner such as Sky or BT will struggle,” was Halton’s rejoinder.

In contrast, Howling, concerned with updating the Freeview platform for a connected era, is attuned to the mass market; Freeview is the UK’s biggest digital TV platform.

She said: “What do [people] want next?… They’d like to be able to find programmes faster and be able to watch more of what they want to watch when they want. Freeview Con-

nected is about giving them that.”

There will be a “backwards” EPG that combines linear channels with catch-up and on-demand, but no date has been fixed for launch.

“We do see it as something you buy with a new television. There is no obligation to subscribe and it will work with any broadband provider,” said Howling. “What Freeview homes value is that Freeview is free.”

By comparison, Saunders is more of a disrupter. “Chromecast turns things on their head. As a connected-TV ­solution, it really allows you to have an experience driven by mobile. You search and decide through your mobile tablet device. Simple,” he claimed.

Taylor agreed, adding: “Google, if it does a single thing, is getting us used to using our mobile phones as a remote control.

“A big step forward, from Google’s point of view, is that it is a personal device.” Critically, this means that the search engine can track you via your mobile.

This led to a question about whether rising numbers of mobile viewers would see more demand for shorter, more concise programmes.

Lloyd said Sky was “watching carefully”, but so far thought it unlikely.

Halton suggested that, overall, “producers should do really, really well out of it. Content providers, what’s not to like?” It meant, he said, that they could sell their programmes to a wider variety of distributors, generating more money to invest in making content.

Howling was more grounded: “The other thing is that we just about understand this. For so many people in this country, what we are talking about would not make a huge amount of sense.

“The percentage of people with smart TVs is tiny. This is something they will really love. They will get a lot out of it, but we must remember to keep it simple and easy to use.

“My biggest concern is that we screw things up by overcomplicating them and get too far ahead of where millions of mass-market homes are.

“Think of us going home, tonight, to crash down in front of the TV. We want something easy.”

‘Connected TV: decoded’ was held at the Cavendish Conference Centre in central London on 26 November. It was produced

by Stephen Gaynor, Sky’s Senior Commercial Development Manager.

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How to make it on screen

‘I

wish I’d had this opportunity to talk to people who’ve been successful in television, because it’s bloody tough. But, on the flip side, and I know it’s a contradiction, it’s not as difficult as you may think,” said TV game-show host Vernon Kay, as he introduced the final RTS Futures event of the year, “I made it… on screen”.

An all-star panel of presenters plus talent agent Holly Pye discussed working in television with Kay, who chaired the event, offering advice to the many would-be presenters in the large audience. Echoing Kay, their view was that TV always needs new talent and, with the right skills and perseverance, it is possible to break in and build a career.

The presenters were treated to clips of their career highlights and – in stark contrast to the polish of their later work – their uneasy early efforts. “No one starts off being bloody brilliant – it’s a learning curve,” admitted Kay, who hosts ITV’s All Star Family Fortunes.

The co-presenter of The Great British Bake Off, Sue Perkins, watched herself perform a shambolic song and dance routine with Mel Giedroyc and Kylie Minogue from Light Lunch in 1997.

Before working on the Channel 4 chat show, Perkins had already written

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RTS Futures

Matthew Bell joins would-be presenters to find out what it takes to become the face of a TV programme for BBC comedies French and Saunders and Absolutely Fabulous. Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, said Perkins, “were amazing mentors and that is something you really need – someone who fights your corner and who gives you the opportunity – because they’re hard to come by”.

ITV News at Ten anchor Charlene White was shown her small-screen debut, an ITV News Meridian report from 2001 on a pilates course in a church hall. As a child, she recalled, “I wanted to tell stories. TV was never part of my plan – it just happened.”

White started early, doing work experience for The Guardian at the age of 16. She worked as a journalist for BBC Radio 1 in her early twenties before a chance encounter with the

editor of BBC Three’s 60seconds news programme led to a screen test and shifts on the news bulletin.

Having seen a clip of an early presenting gig on ITV sex education show Love Bites, Anna Richardson admitted that her performance and those of the other presenters were “really shit”.

Addressing the audience, she added: “Don’t kid yourself that, just because you do a bit of vlogging or [filming] your own little packages, you’re really good. It really does take quite a few years to become good as a presenter.”

Richardson had worked in production before landing a presenting role on C4’s The Big Breakfast. She said that producers were reluctant to hire new presenters: “There is a suspicion of new talent – unless you’ve got something exceptional about you or you have some particular expertise.”

“Write and put on a show,” suggested Perkins, who penned and performed comedy with Giedroyc for many years before appearing on TV. “Edinburgh [the festival] is an amazing place to get seen if you have anything of a comedic bent, or you write sketches or if you have a point of view on the world that would make great stand-up.”

Pye, who is Head of Television at talent agency James Grant, argued that

Sue Perkins on talent’s logjam

Paul Hampartsoumian

From left: Holly Pye, Alex Brooker, Charlene White, Anna Richardson, Sue Perkins and Vernon Kay

it was harder for today’s young presenters to learn their trade. Many current prime-time presenters had cut their teeth on children’s or youth programmes, which are now less common on the main channels.

“There’s a lot of talk about YouTube being the new way, but it’s not that easy to make the transition [to TV],” said Pye. “Getting into production and finding ways [to present] through that has probably been more successful.”

Nevertheless, plenty of new faces do make it on to the telly. Alex Brooker, the co-host of C4 programmes The Last Leg with Adam Hills and celebrity ski show The Jump, was a football print journalist before he covered the 2012 Paralympics.

The RTS Futures audience viewed his successful audition tape for C4’s “Half a Million Quid Talent Search”, which aimed to recruit disabled talent to cover the Paralympics. “C4 wanted people with a media background and [who were] disabled,” he recalled. “I thought, ‘There can’t be that many of us knocking about, so I’m in with half a chance.’”

At the Paralympics opening ceremony, Brooker had to interview Prime Minister David Cameron. “I was sick in the toilet before,” he recalled. “There’s

Television www.rts.org.uk January 2015

THERE’S NO HIDING WHEN YOU’RE LEARNING, BECAUSE YOU’RE LEARNING [LIVE] ON THE TELLY no hiding when you’re learning, because you’re learning [live] on the telly.”

Throughout the evening, the presenters threw out advice to the RTS Futures audience. They were, however, united on one thing. “You have to understand how telly works. I obsessively watch news programmes,” said White.

“You must understand the medium,” added Perkins. “You can either do that through writing, performing or being involved in production or journalism.

If anyone here wants to be on television to be famous, to get girls or to be rich, you’re never going to be on TV.” The RTS Futures event, ‘I made it… on screen’, was held at the Hallam Conference Centre in central London on 9 December and produced by Anna Richardson, James Longman and Rebecca Templar.

‘I don’t think enough is being done to make the jump from this sort of event, where we willingly and with love, give you whatever the sum total of our experience is – to you actually being on television…

‘Where are the younger, brighter, faster versions of me? I can’t tell you how much I want to see them, not only because I’m tired, but because I’ve got stories that are age-appropriate to me that I want to start telling…

‘I want to see people bounce around and make tits of themselves during their twenties – lively, vibrant and plugged into a world that I am too slow and stupid to understand.’

Sue Perkins

Vernon Kay on Boys and Girls ‘The big learning curve for me was working with Chris Evans on [the 2003, battle-of-the-sexes game show] Boys and Girls – it was my first Saturday-night TV show…

‘Chris, and I mean this in the loveliest way, is a TV obsessive and he said, “I want you to learn the script. There’s no prompt or cue cards; you’ll get the script on Friday night and I want you to learn it by first rehearsal at 10am Saturday…”

‘It’s the most nerve-wracking thing to be on live telly … I hit my mark and nothing came out.

I stood there thinking, I know it begins “Hello, and welcome to Boys and Girls”. So I said that… and literally this whole script vommed from my mouth and I couldn’t stop talking…

‘And then this ginger penis bobbled underneath the camera.

It was Evans; he’d taken all his clothes off.

‘He said, “You didn’t bat an eyelid when I jumped across [the studio] naked – that proves you know the show.”

‘And I’m thinking, I just didn’t want to look at your knob.’

Vernon Kay

33

Two recent RTS events turned the spotlight on job opportunities in television, especially for in-demand skills, report Steve Clarke and Matthew Bell

C

RTS Craft Skills Masterclasses Day

Learning about craft skills and…

amera, editing and sound skills came under the spotlight during a day of sold-out RTS masterclasses. Students heard at first hand from industry professionals and learnt what it takes to develop a TV craft.

Camera

The camera masterclass offered views from two contrasting practitioners: the purist Director of Photography Sue Gibson and self-shooting Series Producer Kristin Hadland, who learned to use a camera to film BBC One daytime series Helicopter Heroes.

Hadland explained that her new skills gave her “an enormous amount of freedom”. She added: “When you can shoot your own [stuff], you’re getting exactly what you want – you don’t have to rely on anyone else. It’s that intimacy and control that is so brilliant about shooting my own material.”

A self-shooting producer is less intrusive than a traditional crew.

Working solo in Australia, Hadland filmed the victims of a car crash “They forgot I was there,” she said.

Gibson said that, in a 31-year career, during which she has worked on highend series, such as BBC One’s Spooks and ITV’s Lewis, her main inspiration has been to create “beautifully lit shots”.

Technology has changed radically during Gibson’s career, from film through to ultra-high-definition TV. Technical knowledge is only one aspect, however: both Gibson and Hadland prize personal skills highly.

“Be as good as you can be in whatever job you are doing, even if you are making tea,” advised Gibson. “If you take an interest in what everyone else is doing and are perceptive, you will go far.”

Editing

Building good relationships was also crucial for Joanna Crickmay and Andrew McClelland who gave the

34

RTS Undergraduate Bursary recipients

editing masterclass. Directors work with editors with whom they have a “bond of trust”, argued McClelland.

But these are not the only people shaping a programme. Crickmay, whose work includes cutting films for long-running BBC arts series Arena, said the hardest part is “when you’ve got an absolute masterpiece in front of you, then queues of executives come in and tell you it’s shit and you have to change it all – that’s heart breaking.”

McClelland, who edited BBC Two’s Line of Duty, added that the difficulty lies in “trying diplomatically to preserve” work while “at different levels” other people want their input. There is then a danger of damaging a work “by trying to please people”.

Sound

The two audio experts giving the sound masterclass agreed that the fundamental skill of their trade is to distinguish between “wanted sound and unwanted sound”.

“I deconstruct sound, so, in a drama such as An Adventure in Space and Time [the story of how Doctor Who was created], I spent a lot of time isolating sound,” revealed Sound Recordist

Simon Clark. He specialises in TV drama and his credits include Sky 1 thriller Mad Dogs.

“Nobody in television understands sound apart from the sound people,” reckoned Sound Supervisor Robert Edwards, who specialises in live events such as The X Factor and the World Cup. “Largely, you get left alone on a shoot to do your own thing. Understandably, in TV the focus is on the pictures, but without the sound you’re in a very sticky place.”

Edwards and Clark are passionate about sound – “I get paid for doing my hobby,” said Edwards – but both agreed that it is hard work and it lacks glamour.

Clark added: “A lot of people think, ‘Great, I’ll be in the studio recording my favourite band.’ No, I spend most of my time standing in rain storms desperately waiting for the actors to remember their lines.”

The RTS Craft Skills Masterclasses were held at the BFI in London on 25 November and produced by Helen Scott. Sessions were chaired by Rick Goodwin (camera), Scott (editing) and Alex Graham (sound).

Full reports at: www.rts.org.uk

‘Getting Inside the Media’ – RTS Higher Education Day

Both pictures: Paul Hampartsoumian

… the variety of jobs TV offers

M

edia academics and practitioners inhabit very different worlds and have few opportunities to network. The RTS aimed to put this right at the first ‘Getting Inside the Media’ day, which brought those who teach and run media courses in the UK face-to-face with the television professionals.

As RTS CEO Theresa Wise pointed out during her introduction to the event, latest graduate employment figures show more than 75% of all media graduates are in jobs within six months of leaving university.

However, at a time of rapid technological change, it is more vital than ever that academics are up to date with what broadcasters and producers want from students. And with how to secure the best work placements for them.

“This can be a real challenge for academics – particularly those outside the media hotspots of London, Glasgow and Salford,” noted Graeme Thompson, Dean of Arts, Design and Media at the University of Sunderland, and Chair of the RTS Education Committee. “One obvious way of keeping up with the

Television www.rts.org.uk January 2015

shifts in industry practice and ever-changing recruitment trends is for academics and practitioners to link up.”

Delegates heard from a range of TV professionals who participated in four panel sessions.

Throughout the day, a number of themes emerged. One of the most important was that students who want to land a job in television need to do their research, be persistent and well-motivated and to come armed with great ideas.

More than once, the audience heard how wannabes make elementary mistakes by failing to prepare themselves adequately for an interview at a broadcaster or independent producer.

True North Creative Director Andrew Sheldon listed three essentials for those applying to his company for work experience: “I want them to understand what my company does. I want them to have looked at the website. I want them to have a favourite television programme. Quite a lot of them don’t. They say they never watch television.”

The next generation of TV production staff is certain to be digitally literate and expert in social media.

These skills are increasingly being deployed to cast unscripted shows.

But, alongside the ability to use YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to find contributors for a show or series, speakers stressed the importance of knowing how to deal with people.

The essential skills for a successful start in TV drama are commitment, enthusiasm and a “collaborative gene”, stressed Red Production Company’s Alison Loose and Emily Feller, respectively Line Producer and Producer at the Salford-based drama specialist.

“Everyone we interviewed [for a recent, entry-level position] was really competent, everyone had a university media degree,” said Feller.

“The person we offered the role to had gone out and got his own work experience. He also had this immense affability. You knew he could get on with, and respect, everyone.”

“When you make films, you are often privileged to enter people’s lives and you should take that seriously,” stressed Sheldon. “That extends beyond the film going out.”

Sky News’s Editor, Digital, Neil Dunwoodie insisted: “I will say to people when they come in, ‘Don’t be irritating and don’t be a shrinking violet.’ The most successful candidates are those who get on with everyone. They end up coming back as freelancers or in staff jobs.”

Students, however well qualified, must avoid being sniffy about starting their careers as runners, advised the TV professionals “Runners can progress very quickly,” said Nick Todd, Production Executive on The One Show, who began in TV as a runner on Gardeners’ World, before spending a decade as a freelance production manager. In 2002, he joined BBC Current Affairs, before becoming Unit Manager of Panorama.

Runners at Sky News invariably progress to more demanding positions at the news operator.

“You’re working 12-hour days for six months, sorting mail and getting coffee,” outlined Dunwoodie. “But all of them, bar none, find their niche as a researcher, producer… people have gone on to work in sound and as camera operators.”

A full report of ‘Getting inside the media’ can be found at: www. rts.org.uk. The event was held at the BFI in central Lon­ don on 24 November and produced by Helen Scott.

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The awards ceremony on 1 December 2014 at the London Hilton Park Lane was hosted by Jennifer Saunders

RTS Craft & Design Awards 2013/2014

Host: Jennifer Saunders

Judges’ Award Peaky Blinders Production Team ‘Peaky Blinders is celebrated for its inspired performances, fearless direction, fine and cinematic composition and forensic eye for production design.

‘Indeed, the sumptuous visual flair and highest possible production values, including sound, editing and music, have created one of the most visually stunning and emotionally compelling dramas in British television and one that effortlessly holds its own on the global stage.’

Costume Design – Drama

Stephanie Collie, Peaky Blinders Caryn Mandabach/Tiger Aspect for BBC Two “The panel was impressed by the incredibly powerful and distinctive look and characterisation created by the costume team. Modern and edgy, the look helped create the intense mood of this magnetic and enthralling drama.”

Nominees: Marianne Agertoft, Utopia – Series 2, Kudos for Channel 4 Edward K Gibbon, The Honourable Woman, Drama Republic and Eight Rooks for BBC Two

36

Costume Design – Entertainment & Non Drama Annie Hardinge, Rev – Series 3 Big Talk Productions for BBC Two “Meticulously detailed, subtle and restrained. Wardrobe brought so much to the warm, human, endearing and intelligently funny characters in this outstanding comedy.”

Nominees: Claire Finlay-Thompson, Him & Her: The Wedding, Big Talk Productions for BBC Three Vicky Gill, Strictly Come Dancing – Series 11, BBC Entertainment for BBC One

Effects – Digital

Tom Horton, Da Vinci’s Demons – Series 2 Adjacent Productions/Phantom Four Films for Fox UK “The epic way in which the digital effects were treated was particularly impressive. The attention to detail and the overall execution were well defined and very believable.”

Nominees: DNeg TV, Mr Selfridge – Series 2, ITV Studios for ITV Vine FX, Atlantis – Series 1, Urban Myth Films for BBC One

Pictures: Richard Kendal/BBC

Costume Design – Drama: Peaky Blinders

Effects – Digital: Da Vinci’s Demons

Costume Design – Entertainment & Non Drama: Rev

Graphic Design – Programme Content Sequences: Sochi Winter Olympics – Curling

Graphic Design – Titles: Luxury Comedy 2 – Tales from Painted Hawaii

Effects – Picture Enhancement: Welcome To Rio

Television www.rts.org.uk January 2015

Pictures: Richard Kendal/BBC/Channel 4

Effects – Picture Enhancement

Enge Gray, Welcome To Rio Clear Cut Pictures & Keo Films for BBC Two “The colour and contrast perfectly captured the tone and vibrancy of the subject. An almost party atmosphere, which perfectly complemented the backdrop.”

Nominees: Aidan Farrell, The Thirteenth Tale, Vida Films for BBC Two Aidan Farrell, Utopia – Series 2, Kudos for Channel 4

Effects – Special

Colin Gorry, The Smoke Kudos for Sky 1 “The effects team worked with a difficult element in very difficult conditions to achieve the feeling of claustrophobia, greatly enhancing the drama.”

Nominees: Paul Kelly, Da Vinci’s Demons – Series 2, Adjacent Productions/Phantom Four Films for Fox UK The Model Unit, Real SFX, Doctor Who – The Day of the Doctor, BBC Cymru Wales/BBC Drama for BBC One

Graphic Design – Programme Content Sequences

Sarah Cook, Julian Gibbs, Jason Devine and Chris White, Sochi Winter Olympics – Curling Intro for BBC Sport “This bold and striking content sequence really stood out in both ­concept and execution.”

Nominees: Peter Anderson Studio, Sherlock – Series 3, Hartswood Films/Masterpiece for BBC Cymru Wales & BBC One Richard Gort, Julian Gibbs, Jason Devine and Chris White, Formula One – Monza, Intro for BBC Sport

Graphic Design – Titles

Matt Cooper, Luxury Comedy 2 – Tales from Painted Hawaii Secret Peter for E4 “A breath of fresh air; bold, simple, fun; a true example of titles being allowed to shine in their own right.”

Nominees: Chris Billig, Scatterlight Studios, The Honourable Woman, Drama Republic and Eight Rooks for BBC Two Paul McDonnell, Hugo Moss, Tim Key and Tony Jordan, By Any Means, Red Planet Pictures for BBC One � Costume Design – Drama: Peaky Blinders

37

James Parry, John Sprott, Nick Farquhar and Olly Harnett, Rugby League World Cup Red Bee Media for BBC Sport “Great design and an imaginative use of CGI with live action background; this work felt fresh and engaging in both concept and style.”

Nominees: James Parry, Sarah Owen, John Sprott and Andy Booth, World Cup, Red Bee Media for BBC Sport James Parry, Mark Rolfe and Tomek Baginski, Winter Olympics – Opening Ceremony, RKCR/Y&R/Red Bee Media for BBC Sport

Graphic Design – Trails & Packaging: Rugby League World Cup

Sound – Drama: The Smoke

Lighting for Multicamera

Chris Rigby, Alan Carr: Chatty Man – Series 11/12 Open Mike Productions for Channel 4 “The quality of the musical numbers was impressive. The lighting gave the numbers an edgy quality, which made the winner stand out from the rest.”

Nominees: Dave Davey, Dancing On Ice – Series 9, ITV Studios for ITV Dave Davey, The X Factor, Thames/Syco for ITV

Multicamera Work – Sport: Grand National 2014 Editing – Entertainment & Situation Comedy: Rev

Multicamera Work

Chris Power, Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway ITV Studios and Mitre Television co-production for ITV “An extraordinary use of multicamera – absolutely nothing was missed. The viewpoints gave the scale and danger of the challenges as well as the intimacy of the presenters’ emotions.”

Nominees: Tom Parr and Camera Team, Educating Yorkshire, Twofour Broadcast for Channel 4 Nikki Parsons and Camera Team, Strictly Come Dancing – Series 11, BBC Entertainment for BBC One

Multicamera Work – Sport

Denise Large, Grand National 2014 IMG Productions for Channel 4 “Jury members had all watched the race before, but once asked to concentrate on the camerawork, they were blown away. The viewpoints, the use of technology and the timing of the cuts between shots were extraordinary.”

Nominees: Paul Davies, Six Nations – England vs Wales, BBC Sport for BBC One Paul McNamara, FA Cup Final 2014, ITV Sport for ITV

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Lighting for Multicamera: Alan Carr: Chatty Man

Pictures: Richard Kendal/BBC/Channel 4

Graphic Design – Trails & Packaging

Make-Up Design – Drama

Pictures: Richard Kendal/BBC/BSkyB/ITV

Make-Up Design – Entertainment & Non Drama: Strictly Come Dancing

Davy Jones, In the Flesh – Series 2 BBC Drama Production Salford, co-produced with BBC America for BBC Three “We were impressed by the sheer breadth and quality of work on this brilliant drama. A remarkable feat of make-up and visual style; the team delivered a blockbuster supernatural movie in terms of impact, but without blockbuster movie budgets.”

Nominees: Lisa Cavalli-Green, Inside No 9 – Series 1, BBC Comedy Production London for BBC Two Loz Schiavo, Peaky Blinders, Caryn Mandabach/Tiger Aspect for BBC Two

Make-Up Design – Entertainment & Non Drama

Lisa Armstrong, Strictly Come Dancing – Series 11 BBC Entertainment for BBC One “The winning make-up is at the very centre of an iconic live entertainment show and really put through its paces.

Flawless,.”

Nominees: Christine Cant, Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy 2 – Tales from Painted Hawaii, Secret Peter for E4 Christine Cant, Leslie Smith, Nina Pratley and Lisa Halstead, Harry and Paul’s Story of the Twos, Balloon Entertainment for BBC Two

Effects – Special: The Smoke

Music – Original Score Make-Up Design – Drama: In the Flesh

Music – Original Score: The Tunnel

Adrian Johnston, The Tunnel Kudos for Sky Atlantic & Canal+ “An astonishingly accomplished work that fitted perfectly around dialogue and sound. The composer intelligently solved the challenge of working with multiple directors, with a clever, original and breathtaking score.”

Nominees: Oliver Julian, Cardinal Burns – Series 2, Left Bank Pictures for Channel 4 Cristobal Tapia de Veer, Utopia – Series 2, Kudos for Channel 4

Music – Original Title

Multicamera Work: Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway

Television www.rts.org.uk January 2015

Editing – Sport: World Cup 2014 Closing Montage

Adrian Johnston and Dominik Moll, The Tunnel Kudos for Sky Atlantic & Canal+ “Brilliant, gripping and totally memorable in a simple and effective way.

Just amazing.”

Nominees: Andrew Simon McAllister, 37 Days, Hardy Pictures for BBC Two Samuel Sim, By Any Means, Red Planet Pictures for BBC One �

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Production Design – Drama

Jennifer Kernke, Utopia – Series 2 Kudos for Channel 4 “This series has successfully translated the world of the graphic novel to television. The suspenseful storylines are supported relentlessly by the design, which has successfully managed to create a fully realised world in which the characters can breathe. This is what has made it different from anything else on television this year.”

Nominees: Matthew Button, Our World War, BBC Factual Productions for BBC Three Grant Montgomery, Peaky Blinders, Caryn Mandabach/Tiger Aspect for BBC Two

Production Design – Entertainment & Non Drama

Miranda Jones, Joanna Marshall and Gina Fields, Cardinal Burns – Series 2 Left Bank Pictures for Channel 4 “A really great sketch show relies on the viewer having an immediate understanding of a new scenario. On television this is primarily achieved with design. The winner is brave and quirky, presenting each new world with great detail and wit, which gives each sketch a baseline of believability and allows the humour to fly.”

Nominees: Nigel Coan, Ivana Zorn and James Dillon, Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy 2 – Tales from Painted Hawaii, Secret Peter for E4 Patrick Doherty, Strictly Come Dancing – Series 11, BBC Entertainment for BBC One

40

Sound – Drama

Stuart Hilliker, Jim Goddard, Jeff Richardson and Billy Quinn, The Smoke Kudos for Sky 1 “Backdraft on a TV budget. The team worked with great skill in a challenging environment. They delivered sound that felt hyper-real while retaining absolute clarity in the dialogue.”

Nominees: Nigel Edwards, Linda Murdoch, Lee Crichlow and Glen Marullo, The Honourable Woman, Drama Republic and Eight Rooks for BBC Two Sound Team, Our World War, BBC Factual Productions for BBC Three

Sound – Entertainment & Non Drama

Andy Payne, D-Day 70: The Heroes Return – Bayeux Cemetery BBC Entertainment & Events for BBC One “A live OB on a major scale, with speech and music both essential ingredients, and yet with minimal rehearsal, clearly offers the sound team a colossal challenge. The astounding quality of the transmission was clearly the result of great teamwork and professionalism.”

Nominees: Nick Fry, Ben Anthony, Rupert Houseman and Scott Szabo, Life And Death Row, BBC Vision – London Factual for BBC Three Sam Staples and Mike Williams, Operation Grand Canyon, BBC History Productions/BBC Worldwide/Discovery Channel for BBC Two

Photography – Drama

Lol Crawley BSC, Utopia – Series 2 Kudos for Channel 4 “Flawless – every frame feels cohesive, which makes this series instantly recognisable and immersive.”

Nominees: Neville Kidd, Sherlock – His Last Vow, Hartswood Films/Masterpiece for BBC Cymru Wales and BBC One Zac Nicholson and George Steel, The Honourable Woman, Drama Republic and Eight Rooks for BBC Two

Photography – Documentary/ Factual & Non Drama Productions

Marcus Robinson, Rebuilding the World Trade Center Lion Television in association with Marcus Robinson for Channel 4 “The vision involved in bringing a project of this scale to screen is extraordinary. The visuals breathed life into the process of the building’s construction and the same care and attention is apparent in the beautifully lit and composed interviews with the construction workers. Captivating.

Nominees: Jamie Cairney, Cardinal Burns – Series 2, Left Bank Pictures for Channel 4 Seamas McCracken, The Disappeared, Erica Starling for BBC One Above, from left: Editing – Documentary & Factual, Stop at Nothing: The Lance Armstrong Story; Production Design – Drama, Utopia; Photography – Drama, Utopia

Pictures: Richard Kendal/BBC/Channel 4

Pictures: Richard Kendal/Channel 4

Editing – Entertainment & Situation Comedy

Mark Davies and Mark Henson, Rev – Series 3 Big Talk Productions for BBC Two “Beautifully judged editing that takes the viewer from very funny to very poignant stories in a totally engaging way.”

Nominees: Mark Williams, Some Girls – Series 2, Hat Trick Productions for BBC Three Michael Wolf and Mob Dar, Off Their Rockers, CPL Productions for ITV

Editing – Documentary & Factual Philip Kloss, Stop at Nothing: The Lance Armstrong Story An ABC Production in association with Passion Pictures for BBC Four “Compelling storytelling that masterfully communicated the nuances of doping, while being rooted in the race footage.”

Nominees: Joanna Crickmay, Arena: The National Theatre – Part 2: War and Peace, Lone Star Productions for BBC Four Gwyn Jones, 15,000 Kids and Counting – Episode 1: The Decision, True Vision North for Channel 4

Above, from left: Editing – Drama, Line of Duty; Sound – Entertainment & Non Drama, D-Day 70: The Heroes Return; Production Design – Entertainment & Non Drama, Cardinal Burns; Photography – Documentary/Factual & Non Drama Productions, Rebuilding the World Trade Center

Television www.rts.org.uk January 2015

Lifetime Achievement Clive Curtis

‘Clive has dedicated himself to opening the way for other black stunt performers to enter the profession and move up through the ranks.

He has carved out a reputation for being the consummate professional, a true gentleman and an ambassador not only for the stunt profession, but television and film production as a whole.’

Editing – Sport

Tom Gent and Steve Williams, BBC Match of the Day – World Cup 2014 Closing Montage BBC Sport for BBC One “Colour, energy and a great story, which created a hypnotic masterpiece.

An outstanding piece of television.”

Nominees: Adam Maynard, Alex Dinnin and Trevor Aylward, England vs Montenegro World Cup Qualifier, ITV Sport for ITV Tom Gent and Steve Williams, AP McCoy Sequence for Sports Personality of the Year, BBC Sport for BBC One

Editing – Drama

Andrew McClelland, Line of Duty – Series 2 World Productions for BBC Two “The extraordinary length of this single sequence is all about the editing. It is beautifully controlled as the power shifts between the characters. The sequence is simple, but the tension and jeopardy is maintained throughout.”

Nominees: Iain Erskine, Tommy Cooper: Not Like That, Like This, Left Bank Pictures for ITV Jamie Pearson, Happy Valley, Red Production Company for BBC One

41

RTS NEWS Channel 4

Byker Grove reunited

Utopia

Video games draw workers to Leeds ■ There was a big turnout in November for “So you want to work in video games?” at West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds. The careers informtion event was organised jointly by RTS Yorkshire and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain.

Attendees travelled from Hull, Manchester and even London to hear three experienced speakers talk about their growing industry. The Guild’s newly elected Chair of its Video Games Committee, Steve Ince, explained how storytelling works in the medium and adds value to playing the game.

Richard Boon, who has been involved in the development of many games, explained the structure of games design teams and the many roles available in the industry. He encouraged potential designers and writers to put their work online to demonstrate their abilities to an industry that is thirsty for talent.

This sentiment was echoed

by Emma Cooper, Business Development Manager at award-winning Rckt. She discussed Rckt’s work with Channel 4, developing online games for shows such as Utopia and Live from Space.

Cooper encouraged would-be designers to make small, clever games that show potential and imagination.

Lisa Holdsworth

42

Y

ou would never have guessed that Byker Grove had been off TV for eight years when the audience packed Newcastle’s Tyneside Cinema for a sell-out North East and the Border Centre event celebrating the Geordie children’s drama.

Former cast and crew were reunited at ‘Byker Grove: all grown up?’ in November, 25 years after the groundbreaking show first aired.

Matthew Robinson, the original producer, revealed that the BBC initially commissioned six programmes.

Untrained child actors with Geordie accents could have been a ratings risk but, after seeing the first few days’ rushes, executives gave the green light to two more series.

Actors Lyndyann Barrass (Spuggie), Andrew HaydenSmith (Ben) and Chelsea Halfpenny (Lucy) all joined as children, but grew up on screen.

It was difficult living out your teenage years as an actor, according to HaydenSmith: “The crew are dealing with you having hormones going all over the place, trying to calm you down. But

we all absolutely loved working on Byker.”

The show tackled tough subjects for an early, teatime audience. A scene involving a gay kiss led one tabloid to call for Robinson’s head.

One 15-year-old wrote in, thanking the show: “It made a real difference to me, knowing there are other people the same age feeling the same things as me.”

Ed Pugh who produced the show in its latter years, said Byker tackled lots of issues, such as self-harming and teenage pregnancy, but there was also lots of humour and fun along the way.

With children’s channels now aiming for younger audiences, he was critical of the lack of dedicated teenage

drama on today’s television.

Although Byker Grove launched the careers of the likes of Ant and Dec, it was also responsible for establishing a vibrant TV production centre in the North East.

Many of the Byker crew can now be found working on Wolfblood and The Dumping Ground, which are CBBC’s highest-­rating shows.

Hairy Bikers’ Si King started as a runner on the show and went on to cut his teeth in TV production as Assistant Director. He told the audience in a recorded interview for the event that Byker Grove was “well crafted, the story­ lines were good. It wasn’t ‘just’ a kids’ programme, it was a North East institution”.

Chris Jackson

Bristol explores digital skills ■ It’s always a sobering sight for seasoned TV folk to see how few hands go up when the next generation of talent is asked if they “watch the box”.

While the word television has come to mean something different to our kids, they’re nonetheless consuming content like never before – 24/7 on big, small, tiny, second, third and sometimes

fourth screens. Their thinking and skills were combined with the traditional TV world for the Bristol RTS Futures event “Digital skills for TV: a brand new world – where do I fit in?”.

The panellists included Dan Efergan, Creative Director of Digital at Aardman Animations, who has an interest in human/computer

interaction, and Ben Freeman, Director of the Creativity and Innovation Unit at Zodiak Media. Freeman’s credits include Coronation Street and Big Brother.

Also on the panel – via Skype – was recent graduate Ross Butter who has worked as an animator on both web and TV projects.

Lynn Barlow

■ RTS Chief Executive Theresa Wise and Honorary Secretary David Lowen presented Northern Ireland Centre member Bill Shaw with the prestigious Pilgrim Award at a lunch in Belfast in early November.

Shaw’s commitment to the RTS has been demonstrated over more than 50 years since he joined the Society in 1963. He served the Centre in various capacities and only last year stepped down from the Centre Committee, which

Curran calls for Irish decisions Bill Shaw nominated him for his endless energy, enthusiasm, ideas and commitment to the values of the RTS.

ARRI camera fans flock to Penarth ■ The newly restored Penarth Pier Pavilion, which has a 4K video projection facility, was the location for a demonstration of one of IBC’s must-see exhibits this year – ARRI’s Amira camera.

The camera company’s Business Development Manager, Milan Krsljanin, had lent an Amira to Cardiff-based film-makers Storm and Shelter for a week and the resulting video, shot in the Penarth area, was premiered at the RTS Wales event in late October.

Josh Bennett, a director of Storm and Shelter, said: “It’s almost impossible to get a bad shot with the Amira – it was a joy to use.”

In his presentation, Krsljanin explained that this type of industry feedback is integral to ARRI’s philosophy: “We listen and make

Television www.rts.org.uk January 2015

modifications to stay on the bleeding edge of technology.”

Unlike its bigger sister, the Alexa, the Amira has been designed as a lightweight alternative for the self-shooting documentary market.

“We’ve tried to make the camera easy to use. We even considered how easy it is to balance when it’s hand-held or on someone’s shoulder,” said Krsljanin.

The results, seen in the various clips screened at the event in ultrahigh definition, were impressive. Krsljanin claimed that “it’s the quality of the pixels, not just the number, that is key.

“The quality of skin tone on screen is our measure of success.

Just look at the skin tone!”

Hywel Wiliam and Tim Hartley

Noel Curran (left) and Stephen Price

I

n his first public speech in Northern Ireland, RTÉ Director General Noel Curran told the audience gathered for the RTS Dan Gilbert Memorial Lecture that vital decisions on the future of public-service media in Ireland were long overdue.

Northern Ireland Centre’s annual lecture, which was held in November at the Belfast Media Festival, celebrates the life of Dan Gilbert, who started a long career in television at BBC News in Belfast in 1950.

RTÉ was the most trusted national organisation in the Republic, said Curran, who was later interviewed by media commentator Stephen Price. He reported that 84% of people claimed that RTÉ was important in their lives.

Its core values were independence, universality, excellence, accountability and impact.

The key was to provide something different to commercial rivals – which they cannot, rather than choose not to, do – argued Curran.

The very existence of public-­ service media at the heart of a vibrant media market

encourages higher quality and creativity, more rigour and greater impartiality, he added.

Despite large audiences and public support, RTÉ’s dual-funding model of licence fee plus commercial income faces serious threats from four quarters: ideological; economic – RTÉ’s income is €113m lower than five years ago; geographical – RTÉ competes with UK channels for Irish advertising; and technological – which brings huge opportunities but cuts the return on digital investment.

Curran also discussed RTÉ initiatives, including launching an international online subscription channel and commissioning a comprehensive report into retransmission fees.

The current TV licence-fee system, however, is not fit for purpose, he said, claiming that it reflected less and less how people consume content. Curran added that evasion deprives content producers of €34m each year and that collection costs need to be cut.

John Rosborough

43

RTS NEWS

■ A record number of entries and a bumper audience of almost 400 contributed to a great evening’s entertainment at the Yorkshire Centre Student Television Awards, which were held at York Racecourse in early November.

The University of Leeds scooped the winners’ trophies in two of the most competitive categories on the night: Factual, for Thick Skin, an intriguing exploration of a dark side of life; and Fiction, for Pebble Moon. The judges praised the latter as “a lovely, life-affirming film”.

A film that went beneath the glitz and glamour of baby pageants, The Real Cost of Baby Beauty, won the News cate-

Chris Fahy (left) gory for Hannah Rose Campbell from the University of Sheffield. The Entertainment award went to Chris Fahy from Leeds Trinity University, whose short film, Hyperlapse Leeds, was described by the judges as “mesmeric and technically faultless”.

Michaela Wozny from Sheffield Hallam University won the Animation award for The Caterpillars. The winner of the new Open category for short films was Dominic Johnson from the University of Sheffield, for Good Morning Rave.

In total, more than 60 films were submitted in the six categories from students at nine Yorkshire universities and colleges.

Mike Best

44

The shocking price of cotton

Spraying insecticide on cotton

T

he challenges of fin­ ancing a hard-­hitting film on the plight of Indian cotton farmers were outlined at a compelling discussion at The Hospital Club in central London, as part of the venue’s Sustainability Week.

The audience at the RTShosted debate heard how journalist Leah Borromeo and her co-producers at Dartmouth Films struggled to fund campaigning documentary, The Cotton Film: Dirty White Gold.

The film, which is unfinished, casts a spotlight on unsustainable global garmentmanufacturing practices.

To find the cash for the low-budget film, its makers had to sell an original Banksy art work, organise a successful online crowdfunding campaign and apply for tax-credit schemes.

The documentary tells the story of the 300,000 Indian farmers driven by overwhelming debts to take their own lives since 1995.

“After writing an article about pesticides and fashion, I was invited to India to see the consequences of the unsustainable supply chain in the global garment and textile

industry,” Borromeo said.

India’s small cotton farmers are persuaded by multinationals to take out loans to invest in pesticides, she added.

Ashamed of what turned into huge debts, the farmers took their own lives.

They are part of the supply chain that delivers cheap, clean, white cotton shirts to Western high streets.

Borromeo argued that a film would be a potent way to question the ethics involved in producing cheap cotton. “I felt consumers who buy the shirts need to know how the fabrics are sourced,” she said.

The global textiles and garment industry is worth some £1.6tr a year, according to UK research company MarketLine.

Since it was unlikely that a broadcaster would commission the film, Borromeo approached London-based Dartmouth Films to come aboard as a co-producer.

The company is well known for The End of the Line, the 2009 Channel 4 documentary focusing on the devastating consequences of overfishing.

Marks & Spencer and celebrity chef Jamie Oliver were among the high-profile

Public Domain/Andrew Flachs

Students pack York racecourse

names who publicly said the film influenced how they subsequently sourced fish.

“The Cotton Film: Dirty White Gold is the sort of film we do… The aim is to have an impact and lead to change in corporate and consumer behaviour,” Dartmouth Films’ Managing Director Christopher Hird explained.

Raising the money without a broadcaster’s financial involvement was hard work.

Borromeo was offered £25,000 by an unidentified private donor provided she raised £25,000 first. At this point, she sold Banksy’s The Girl with a Balloon, which added a few thousand pounds more to the film’s coffers.

Dartmouth Films approached Channel 4, where True Stories Editor Anna Miralis wrote “a letter of interest”. This stated that the broadcaster “would be keen to look at some visual material… when you have developed it more fully”.

The letter helped Dartmouth Films get £10,000 from the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association’s Worldview initiative.

For the remaining £15,000, Dartmouth Films’ Head of Outreach and Distribution, Matt Hird, launched a crowdfunding campaign on the Sponsume website: supporters pledged £18,880.

According to Matt Hird, about 75% of the film is complete. To finish the rough footage of the film another £50,000 is needed.

“It is very difficult to make a living out of film-making.

So you need to believe the cause has a chance of changing the world,” Christopher Hird said. “Within three years of the film being completed, I hope we get a Kitemark certification [scheme], similar to the one for Fairtrade, to give consumers assurances about how the garments they are wearing were made.”

Juliana Koranteng

BBC tops North West Awards

T

he BBC dominated the North West Centre’s Annual Awards, winning 16 of the 26 categories, including those for best programmes in drama, comedy, entertainment, factual and current affairs.

BBC One’s Common, from LA Productions, which also won Jimmy McGovern the Best Writer award, was named Best Drama. BBC One’s in-house Citizen Khan won the Best Comedy award and Sam and Mark’s Big Friday Wind-Up (BBC Children’s for CBBC) secured Best Entertainment Programme.

BBC One’s in-house Rip-Off Britain took the factual category, while Blakeway North’s EDL Girls – Don’t Call Me Racist for BBC Three scooped the Current Affairs award.

Sarah Lancashire picked up the award for Best Female Performance in a Drama for her role as a policewoman in BBC One’s hard-hitting Happy Valley. John Simm took the male equivalent for his cop on the run in ITV’s Prey.

Sarah Lancashire

Nicola Shindler

Both shows were made by Red Production Company, which received the Judges’ Award. Set up by Nicola Shindler in Manchester in 1998, Red has been responsible for some of the best recent drama on British television, including Scott & Bailey, Clocking Off, Queer as Folk and Last Tango in Halifax.

Alison King’s performance in Coronation Street secured her the award for Best Per-

formance in a Continuing Drama. The ITV soap also picked-up the award for Best Continuing Drama Storyline for “Hayley’s cancer”.

“Once again, the RTS North West Awards have been bigger than ever – both in entries and on the night. They have demonstrated the range, depth and growth of TV production in our region,” said RTS North West Chair Alex Connock, whose day job is

Alison King Managing Director of Shine North. “This may be TV in the regions, but it is certainly not regional TV – in fact, much of it is not only national in impact but global in reach,” he added.

The awards were hosted by Adil Ray, who won Best Comedy Performance for Citizen Khan, and TV presenter Helen Skelton at the Hilton, Manchester, on 15 November.

Matthew Bell

■ Lieven Vermaele, co-founder and CEO of SDNsquare, treated Thames Valley Centre to a presentation in November on the challenges faced by media organisations when implementing Software Defined Networking (SDN).

Although SDN is now routinely used within the wider IT industry, there are specific challenges to be overcome when using it for moving and controlling large media files. SDN typically takes the intelligence away from the switch to an external network management system.

Television www.rts.org.uk January 2015

Lieven Vermaele

EBU

TV’s ‘bursty’ data challenges IT networks Broadcasting requires 100% reliability and predictable behaviour from its networks in order to manage huge amounts of very time-sensitive data.

Media data is typically “bursty”, which can cause problems within network systems such as speed mismatches and instability, explained Vermaele at the event, “Network infrastructures for media applications”.

These problems could potentially be overcome by massive over-provisioning, but that would, of course, increase costs. IEEE standards

do exist for quality of service but, as network switches are often non-standard, difficulties can arise.

Vermaele described some of the advances that have been made in providing intelligent management systems, which could enforce a guaranteed quality of service and specified throughput along network paths, providing fast and easy configuration.

A technically knowledge­ able Thames Valley Centre audience was quick to ask searching questions, and a lively discussion ensued.

45

OFF MESSAGE

M

aking predictions is always a tricky business - and never more so, when change is all around us.

Off Message can make one forecast for the year ahead without risking too much credibility - a new CEO of All3Media will be in place before the spring sets in.

So who is likely to land the job?

The company’s existing MD, Jane Turton, is considered a leading candidate. Another favourite is ex-Shine CEO Alex Mahon. She has plenty of experience working for US owners.

In other words, the chances are that the job of running All3Media will again go to a woman.

■ What a year it’s been for Lenny Henry, who is about to celebrate four decades in television.

By the time you read this, Henry’s guest-edited Today show will have been broadcast by Radio 4.

To put Henry in the Today hot seat was an inspired choice by the programme’s Editor, Jamie Angus.

The actor and comic deservedly shot to near the top of the Media­ Guardian 100 power list, published in December.

He was there for ‘almost single-­ handedly putting TV’s lack of racial diversity at the top of the agenda’.

Good to see recognition finally coming Henry’s way for his campaigning for wider BAME representation in TV. It’s easy to forget that the creator of some of TV’s funniest moments has been pushing the diversity agenda for quite some time. It is almost seven years to the day since Henry gave a passionate speech to the RTS, ‘The road to diversity is closed…

Please seek alternate route’.

46

Off Message sincerely hopes that in seven years’ time he doesn’t need to make a similar speech.

■ With the diversity issue in mind, Ofcom should be congratulated for appointing Treasury official Sharon White as Ed Richards’ successor.

Having a black woman in charge of the UK media watchdog sends out a strong message on behalf of Britain’s BAME community.

By the time White led the 2011 review of the Treasury’s management response to the financial crisis, she had racked up more than 20 years’ experience of the Civil Service.

For someone as smart as White, getting to grips with such arcane arguments as the present row over retransmission fees should be a breeze.

Before becoming a civil servant, she worked for a church in a deprived area of Birmingham.

White should be the proverbial breath of fresh air at Riverside House.

As Off Message noted last year, Richards is a hard act to follow. By putting White at the helm, the regulator looks to have landed on its feet.

■ If ITV were a Londoner, 2015 is the year it would be getting free travel on the Tube. In other words, the UK’s most popular commercial terrestrial network is 60 years old this coming September.

Adam Crozier and co will doubtless be announcing details in the months ahead of what the network has in store for the anniversary.

Meanwhile, the Association of Reunited Thames Staff – that’s ARTS for short – is preparing its own celebrations for staff who worked at any of the original ITV companies between 1955 and 1968.

ARTS plans a daytime gathering in central London on 22 September (the

day Associated-Rediffusion began broadcasting in 1955 ). Those interested should contact Bill Rawcliffe at bill@sheppertonsound.plus.com.

■ This year is likely to be another difficult one for the BBC, politically.

Quite how bad, depends to a large extent, of course, on the complexion of the next government.

And if there is another Conservative-led coalition, the likelihood is that the current Culture Secretary, Sajid Javid – not, noticeably, Broadcasting House’s closest friend – will win promotion.

But, regardless of who ends up in power, the BBC’s chances of winning a favourable new Charter always look better when the organisation sticks up for itself. It was therefore encouraging to see the Beeb standing firm during the kerfuffle over George Osborne’s autumn statement.

More, please.

■ As the 2015 awards season comes into view, there is no shortage of standout drama for jurors to give their verdicts on.

One of the latest to join potential nominees is ITV’s remarkable The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies, which featured a stunning performance from Jason Watkins in the eponymous role.

Expect a flurry of nominations for this exquisite and deeply moving film, which ranks alongside writer Peter Morgan’s finest.

■ And, finally, we bid a fond farewell to the wonderful Claire Price, who is stepping down as the RTS’s Deputy CEO. Claire’s unflappable presence and flair for organisation will be much missed by all those who are regular attenders of RTS events. Off Messages wishes her well.

January 2015 www.rts.org.uk Television

RTS PATRONS RTS Principal Patrons

BBC

RTS International Patrons

Discovery Corporate Services Ltd Liberty Global NBCUniversal International The Walt Disney Company

Turner Broadcasting System Inc Viacom International Media Networks YouTube

RTS Major Patrons

Accenture Channel 5 Deloitte Enders Analysis EY

FremantleMedia Fujitsu IBM IMG Studios ITN

KPMG McKinsey and Co S4C STV Group UKTV

Virgin Media YouView

RTS Patrons

Autocue Digital Television Group ITV Anglia ITV Granada

ITV London ITV Meridian ITV Tyne Tees ITV West

ITV Yorkshire ITV Wales Lumina Search PricewaterhouseCoopers

Quantel Raidió Teilifís Éireann UTV Television Vinten Broadcast

Patron HRH The Prince of Wales

Chair of RTS Trustees John Hardie

CENTRES COUNCIL

History Don McLean

President Sir Peter Bazalgette

Honorary Secretary David Lowen

Vice-Presidents Dawn Airey Sir David Attenborough OM

Honorary Treasurer Mike Green

Who’s who at the RTS

CH CVO CBE FRS

Baroness Floella Benjamin OBE Dame Colette Bowe OBE John Cresswell Mike Darcey Greg Dyke Lorraine Heggessey Ashley Highfield Rt Hon Dame Tessa Jowell MP David Lynn Sir Trevor McDonald OBE Ken MacQuarrie Trevor Phillips OBE Stewart Purvis CBE John Smith Sir Howard Stringer Mark Thompson

BSkyB

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Tim Davie Mike Green John Hardie Huw Jones Jane Lighting Graham McWilliam David Lowen Simon Pitts Graeme Thompson

EXECUTIVES

Chief Executive Theresa Wise Deputy Chief Executive Claire Price

Channel 4

Lynn Barlow Mike Best Charles Byrne Isabel Clarke Alex Connock Gordon Cooper Tim Hartley Kristin Mason Graeme Thompson Penny Westlake James Wilson Michael Wilson

SPECIALIST GROUP CHAIRS

Archives Steve Bryant

ITV

IBC Conference Liaison Terry Marsh RTS Legends Paul Jackson

AWARDS COMMITTEE CHAIRS

Awards & Fellowship Policy David Lowen

Craft & Design Awards Cheryl Taylor

Diversity Marcus Ryder

Television Journalism Awards Stewart Purvis CBE

Early Evening Events Dan Brooke

Programme Awards David Liddiment

Education Graeme Thompson

Student Television Awards Stuart Murphy

RTS Futures Camilla Lewis

Television www.rts.org.uk January 2015

47

Entry Level Training Fair Monday 26 January Hallam Conference Centre 22 Duchess Mews, London W1G 9DT BOOKING: WWW.RTS.ORG.UK