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July/August 2014

Chase Carey 21 CENTURY MAN ST

LET’S HEAR IT

LOVES FOR THE TV BRITAIN

It’s been a year of brilliant British telly and radio, and we were swamped with entries for the Freesat Free TV Awards 2014. Thank you to everyone, but there can be only one winner in each category.

So congratulations to this year’s champions: FREESAT CHANNEL OF THE YEAR

BEST CHILDREN’S TV PROGRAMME OR SERIES

BEST OF BRITISH: TV PROGRAMME OR SERIES

BEST DIGITAL RADIO CHANNEL

BEST FACTUAL TV PROGRAMME OR SERIES

BEST SPECIALIST CHANNEL

BEST TV SITCOM

BEST NEWS CHANNEL

BEST TV DRAMA

PUBLIC VOTE: PERSONALITY OF THE YEAR

BEST LIVE TV PROGRAMME OR SERIES

PUBLIC VOTE: BEST BRITISH TV SOAP

BBC TWO

KATIE MORAG

DOCTOR WHO: THE DAY OF THE DOCTOR

ABSOLUTE 80s

EDUCATING YORKSHIRE

TRAVEL CHANNEL

THE WRONG MANS

BBC RADIO 5 LIVE

LINE OF DUTY

ANT AND DEC

ANT & DEC’S SATURDAY NIGHT TAKEAWAY

Coronation Street ITV

Doctor Who BBC One

Line of Duty BBC Two

CORONATION STREET

Educating Yorkshire Channel 4

The Wrong Mans BBC Two

To find out more about the Freesat Free TV Awards 2014 and the winners, visit freesat.co.uk/awards In association with:

With thanks to:

Journal of The Royal Television Society July/August 2014 l Volume 51/7

From the CEO Leeds was the location for the Grand Depart, the opening stage of this year’s Tour de France. And the city played host to another important summer event – the 10th Yorkshire Programme Awards, held for the first time at the splendid and very contemporary Royal Armouries museum.

It was a wonderful occasion and I was delighted to have been invited.

Michael Steer and Matthew Burton from Educating Yorkshire presented an event that celebrated Yorkshire’s finest.

Further north still, the inaugural RTS Scotland Awards was a fantastic

event, which I was also privileged to attend. Congratulations to all the winners at both awards ceremonies.

During the past month I was thrilled to be present at the RTS Centres Council, generously hosted by RTÉ in Dublin.

The day’s centrepiece was an inspiring and amusing talk given by RTÉ’s Chairman, Tom Savage.

Back in London, the RTS All Party Parliamentary Group hosted a stimulating debate, “Future of funding for the BBC”. A top-class panel dissected the key issues – and more besides.

Even England’s dismal draw against Costa Rica the same evening failed to dampen proceedings.

Contents 5 6

Andrew Scadding’s TV Diary

8 11 12

Looking forward to September, I would like to your draw attention to our London conference, “Power, Politics and the Media”.

We have put together a stellar lineup of UK and international speakers.

One of the keynotes will be given

by Chase Carey, President and Chief Operating Officer of 21st Century Fox, the subject of this month’s cover story.

Please book your places now.

Theresa Wise

19 20

Quotas unfair? So is the status quo

A man with worldwide ambitions

22

Netflix lays down the law

Our Friend in the North East

24

Discovery sprints for yellow

How will we pay for the BBC?

26

What Twitter can do for TV

Not many bring-your-daughter-to-work days include a war briefing in Parliament. Andrew Scadding’s does

21st Century man

In the Murdoch empire Chase Carey is uniquely powerful. But little is known about this unassuming yet redoubtable high-flyer. Raymond Snoddy lifts the lid

The CEO of BBC Worldwide wears no tie and no airs.

Tim Davie tells Andrew Billen why he is not bashful about money or public service

The region would offer the Queen an appealing change after Game of Thrones, says Graeme Thompson. He’s even drawn up her itinerary

BBC Charter renewal will centre on funding. Steve Clarke hears the opening shots of the campaign

Editor Steve Clarke smclarke_333@hotmail.com

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

Television www.rts.org.uk July/August 2014

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

Will anything short of quotas reverse TV’s declining diversity? Matthew Bell listens to the debate

Scotland: high stakes for the BBC

A key issue in the Scottish independence debate is the fate of the BBC if Scotland votes yes, reports Maggie Brown

It is successfully poaching broadcasters’ viewers and top writing talent, but can Netflix maintain its momentum? asks Tara Conlan

Discovery’s acquisition of a majority stake in Eurosport will play a central role in the group’s response to fracturing audiences, learns Kate Bulkley

Twitter is stoking the conversations around TV shows. But can it also drive ratings? Steve Clarke sifts the evidence

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

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

Legal notice © Royal Television Society 2014.

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

3

RTS NEWS RTS Student Television Awards 2014

Invitation for entries Closing date for entries:

Friday 26 September Two awards will be presented in each category, for Undergraduate and Postgraduate entries. The categories are:

n Animation n Comedy and Entertainment n Factual n Drama n Open The new Open Award is for films on any subject that are no longer than three minutes.

Entries will be accepted from any students attending a higher education institution In addition, to reward excellence in craft skills, up to six awards will be presented at the national judges’ discretion to any of the awards entries. Undergraduate and Postgraduate nominees will be selected for:

n Best Camera n Best Editing n Best Sound Nominations will be announced in March 2015 Entries to: n Jamie O’Neill 020 7822 2821 n jamie@rts.org.uk Criteria at: www.rts.org. uk/rts-student-televisionawards-2014 4

National events

RTS MASTERCLASSES Monday 27 October

MIDLANDS ■ Jayne Greene 07792 776585 ■ jayne@ijmmedia.co.uk

RTS LONDON CONFERENCE Tuesday 9 September

Production masterclasses: drama, documentary and entertainment

Principal sponsor: STV Group.

Conference chairman: Rob Woodward, Chief Executive, STV; Keynote speakers: Chase Carey, President and Chief Operating Officer, 21st Century Fox; The Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport; JB Perrette, President, Discovery Networks International Speakers: Sir Peter Bazalgette, President, RTS; Jeremy Darroch, Chief Executive, BSkyB; Michael Foster Tony Hall, Director-General, BBC; John Hardie, Chief Executive, ITN; James Harding, Director, News and Current Affairs, BBC; Lorraine Heggessey; Steve Hewlett, Writer, Broad­ caster and Media Consultant; Kevin Lygo, Managing Director, ITV Studios; James Purnell, Director of Strategy and Digital, BBC; Stewart Purvis CBE, Professor of TV Journalism, City University; Jim Ryan, Senior Vice-President and Chief Strategy Officer, Liberty Global; John Ryley, Head of Sky News, BSkyB; Kirsty Wark, Broadcaster.

Venue: Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9AG ■ Jamie O’Neill 020 7822 2821 ■ jamie@rts.org.uk

One-day event Venue: BFI, Southbank, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XT

RTS EARLY EVENING EVENT Tuesday 23 September

DEVON & CORNWALL ■ Contact TBC

Power, politics and the media

In conversation with…

Tim Davie

6:30pm for 6:45pm start Venue: The Hospital Club, 24 Endell Street, London WC2H 9HQ ■ Events 020 7822 2820 ■ events@rts.org.uk

Your guide to upcoming national and regional events

NORTH EAST & THE BORDER ■ Jill Graham ■ jill.graham@blueyonder.co.uk NORTH WEST ■ Rachel Pinkney 07966 230639 ■ rachelpinkney@yahoo.co.uk

Tuesday 25 November

Craft skills masterclasses: camerawork, sound and editing One-day event Venue: BFI, Southbank, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XT RTS AWARDS Monday 1 December RTS Craft & Design Awards 2013/14 Venue: London Hilton, Park Lane, London W1K 1BE Wednesday 18 February 2015 RTS Television Journalism Awards 2013/14 Venue: London Hilton, Park Lane, London W1K 1BE Tuesday 17 March 2015 RTS Programme Awards 2014 Venue: Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane, London W1K 7TN May 2015– date TBC

RTS Student Television Awards 2014

NORTHERN IRELAND ■ John Mitchell ■ mitch.mvbroadcast@ btinternet.com REPUBLIC OF IRELAND ■ Charles Byrne (00353) 87251 3092 ■ byrnecd@iol.ie SCOTLAND ■ James Wilson: 07899 761167 ■ james.wilson@ cityofglasgowcollege.ac.uk SOUTHERN ■ Gordon Cooper ■ gordonjcooper@gmail.com THAMES VALLEY ■ Penny Westlake ■ info@rtstvc.org.uk WALES ■ Hywel Wiliam 0798 000 7841 ■ hwyel@aim.uk.com

Venue: TBC YORKSHIRE ■ Lisa Holdsworth 07790 145280 ■ lisa@allonewordpoductions. co.uk

Local events BRISTOL ■ Andy Batten Foster ■ andrewbattenfoster@hotmail. co.uk

EAST ANGLIA ■ Contact TBC LONDON ■ Daniel Cherowbrier ■ daniel@cherowbrier.co.uk

Television online You can now read, search and link to individual Television articles on the RTS website PDFs of each issue will continue to be available.

Every article since 2001 will be added over the next few months www.rts.org.uk/television

July/August 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

TV diary Not many bring-yourdaughter-to-work days include a war briefing in Parliament. All in day’s work for Andrew Scadding

I

t’s the football again this week. To be honest, my only issue with the footie is that Holby City gets shifted around, and that’s my weekly appointment-to-view TV. Holby City, I hear you ask?

Yes, I answer. I know it’s popular and British and, yes, I know it’s not a box-set political drama from Washington or, come to think of it, set in Schleswig-Holstein or Malmö – but I love it.

Maybe it’s because I’m a Bristolian and Holby is kind of, er, Bristol.

That said, I am still getting to grips with the fact that the excellent John Michie who plays Guy Self used to be DI Robbie Ross in Taggart.

“Jean, Jean, there’s been a murder” rings uninvited in my ears.

■ Actually, thinking of Glasgow, I was up there for Radio 1’s Big Weekend a couple of weeks ago. A quick, shameless plug here for the great opportunities it brings locally, with the Radio One Academy and BBC giving local musicians the chance to showcase their talents and possibly get a break.

I am told one young lad got a manager out of it.

At a suitably modest BBC reception (there’s a cash bar) Ken MacQuarrie, Director of BBC Scotland, outlines the amazing cultural events we are

Television www.rts.org.uk July/August 2014

holding at Pacific Quay in the run-up to the Commonwealth Games.

Ben Cooper from Radio 1 does a backstage tour for MPs and MSPs. There’s supposed to be five folk, but somehow about 20 tag along as we traipse past Pharrell’s dressing room.

No local stereotypes, but lunch is a very pleasant pizza and chips with a local MP and the great John Boothman. “Boothy”, the Head of News for BBC Scotland, is a man enjoying a quiet time at the moment, with just the small matter of a referendum to cover.

It reminds me of filming in Scotland when working in BBC News, and interviewing Alex Salmond with a reporter called Michael Gove. I do sometimes wonder what happened to him. Perhaps he went into teaching or something?

■ Coldplay closing day one of the Big Weekend and Kings of Leon opening with a guest appearance by Chris Martin were brilliant. This event is definitely a highlight every year.

I have happy memories of the Bishop of Trowbridge bopping along to Lily Allen in the Radio 1 live lounge at Swindon a few years ago.

■ Back in Surrey, having an 88-mile round commute every day has its advantages and disadvantages. I get to read the great morning email from

Paul Waugh and the iconoclastic views of my old mate, Dan Hodges, at The Daily Telegraph – usually on Ed Miliband or Roy Hodgson or possibly both in the same piece.

Not this morning, as it’s bringyour-daughter-to-work day. My 14-year-old enjoys a quick tour around Broadcasting House after a packed briefing meeting in Parliament on the situation in Iraq by Mark Urban from BBC News and the BBC World Service.

■ Later in the week, a very pleasant drink at the House of Lords with former BBC Governor Barbara Young.

We get a cheery wave from Lord Fowler, who is off to chair an RTS All Party Parliamentary Group event on the future funding of the BBC. Then a breakfast event in Parliament, a gathering of ministers and others to hear Jonty Claypole and Alan Yentob outline our new BBC Arts offer, including The One Show from Hay and the Edinburgh Festival.

It all goes down well, despite calls from some MPs for us to put more emphasis on out-of-London. Jonty points out that his team is based in Glasgow.

That’s back to Glasgow again, so probably enough from me.

Andrew Scadding is Head of Corporate and Public Affairs at the BBC.

5

21st Century man Profile

In the Murdoch empire Chase Carey is uniquely powerful.

But little is known about this unassuming yet redoubtable high-flyer.

Raymond Snoddy lifts the lid

6

21st Century Fox

T

here is absolutely no doubt that Chase Carey, long-time Murdoch loyalist, is the most powerful executive in 21st Century Fox – whose surname does not begin with an M. Three years ago, the man noted for both his unassuming nature and his flamboyant handlebar moustache, became the latest in a select line of News Corp executives to receive the ultimate public accolade, the official “bus” title: the person who would take over if Rupert Murdoch fell under a bus.

“Chase is my partner and if anything happened to me, I’m sure he’ll get it [the top job] immediately if I went under a bus,” said Murdoch at the time.

That was then. News Corp has not only survived the UK phone-hacking scandal, but is actually flourishing following the split of the company into separate corporate entities for the entertainment and publishing businesses – 21st Century Fox and News Corp.

Earlier, Carey had pushed Murdoch to go for a $5bn share buy-back to

show confidence in the company and underpin its share price.

As well as being influential in the corporate split, the television executive – who does not share Murdoch’s love of newspapers – has also been credited by influential US trade paper, Adweek, with advising Murdoch to close The News of the World to try to limit the phone-hacking damage.

Yet, despite such achievements and Carey’s undoubted popularity with

Wall Street, the dynastic dynamics have recently taken another twist in favour of family succession.

James Murdoch, former Chief Executive of News International in the UK, has weathered the hacking storm.

Meanwhile, his elder brother Lachlan has returned to the business from running his own company in Australia to take increased power.

And in March Rupert Murdoch unexpectedly announced in an

internal memo that Lachlan would in future be Co-Non-Executive Chairman of News Corp and its sister company, 21st Century Fox. His brother James was elevated to become Co-Chief Operating officer of 21st Century Fox alongside Carey.

In a subtle touch, James Murdoch – despite his equal titular status – would still have to report to Carey.

It was probably a realistic nod to the fact that, while Chase Carey is very loyal to Rupert Murdoch, this could be stretched to breaking point if he had to report directly to the younger Murdochs.

If Carey has been put out by being leap-frogged again by a family member in the succession battle, there is no external sign of it.

He has continued doing what he does best, running the television and film business on a day-to-day basis and being one of the few whom Rupert Murdoch will listen to and even heed – a quality valued by investors.

He is widely seen as the operational counterpoint to Rupert Murdoch and a valuable brake on his corporate restlessness.

But who is Chase Carey?

The Financial Times noted recently that even his colleagues were not sure what lay behind the moustache.

“The greying thicket, delicately twirled at the ends may conceal a rugby wound or a car crash scar. Or it could be a diversionary tactic; one unavoidably noticeable feature of a man who otherwise presents a studiously low-­key face to the world,” the paper said.

In fact, the extravagant moustache is linked to a car crash suffered on the way to play rugby for his college team, but Carey’s low-key approach is equally real.

“He is very unassuming. If you ask him what his favourite lunch is, he would say cheeseburger and French fries,” says Marty Pompadur, a longtime Murdoch confidant, who now works for Macquarie, the Australian banking, financial services and investment group.

“But he is a very strong executive – a no-bullshit kind of guy. I have seen bankers present to him and he thinks for a minute and then says ‘No’ or, just occasionally, ‘Yes,’” adds Pompadur.

Carey is also a loyalist both to places and people, and he has a tendency to return to first base.

After a Harvard MBA he worked for Paramount Pictures before becoming a

Television www.rts.org.uk July/August 2014

Murdoch executive in 1988. He ran Murdoch’s US satellite venture, DirectTV, from 2003 and stayed on when John Malone took over, adding 1 million new subscribers before returning to Murdoch in 2009.

Carey, naturally, had to spend time in Los Angeles as a television and film executive, but in 2000 returned with his wife Wendy and two children to live in the town where he was brought up, New Canaan, Connecticut.

And even though he earned more than $27m last year and is said to have the highest car allowance in the company, Carey is often seen on the

HIS CALM AND MEASURED STYLE IS COUPLED WITH A FIERCE INTELLECT… AND VAST EXPERIENCE commuter train from Manhattan to New Canaan with a can of beer in his hand at the end of the working day.

Last year, in a rare case of Carey breaking cover outside Wall Street briefings, he talked openly to around 100 local citizens in the New Canaan Library about “Managing businesses in an increasingly volatile and complex world”.

He voiced support for Fox News and insisted: “I actually think its news coverage is fair and balanced.”

Asked about Murdoch’s corporate heir, Carey told his hometown audience: “I think Rupert’s going to outlast all his kids... He works seven days a week... but Rupert is quite clear: the decision on his successor will be the board’s choice, should that day come.”

While being personally understated, Carey is robust in fighting the public battles of the media owners.

Cable customers who think they can

IT’S A MISTAKE TO UNDERESTIMATE HIM… HE’S NOTORIOUS FOR HIS TERRIFYING COMMAND OF DETAIL

buy à la carte, subscribing on a channelby-channel basis, “need a reality check”.

In June Carey and fellow broadcasters won an important legal battle against Aereo, the company providing simple aerials to access free-to-air television that allowed viewers to avoid cable subscriptions. The US Supreme Court ruled that Aereo breached broadcasters’ copyright.

Murdoch executives are united in their view of Carey’s redoubtable skills.

“I’m grateful that this formidable negotiator has always been my side of any argument or deal, rather than facing me,” says Mike Darcey, now Chief Executive of News UK, publisher of The Times.

“He is an exceptional executive, not only for his showbiz name and standout moustache, but for the formidable armoury he brings to the table,” says Darcey. “His calm and measured style is coupled with a fierce intellect, clarity of purpose and vast experience.”

Les Hinton, former Chief Executive of Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, clearly agrees. He emphasises Carey’s relaxed, almost genial, manner, lacking in pretence and happiest talking about Yankees baseball with a bottle of beer in his hand.

“But it’s a mistake ever to underestimate him,” warns Hinton. “As a boss he’s notorious for his terrifying command of detail.

“He would fix with a fierce gaze any faltering executive; unblinking in negotiation; always ready to confront Rupert when he thinks he is about to make a mistake.”

But despite the current odds, could the 60-year-old Carey actually inherit the top job one day at the insistence of the board or of 21st Century Fox shareholders?

It has to be said that it would not make much difference if he did. The way the company is structured means, irrespective of who holds the top title, it will remain a family business controlled by the Murdochs, who are supported by the second-largest voting shareholder, the Saudi multi-billionaire, Al-Waleed bin Talal.

And one thing you can be absolutely sure of: Chase Carey is more than smart enough to be very aware of that reality.

Chase Carey, President and COO of 21st Century Fox, is a keynote speaker at the RTS London Conference, ‘Power, Politics and the Media’ on 9 September.

7

T

he Chief Executive of BBC Worldwide is a personable, persuasive but modest fellow with a south-London accent.

Tim Davie wears no tie and has no airs.

When we run out of our allocated time in the Robin Day Meeting Room at New Broadcasting House, he finds, after a few wrong turns, an empty cubicle named after Elizabeth Cowell (BBC TV’s first continuity announcer), where we can continue.

Future interviewers, however, should be warned that he might blow their minds about Auntie. At home, they may think of her as a maligned, crisis-prone embodiment of a 1920s theory of public service with a problematic revenue source. Abroad, Davie suggests, she is a business titan.

In the US, the wholly owned, overtly commercial, BBC subsidiary that Davie leads is turning over 600 million freely spent dollars.

In China, 72 million have watched Sherlock. BBC Earth is not just a channel he has launched – alongside BBC First (prime drama) and BBC Brit (more fun) – but a natural-history theme park in Japan, distantly related to CBeebies Land, which BBC Worldwide opened at Alton Towers in May. Slovenia recently became the 50th country to make under BBC licence its own Strictly Come Dancing. In Beijing they are auditioning for three fume-­ junkies to present the local Top Gear.

In coals-to-Doncaster fashion, BBC

me of John Birt in the 1990s, a man from the BBC’s future, not its past.

Similarly, however, he does prompt the question: is he quite BBC in the strictest sense? He came, after all, from Pepsico.

I gibe that it must be easier to be enthusiastic about selling British television to the world than fizzy pop to sub-Saharan Africa, but he counters that he still finds Pepsi’s “challenger” mentality helpful.

In this country, the BBC is more Coke than Pepsi. For all the success stories, the world could still be consuming lots more BBC. BBC America, for instance, will soon be in 80 million homes, but they are not all premium-cable paying homes.

He says he wants the channel to be “indispensable to a sizeable niche” of pay-channel viewers, which suggests to me that he believes customers might pay more for the right content.

Perhaps, I say, BBC America could grow as big one day as HBO, which

rakes in more than $4bn annually from its US subscribers?

He replies that he has plenty of ambition for it, but does not want to put numbers to it. “I am incredibly proud BBC America continues to deliver.”

Otherwise, he is unbashful about money. He is not embarrassed that his base salary of £400,000 is only £50,000 less than Tony Hall’s – although he says it is “critical that leaders like myself offer value”.

Nor does he mind that BBC Worldwide has helped make the original Jeremy Clarkson and his Executive Producer, Andy Wilman, £31m.

Top Gear, after all, made money for the licence payer. “Those individuals who came up with the IP [intellectual property] and developed those ideas could, without doubt, be going with other partners.”

It is the rationale of someone steeped in the free market. Nevertheless, he says that when he joined the BBC in 2005 as head of marketing, it was a jump, but not into the unknown.

“My base wiring is Blue Peter, suburban Britain. The BBC was absolutely part of what I was. I just felt genuinely incredibly honoured to be on the board at the BBC.” At the BBC he gained a reputation for decisiveness laced with humanity.

When he had to fire a senior employee in difficult circumstances, the person was impressed that at parties over the following years he made a point of approaching and asking how things were going.

ONE OF THE GREAT THINGS ABOUT THE BBC, AND IT CAN BE UNCOMFORTABLE FOR SENIOR MANAGEMENT, IS ITS ABILITY TO INTERROGATE ITSELF

The greater leap was, he acknowledges, into editorial. When Jenny Abramsky quit as the head of BBC Audio and Music (now known as BBC Radio) in 2008, he applied for the job.

Although he had never made a radio programme or conducted a symphony orchestra, he says he knew they would have been looking for a candidate with leadership qualities and editorial judgment.

But how could they know he had any of the latter? “All I can tell you is that having been on the BBC’s Executive Board for some time, we have quite a lot of editorial debates. But that

The Billen profile

The CEO of BBC Worldwide wears no tie and no airs. Tim Davie tells Andrew Billen why he is not bashful about money or public service

A man with world

Worldwide (in a deal with Love Productions) has made a Great French Bake Off, Le Meilleur Pâtissier.

“It is more macaroons and choux pastry than jam sponge,” says Davie.

“And it’s great to see this balance between global brand and localisation.

There is something quite powerful about that.”

Although, not, I say, as powerful a news story as when the Chinese Jeremy Clarkson is announced.

“It’s got to be a great picture,” agrees the former brand manager for Procter & Gamble.

In the nicest possible way he reminds

8

BBC

hypotheticals are not really needed.”

The acting DG was soon criticised for not wearing a tie. “I remember thinking, ‘If they’re debating the neckwear, you are making progress.’”

He nevertheless wore one for the duration of his tenure.

Davie set about meeting his demoralised staff. There is, he says, only so much that can be done by email.

Ten days in, he was at Media City in Salford answering hostile questions from BBC journalists. One tweet enthused that it was “awesome” the way Nicky Campbell, Five Live’s breakfast host, was grilling him.

“One of the great things about the BBC, and it can be uncomfortable for senior management, is its ability to interrogate itself,” Davie says, which make me think he really does get its ethos.

“I can simultaneously be having a tough time being asked questions by one of our reporters, and thinking what a wonderful organisation it is that we can do that. Certainly, Nicky and others gave me appropriate questioning at the time.”

At the meeting he did not rule out applying for the DG’s job full-time; after all, he had gone for it when he was beaten by Entwistle. Subsequently, it was reported he was talking to ­All3Media about becoming its CEO. The day after that Salford grilling, on 22 November, Tony Hall was appointed.

Did Davie feel like Ryan Giggs, the caretaker doomed not to get the job full time? “As a Crystal Palace fan, I

wide ambitions is probably a question to ask Mark Thompson.”

And here, from New York, is his reply: “Although Tim didn’t come from a programme-making background, he’d shown almost from the day he arrived that he had great critical judgement about TV and radio and a real understanding of the BBC’s values and creative ethos. His ability and potential as a general manager, meanwhile, were not in doubt. That was why I was so confident that the appointment would work and that BBC Radio – never a pushover – would quickly come to accept and value him.”

Television www.rts.org.uk July/August 2014

His fiercest hour in the spotlight came in November of 2012, 22 days after he had been announced as the next Chief Executive of Worldwide.

It was the Saturday George Entwistle resigned after 54 days as DirectorGeneral. Davie lives outside Henley-onThames but he was at the Vue cinema in Reading with his wife, Anne, and their boys, 14, 11 and 8, watching Skyfall when Chris Patten rang. The family gave up on him returning to his seat.

“It was a crisis that needed handling.” How bad could it have got? “It’s a very good question, [but] there was so much to deal with in the real world that

can’t even put myself in the shoes of anyone in Manchester United. Look – you’ll get a cliché off me, but it’s true – you just do the job.”

It took him from New Broadcasting House to BBC Media Centre in Wood Lane.

Under his predecessor, John Smith, Worldwide had doubled its revenues and quadrupled its profits. Less impressively, it had purchased the travel-guide company Lonely Planet and, in 2013, sold it at an £80m loss.

I ask whether, after the political quag­mires of New Broadcasting House, Wood Lane and commerce came as a relief? �

9

All pictures: BBC

Tim Davie at a glance

Premier product: Top Gear Tim Davie, Chief Executive, BBC Worldwide and Director, Global; member of the BBC Executive Board Married To Anne Shotbolt, designer; three sons Born 25 April 1967. His father, Douglas Davie, was a salesman; his mother: Alicia Davie, had various jobs; one brother Education Day boy at Whitgift School, Croydon; studied English at Selwyn College, Cambridge 1991 Brand manager, Procter & Gamble 1993 Vice-President, Pepsico 2005 Director of Marketing, Communication and Audiences, BBC 2008 Director, BBC Audio and Music 2012 Acting Director-General, BBC 2013 CEO, BBC Worldwide Other jobs Joint Chair of UK Trade & Investment Creative Industries SAG; Chair of Comic Relief; Trustee of Children in Need Recreations running, reading, skiing, live music, fresh air, strong coffee, ‘my young family’ What he’s watching? ‘Hoovering up Orphan Black’ Blue Peter or Magpie? Blue Peter Number of ties he owns 12.

Number of ties still sartorially acceptable: three – ‘If I had worn any of the others during the crisis, there would have been serious questions.’

10

� “Running BBC Radio is one of the great jobs in the country,” he begins, recalling the nights at the Proms, Radio One Big Weekends and the fight to convert us from analogue to digital listeners.

“But I think in a career it is good to do a number of different things and I have to say it is pretty rewarding to get back to the simplicity of PnL [that’s profit and loss, to us]. I think that what’s excellent about Worldwide is there is clarity.”

The clarity is about how to make money? “I think Worldwide is a bit more than that.”

As managers tend to, he divides his aims into three. The first is to build “the brand reputation” of the BBC. The second is to secure “sustainable, long-term financial returns for the licence-fee payer”.

The third is to be a “world-class media company” and a “leading light” within the UK creative industries: “My view is that the BBC has a role as a leader in terms of growing the creative industries as a whole.”

His joint chairmanship, with the communications minister, Ed Vaizey, of the UK Trade & Investment Creative Industries Sector Advisory Group and his trade mission to China in May with Vince Cable could suggest that – even now – he is looking, long term, beyond the BBC. He is, after all, only 47 and may have climbed as far as he can in the corporation. Davie’s biography gives reason to suggest he might not respect this ceiling on his career.

He grew up in lower-middle-class Croydon, the son of a wine and spirits

salesman and his wife, whose jobs included teacher and psychiatric nurse.

Shortly after they divorced, when he was 11, he won a scholarship to the fee-paying Whitgift School – a “blessing”, and not only because from there he became the first member of his family to reach university. And Cambridge, at that.

“It just multiplied the number of choices I had. I mean, for instance, I love watching rugby, but I was never going to be, with my build, a great rugby player.

“But they had the Olympic fencing coach there and he got us to an incredibly high standard. To this day I feel very lucky to have had those opportunities.

“One of the reasons that I went to Proctor & Gamble after university was that I felt that brand management kept my options incredibly open in terms of what I could go and do after it.

“There are some people who have got a passion for one thing. I have seen musicians, whom I admire enormously, do things with their hands no human being should be able to do, like play a piano that well.

I’ve tended to keep my options open a little bit, which makes me a different type of individual.”

Maybe not a BBC lifer, then? “You could argue,” he smiles, “that what I’ve just said means both possibilities are true. I’m not going to dive down one rabbit hole on that.”

We all know where rabbit holes lead. BBC Worldwide is a wonderland the way he describes it, but there may yet be different wonderlands ahead.

July/August 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

OUR FRIEND IN THE

NORTH EAST

Television www.rts.org.uk July/August 2014

2tone Photography

T

he Queen visiting the Game of Thrones set in Northern Ireland set me wondering if she’d ever actually seen HBO’s blood-soaked epic. And if not the sex and sorcery of Westeros, what does she watch?

I imagine she rather likes Brenda Blethyn’s big-hearted, workaholic detective Vera and Robson Green’s glorious Tales of Northumberland.

Both shows – filmed in the spectacular landscape of castles, crags and coast north of the River Tyne – have been recommissioned by ITV. This is great news for the area’s tourist trade. Northumberland is a great location; indeed, the ideal place to start a royal visit.

I am willing to wager the royal telly is rarely tuned in to the North East’s other long-running cultural export, Geordie Shore.

Season 8 of MTV’s unstoppable reality blockbuster starts this month.

While the eye-watering antics of its uninhibited cast may not suit all tastes – and, let’s face it, most of us would struggle to qualify as the target audience – its success with millions of viewers and social-media followers worldwide seems to guarantee it a recommission.

I’m reminded of the journalist who observed, “Being shocked by the lasciviousness of Geordie Shore is like being shocked by the nutritional value of a deep-fried Mars Bar.” Nevertheless, let’s take the executive decision now. The royal tour of North East TV locations will skip the Bigg Market. Her Majesty might be more interested in visiting South Tyneside – home of BBC Two comedy Hebburn, the Great North Run, Joe McElderry and Sarah Millican.

Hebburn writer and comedian Jason Cook (who also starred in the show)

The region would offer the Queen an appealing change after Game of Thrones, says Graeme Thompson.

He’s even drawn up her itinerary

tells me he’s now adapting the scripts for the US, where the cultural equivalent of South Tyneside is somewhere in Pennsylvania.

Next stop on the royal itinerary would be Rowlands Gill near Gateshead, where a converted school is the base for CBBC’s top-rated dramas Wolfblood and The Dumping Ground.

So brilliant are the crews, actors and locations here, the BBC now describes the North East as the home of children’s drama.

Airing soon is Harriet’s Army, a ripping three-part CBBC drama series, set during the First World War and filmed at the extraordinary Beamish Museum near Chester-le-Street.

This represents a brilliant royal photo opportunity amid the Edwardian trams and shop fronts.

Further south is the stately city of Durham, where series 8 of the BBC period police drama Inspector George Gently is about to start filming with Martin Shaw in the lead. Bet the royal family love Inspector Gently.

During a tea break in the castle, she could learn how all of this activity is boosting the visitor economy as well as having a significant impact on the region’s production sector.

Over recent months, more than £11m has been spent on 70 productions across the North East, supporting hundreds of jobs.

Not much in London terms, but significant in a region trying to persuade its politicians to invest in a production fund to attract more projects.

Then it’s off on the nostalgia leg of the journey – the site of the old TyneTees studios in Newcastle, where Ant and Dec cut their teeth as presenters and where all those tasteful Catherine Cookson bodice-ripper dramas were made.

Still time to catch the new kids on the TV block with a visit to Sunderland University – home to Made Television, which starts transmitting its new local-TV service for Tyne and Wear this autumn.

Then it’s down the A19 to Digital City on Teesside to meet animators and games designers before one final photo call on the magnificent Transporter Bridge – as featured in Billy Elliot and Auf Wiedershen, Pet. What a tour!

I wonder if the Palace subscribes to Television? I might have an excellent suggestion to make…

Graeme Thompson is Dean of Arts, Design and Media at the University of Sunderland.

11

How will we pay for the BBC?

I

n the age of the iPlayer, paying for BBC services is arguably straightforward no longer. As a result, the key debate around renewal of the BBC’s Royal Charter in 2016 is expected to focus on the future of the licence fee and alternative means of paying for the corporation’s services.

Could the BBC’s traditional form of funding – already top-sliced to fund the World Service, local-TV and S4C, among other things – be replaced by subscription? Or perhaps a hybrid financing model might be preferable?

And how practical would it be to extend the licence fee to embrace the corporation’s online output?

This was the background to a stimulating and occasionally fractious debate, “Future of funding for the BBC”, held in June under the auspices of the RTS All Party Parliamentary Group at the House of Commons.

A distinguished panel, ably chaired

by Lord Fowler, was effectively split down the middle between the traditionalists, who want to preserve the licence fee (Lord Grade and Claire Enders), and those in favour of intro-

12

BBC licence fee

BBC Charter renewal will centre on funding.

Steve Clarke hears the opening shots of the campaign ducing subscription (Lis Howell and Nick Ross) to bankroll the Beeb.

Grade, a former Chair of the BBC Governors, opened the talking shop. He argued there were three British institutions that, in theory, looked anachronistic in the modern world, but in practice worked well: the hereditary monarchy, the House of Lords and the BBC. “You have to believe there is something in these three institutions that connects with the British public,” he said. Even so, the BBC is facing “an incredibly difficult few years.” During the last Charter review the argument revolved around governance and structure. This time the key issue would be funding.

“The fundamental principle that underlies all broadcasting is that there is a direct correlation between the source of funding and the kind of programmes that come out the other end,” Grade continued. “The BBC has a monopoly of revenue at the moment.

If you put the BBC into competition for revenue it would change the very nature of the beast.”

If the public appetite is for a risk-taking, public service broadcaster that reflects the nation back to itself, the best way to fund the BBC would be to keep the licence fee, he argued.

For 88 years this funding model has worked. The current £145.50 fee is “too high” – but to abolish the licence fee would destroy the BBC as we know it, concluded Grade.

Nick Ross, the former Crimewatch presenter, disagreed. “I am passionately in favour of the BBC… but I fear we are driving the BBC to extinction,” he warned.

No one expects the level of the licence fee to increase substantially in the coming years, he said. Meanwhile, the BBC’s rivals, especially new platforms such as Netflix, are increasing

THE SYSTEM TODAY IS FAIR… THE BBC IS THE FOUNDATION OF THE UK’S AUDIO-VISUAL ECONOMY, INCLUDING EXPORTS [OF] £30BN their investment in content. “The BBC is shrinking all the time compared with what is happening elsewhere,” Ross opined.

However, he said he’d been around long enough to appreciate the power of the pro-status quo BBC lobby: “Never underestimate the tenacity of the licence fee. People have been predicting its demise for decades.”

Ross expects the next government to renew the licence fee one final time – but after that it would be toast.

Subscription, he believes, offers the best protection for the BBC in the long term: “All the arguments against subscription fail… Subscription is transparent, fair, democratic and universal.”

Lis Howell, the ex-Sky News executive who is Director of Broadcasting at City University, agreed.

She favours introducing a model she described as “combination funding” to replace the licence fee.

Her case was that online catch-up via the iPlayer is undermining the legitimacy of a licence fee that – technically – people pay in order to receive a live television signal.

“Tonight you can go home and

Television www.rts.org.uk July/August 2014

All pictures: Richard Kendal

WE’RE NOT ALL HAPPY TO PAY THE LICENCE FEE… LOTS OF NICE MIDDLE-CLASS PEOPLE ARE THINKING TWICE ABOUT IT

watch BBC content on the iPlayer and watch the news on your phone – all for free,” said Howell.

With no incentive for people to pay the licence fee, she advocated a mix of a lower fee (which would be topsliced) to fund a basic BBC package, alongside a fuller service for those prepared to pay a premium.

Even now, she said, BBC services are financed “by a mishmash of funding”, including advertising on BBC Worldwide’s overseas channels.

Moreover, there are parts of the UK where support for the licence fee is waning: “Half the people in Scotland do not think the BBC is value for money. It’s not as cosy as it seems.

We’re not all happy to pay the licence fee for ever and ever. Lots of nice, middle-class people are thinking twice about it.

“We need to think about what is going to happen [in the future] because the licence fee, given disruptive technology, is not going to last.”

Lord Fowler intervened and asked if Howell’s idea of a reduced licence fee would embrace the funding of BBC Radio.

“Yes, it would. That’s difficult, because commercial radio doesn’t like the licence fee as they think it takes the oxygen out of the radio environment.

“But when you think about the achievements of BBC Radio, I’d definitely put that in my package.”

Ross suggested that if Radio 4 was financed by subscription, “most people here” would be happy to fork out up to £40 a year for Middle England’s listening choice.

It was time for Claire Enders, CEO of Enders Analysis, to enter the fray. She said she had the evidence to prove the advocates of subscription were plain wrong. Far from being financially outpaced by its rivals, the recent post-­ recession economic re-balancing has seen the BBC’s income increase by 1% a year since 2010.

This is despite the Coalition Government’s licence-fee freeze and is due to more households paying the licence fee and larger profits from BBC Worldwide, which encompass subscription-­ based channels.

“The rebalancing that has occurred has been beneficial to the entire sector,” insisted Enders, who added that the BBC spent £900m on new network content, compared with Netlfix’s spend of around £1bn.

Furthermore, the VoD platform’s budget is spread over a market of 300 million, rather than the BBC’s 63 million people.

Warming to her theme, she continued: “The majority of audiences still watch and listen to BBC programmes traditionally. Only 3% of BBC viewing is via the iPlayer.”

Public support for the licence fee is widespread: “Fifty seven per cent of the public thinks the licence fee is good value.”

As an immigrant (Enders is the daughter of a US diplomat) she stressed that she buys into all the great British institutions. These include the university system, the NHS – and the BBC, which accounts for a third of all media consumption in the UK. “I am actually someone who would pay more for the BBC, but I am perfectly content with the amount that I pay,” Enders declared.

Those aged 45-65 all consume a lot of TV and radio – and vote, she added.

“So if anyone in Parliament wishes to question public service broadcasting, I dare you to do so.

“The system today is fair. The entire ecosystem is a wonder to behold… �

13

‘Future of funding for the BBC’ was an RTS All Party Parliamentary Group event held at the House of Commons on 24 June and produced by Sue Roberston.

QUESTION & ANSWER On decriminalising nonpayment of the licence fee Lord Grade: I think the argument [around Charter renewal] is going to be less about subscription versus licence fee than the issues of criminality and compulsion.

We all feel a bit squeamish about the fact that you can go to prison if you don’t pay the fine for not paying the licence fee. You don’t go to prison for not paying the licence fee, but you can go to prison for contempt of court if you don’t pay the fine.

If there is a way to decriminalise non-payment, that would be a good

14

[SUBSCRIPTION] IS BARKING, IT DOESN’T WORK UNLESS YOU HAVE PROGRAMMES – MOVIES, SPORT AND PORNOGRAPHY – THAT PEOPLE WILL RECOGNISE thing, but not – and this is very, very important – at the cost of compulsion.

On paying to use BBC iPlayer Lord Grade: You can encrypt the iPlayer and pay an additional fiver and you get a code enabling you to watch iPlayer on your devices.

Lis Howell: It is not as simple as that because people at the BBC are unhappy about a charge on the iPlayer…

Even if what you say is true, I don’t see any move towards doing it.

On the BBC’s need for an inhouse production studio Nick Ross: Twenty years ago people said it was barking for the BBC not to have inhouse production… It’s that entrenched conservatism, which says it’s barking to try out the new. But we’ve gone out to the market and quality hasn’t been diminished. We’ve enhanced it.

Richard Kendal

� The BBC is the foundation of the UK’s audio-visual economy, including exports accounting for £30bn…

“These are radical moves that people are talking about and they are completely unnecessary.”

With the temperature in Committee Room 9 at the House of Commons beginning to rise, Lord Grade added fuel to the fire. Responding to Ross’s idea that people would be happy to pay to watch BBC programmes they were unfamiliar with, Grade told him that all successful subscription-TV services rely on a tried-and-tested menu of movies, sport and proven hits.

“It’s programmes such as Strictly Come Dancing that drive subscription,” said the former BBC One Controller.

“And all the people – including pensioners and low-income groups who cannot afford the subscription – will be denied the programmes they absolutely love.

“It’s barking, it doesn’t work unless you have programmes – movies, sport and pornography – that people will recognise. That is the only basis on which they will pay for subscription.”

Expect this debate to run and run – and get hotter, still – as 2016 approaches.

Claire Enders: The BBC already commissions 48% of its network programmes from independents.

There is a very good gradual process occurring in terms of building superindies that can make programmes on multi-million-pound budgets…That’s what the BBC is all about.

Lord Grade: The fact that producers can join or set up as independents and make a lot more money means there is a constant turnover of staff at both the BBC and ITV. One of the strands of the Charter review debate will be the BBC having to justify why it still needs to make drama and light entertainment programmes.

News and current affairs are a separate discussion… The BBC has a very hard argument to make about why it continues to need big, inhouse production departments.

July/August 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

Paul Hampartsoumian

Quotas unfair?

So is the status quo Krishnan Guru-Murthy

P

ublic-sector employers and much of the corporate world have made great strides in building more diverse workforces in recent years. But the same cannot be said of the TV industry, where the representation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people has been falling.

Last year’s Creative Skillset employment survey revealed that the proportion of BAME people in the creative sector, which includes film, advertising, radio and gaming as well as TV, had declined from 7.4% in 2006 to 5.4% in 2012.

These damning statistics formed the backdrop to the RTS-sponsored session “To quota or not to quota” at “Diversify”, an event organised by Broadcast and Screen International publisher MBI in early June and held

Television www.rts.org.uk July/August 2014

Employment diversity

Will anything short of quotas reverse TV’s declining diversity?

Matthew Bell listens to the debate at a packed RADA Studios in central London.

Peter Salmon, the BBC’s Director, England and a member of the Creative Skillset board, told the session, chaired by Channel 4 Director of Cultural Diversity Stuart Cosgrove, that the survey “deeply shocked us all”.

The BBC, though, is performing

better, he claimed. Salmon revealed that 12% of the BBC’s workforce is from BAME backgrounds, close to the average for the UK population as a whole.

He conceded, however, that this overall figure conceals some troubling areas: “It is clear that there are not enough black faces at the most senior levels of all our media companies, not just the BBC. “And, while we bring on many good BAME producers, they don’t develop their careers fully with us.

“We recruit and train them but we do not nurture and treasure them – and I think that’s why they’re probably leaving the sector,” he said.

Salmon added that Director-General Tony Hall would “announce new BBC plans to tackle some of our big diversity challenges” in the coming weeks (see box, page 17). �

15

Two steps to more diverse productions From left: Michelle Matherson, Damian Jones and Priscilla Baffour

1

Getting into the industry

Kate O’Connor, Executive Director, Creative Skillset: ‘Trainee Finder… offers subsidised placements for trainees from all parts of society, with qualifications, without qualifications… It’s a really good way of learning on the job.’

Nigel Warner, Creative Access, which finds paid internships for young BAME people: ‘The creative industries do not do a very good job of selling themselves to universities and explaining what kind of jobs are open to young people coming into the industry… The creative industries have historically [used] friends and family recruitment. If you don’t know anybody, it’s very difficult to find your way in.’

Damian Jones, Producer, DJ Films, producer of movies including Adulthood, Belle and Sex Drugs & Rock & Roll: ‘It’s a tough business. Of the 10 people I started out with – all white, middle-class wannabe producers – there’s two of us left… you’ve got to be thick-skinned, use your initiative and be the best.’

Priscilla Baffour, Industry Talent Specialist, Channel 4: ‘You shouldn’t go into work experience thinking you’re going to get a job at the end of it – unfortunately, there are not enough jobs for everybody.

16

‘It’s a time for you to sell yourself and to build up your network… [and to] find out how the industry works.’

Michelle Matherson, Talent Executive, Shiver: ‘It’s a competitive and sometimes ruthless industry… Certain people will survive this industry and others will go off and do something else…

‘We’re not living in the [old] days when you could hire as many people as you wanted. I have to negotiate salaries that are tight because the budgets are tight – everyone’s trying to squeeze out as much as they can from production to get as much [as they can] on screen.’

O’Connor: ‘We’re a growth industry… one the Government is supporting with tax breaks and all sorts of incentives… There are jobs opening up, skills needed.’

2

Getting on in the industry

Matherson: ‘I find [BAME] people get to assistant producer level and can’t make the jump to becoming a producer/ director. There are very few series producers in the business and the execs you can probably count on one hand.’

Simone Pennant, Founder/Director, The TV Collective, which supports diverse talent: ‘One of the biggest issues is the way the BAME community is perceived.

We’ve got assistant producers, producers and directors, a real wealth of talent… but people send me runners’ and researchers’ jobs.’

Baffour: ‘[The difficulties] are at the midand senior levels – at Channel 4 at the moment, that is our priority… Everyone who is recruiting should cast the net wider – don’t just look at people in your own network. Maybe we need some training in [fighting] unconscious bias because we do tend to hire people who are like ourselves.’

Matherson: ‘It doesn’t matter what colour or race you are, or what gender.

Most broadcasters… don’t want to take a risk on somebody they don’t know. Our job is to put people in front of them so they get to know them.’

Warner: ‘One of the important things that sustains the group of people who are in the middle and senior levels across the industries is the networks they have.

‘They give each other jobs and look after each other – and they’re not the people who lose their jobs when jobs fall out of the industry, which is one of the things that’s happened in the past five years, and which is why the number of BAME people in the industry has fallen…

‘More than anything else, getting to know other people in the industry and building networks provides the protection that helps you to move up in the industry.’

From left: Janice Turner and Paul Blake � Fellow panellist Krishnan GuruMurthy argued that “as an industry, we are failing. There is no doubt that we have gone backwards over the past 10 to 15 years” in promoting diversity.

The Channel 4 News presenter said that “huge strides” had been made in the 1980s and 1990s, but nothing since.

“A lot of the people who are senior in television, either on- or off-screen, are the same as when I was coming into the business 25 years ago,” he added.

Specialist departments, such as the BBC Asian Programmes Unit, and series including Channel 4’s Black on Black and Eastern Eye (both aired in the 1980s), he argued, had proved “great training grounds” for BAME people.

“They enabled people to progress up the ranks and then move out into other areas of television. Those were scrapped on an ideological whim, which said we should mainstream everything – and the truth is, mainstreaming has failed.”

Addressing the question posed by the RTS event – “To quota or not to quota” – Guru-Murthy backed the introduction of “enforceable targets with [financial] penalties”.

He characterised these as “rules with teeth”, adding: “I don’t see anything else that will produce the kind of step change that we need.”

Production companies, for example, would lose a percentage of their fees if they failed to hit diversity quotas.

Targets would be nothing new for TV, he argued, which already has regional

Television www.rts.org.uk July/August 2014

and independent-production quotas.

“The market,” he concluded, “has failed and so we need to intervene.

The argument against quotas is always the same, that they would be ‘unfair’.

“Well, the status quo is ‘unfair’ and it has been for many, many years. If a small number of people are going to end up feeling penalised, well, they’re the people who’ve had the advantage for years and years.”

Bectu Head of Diversity Janice Turner added the union’s support for enforceable targets, while black TV producer Paul Blake said that he had heard much “warm and fuzzy language” about diversity but had seen “no action whatsoever”.

The Managing Director of factual indie Maroon Productions backed quotas, which he thought could be enforced by Ofcom.

“Within our company we joke about doing a film with Will Smith and taking it to Channel 4 or the BBC and [the broadcasters] asking for a taster tape,” he added to illustrate the obstacles faced by BAME programme-makers.

Salmon, however, argued against quotas: “Television needs to reflect everyone’s lives and experiences. But from my own personal experience working at Channel 4, ITV, in the independent sector and at the BBC, it’s much more about intervention at key points in the broader creative process that matters.”

He continued: “The debate is about best business practice; and fairness, �

All pictures: Paul Hampartsoumian

BBC asks its talent to lead BBC Director-General Tony Hall addressed many of the concerns raised at the Diversify event with new plans to increase the representation of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people at the BBC. Advocating a ‘talent-led approach’, Hall announced a set of initiatives in late June to boost diversity. ‘The BBC gets much right on diversity, but the simple fact is that we need to do more. I am not content for the BBC to be merely good or above average,’ he said.

A new £2.1m Diversity Creative Talent Fund will help bring projects from BAME writers and production staff to the screen. The Assistant Commissioner Development Programme, targeting people from diverse backgrounds, will support the training of six commissioners through 12 months’ paid work.

To tackle the lack of diversity at the top of the BBC, Hall unveiled a Senior Leadership Development Programme for six people from BAME backgrounds. He also said the BBC would be taking on 20 BAME graduate trainee interns from its Creative Access programme.

Hall’s plan is backed by a series of targets. On air, he wants to see BAME portrayal increase from 10.4% to 15% over the next three years.

Existing off-air targets – BAME people to make up 14.2% of all staff and to fill 10% of leadership roles by 2017 – are supplemented by new targets for BAME senior staff. These include raising representation from the current 8.3% in TV and radio to 15% by 2020.

Hall also announced the formation of an Independent Diversity Advisory Group, which he will chair. Members include Lenny Henry, a vocal critic of the industry’s lack of diversity, footballer Jason Roberts and paralympian Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson.

‘The package of measures I’ve put in place, alongside the support we’ll get from leading experts, will make a tangible difference,’ said Hall. ‘We will review progress regularly and, if we need to expand our approach even more, then we will.’

17

BBC newsroom, New Broadcasting House

F

ormer RTS CEO and now chair of the Campaign for Broadcasting Equality Simon Albury opened the ‘To quota or not to quota’ session with a passionate denunciation of BBC News’s lack of diversity.

“On 22 January, this year, I arrived at the BBC to do an 8:20 interview about BAME employment on Today,” said Albury. “At Today, in central London where 40% of the population is BAME, I saw that there was not one BAME person in the vast BBC newsroom except for an Asian runner.

“Justin Webb was the interviewer.

He… suggest[ed] that it was ironic that a white man had been asked to prod­uce a report on achieving diversity.

“If I’d known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have been surprised that a Today show presenter thought it odd that a white person was championing diversity.

“The evidence shows that however senior the white man supporting diversity – the Today show presenters will take no notice.

“The man in question is James Harding, the BBC’s Director of News and Current Affairs…

“Six months ago, Harding launched his news strategy. [He] said Mishal Husain joining Today and Ritula Shah’s

18

lead presenter role on The World Tonight were positive steps in terms of broadening diversity on air, but that there was much more to be done. “‘We’ve got to be clear we’ve got a problem,’ he told staff. ‘We’ve got an on-air issue. I, personally, think we’ve got an even bigger one off-air.’

Hallelujah.

“For a demonstration of how little impact Harding’s remarks have had,

THE BBC NEWS ACTION PLAN DOESN’T WANT TO SEE BAME PEOPLE WITH EDITORIAL POWER… JUST A FEW ON SCREEN look no further than an interview with Today presenter James Naughtie in The Sunday Times [in] February.

“When Naughtie was asked about the lack of black people on Today he replied, ‘Come on, it’s not a sociological laboratory.’

BBC

BBC News: ‘Still too white’ “It does seem odd to me that, while people get very exercised about what someone like Jeremy Clarkson said off-air two years ago, no one at the BBC seems much bothered when one of Radio 4’s ubiquitous presenters says something like this on the record – now.”

In his speech Albury also raised the case of 26-year-old Eno Alfred who, despite being a graduate of both the LSE and the Columbia School of Journalism, applied and was rejected – without interview – for 15 jobs, mostly in News, at the BBC. “What is going on here?” asked Albury. “I am not saying Eno Alfred should have been given a job, but I do say Eno Alfred deserved to get an interview… How many Eno Alfreds have there been – not only in News, but across the BBC?” Albury then turned his fire on the BBC News equality and diversity action plan, which, he said, “has not one word about BAME employment – save for the need for strategic decisions about presenters so that ‘a diverse range is reflected on air and on screen’.

“No wonder I didn’t see one BAME person in the BBC newsroom or in the Today control room – the BBC News action plan doesn’t want to see BAME people with editorial power or editorial responsibility – it just wants to see a few of them up on screen.

“On-screen representation is very important, but on-screen representation that is not matched by offscreen employment is a hollow and deceptive gesture.”

In response, the BBC’s Director, England, Peter Salmon, said that he wished he had received advance notice of Albury’s speech, which would have allowed him to address the specific charges: “It’s hard for me to talk about the detail.”

“Getting into the BBC can be really difficult,” Salmon admitted. “It can be opaque and frustrating and it’s very competitive. I’m not sure change happens because of being berated or pushed into a corner or typified as though we were some kind of devil brand. The BBC does some amazing things.”

Television www.rts.org.uk July/August 2014

Simone Pennant think it’s absolutely beyond contempt.”

Bectu’s Turner called on the Arts Council of England, the BFI and Ofcom to make monitoring and publishing data a requirement for those companies it funds or licenses.

“Targets should be set and penalties [imposed] for those who fail to make progress,” she said.

She added that the three organisations “bear quite a lot of responsibility for the disgraceful decline in the employment of ethnic minorities within media and the arts”.

Turner concluded: “What we are demanding is that – finally – the industry is made to give ethnic-­ minority workers an equal, fair chance and reflect the diversity of this country.”

‘Diversify’ was held at RADA Studios in Central London on 3 June and was part of ‘Creative Week’, an event celebrating the

Paul Hampartsoumian

� too; it’s about culture; and for those of us at the top of the BBC, it’s about leadership. It’s about partnerships, too, because no organisation can do it alone.”

Former Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission Trevor Phillips, who once presented and produced LWT’s The London Programme, said that he and Labour MP Diane Abbott “have a simple mantra – the big problem is not that brilliant people are being ignored.

“By definition, most people are not outstanding. All I think we – people from ethnic minorities – would ask for, is to be allowed the same right to be mediocre as most other people.”

He added: “People in this industry and other industries don’t take the same risk with people from minorities as they do with everybody else.”

Phillips pointed out that the use of quotas in the US hadn’t significantly boosted the representation of BAME people in TV and film.

And there are obstacles to introducing quotas in the UK, not the least that it would involve a change in the law, which could take up to three years.

He argued that “there’s only one issue: power – who calls the shots”.

On the five main television boards – the BBC Trust, ITV, Channel 4, BSkyB and Ofcom – Phillips said that just one of the 62 members was not white (Sonita Alleyne at the BBC Trust).

Phillips backed the use of the “Rooney rule”, named after Dan Rooney, the owner of the US football team, the Pittsburgh Steelers. This requires teams to interview minority candidates for senior roles.

Since its introduction in 2003, many more African Americans have become coaches and managers. For every top job in television, urged Phillips, there must be “one woman or one person from an ethnic minority on the shortlist.”

Both Phillips and Turner called for better monitoring of diversity.

TV companies, said Phillips, are failing to follow the example of other UK employers: “How is it that television is the only part of the economy that has some difficulty with keeping numbers?

“The only reason that nobody is doing this is because they don’t want to – I

ON-SCREEN REPRESENTATION THAT IS NOT MATCHED BY OFF-SCREEN EMPLOYMENT IS A HOLLOW AND DECEPTIVE GESTURE UK creative economy. The RTS session, ‘To quota or not to quota’, was produced by the BBC’s Marcus Ryder; the second session, ‘Practical steps for making your production more diverse’, was chaired by Broadcast editor Chris Curtis and produced by Sarah Cooper of Screen Daily.

19

SCOTLAND’S REFERENDUM:

I

n June former Prime Minister Gordon Brown finally ignited the debate about the BBC and Scottish independence by raising the “EastEnders” question. The key issue is whether the country’s 5.2 million citizens would have uninterrupted access to all current BBC services, if the referendum vote is for separation, and Scots’ licence fees are then diverted to a new national broadcaster.

He pointed out that Scots get topclass programming from a UK-wide corporation funded to the tune of £4bn; BBC One’s budget alone is three times what the entire proposed semi-­ replacement Scottish Broadcasting ­Corporation could expect to receive.

The BBC’s six most popular programmes, headed by EastEnders and Strictly Come Dancing, together cost £160m, with sports rights for Match of the Day included. Brown raised the spectre of Scots having to pay more.

As the 18 September vote nears, it is clear that the BBC will bear the brunt of substantial changes within the media sector if there is a yes vote.

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A key issue in the Scottish independence debate is the fate of the BBC if Scotland votes yes, reports Maggie Brown

But there has been scant dispassionate examination of the consequences for all 25 million UK licence-fee payers of such an outcome.

The EastEnders question first surfaced with Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond’s declaration at the 2012 Edinburgh Television Festival: “East-

Enders will be safe with us.” The subtext was that messing with favourite TV shows could undermine the independence vote.

Stand back from the debate and you see a BBC left isolated among the public service broadcasters: Channel Five, Channel 4 and ITV have been neutralised because they are assured that their existing licences, renewed until 2025, will be fully honoured.

The least affected (and so, most relaxed) is BSkyB, because it uses ­satellite transmission.

It is a different story for Scottish independent producers – 37 companies represented by Pact, with an annual turnover of £33m, who are edgy. As are UK indies in general about any assumption that BBC network programmes they make, and whose rights they own, could be shown for free in the territory of an independent Scotland. It would set a precedent.

“Businesses want clarity,” says Pact’s Scots-born chief executive, John McVay. “There are a lot of unknowns.”

There are rumours that, in the event of a yes vote, some independent companies might relocate in order to continue operating under the 25% production quota and BBC Window of Creative Competition. (Pact declines to comment on this speculation.)

Patrick Barwise, Emeritus Professor of Marketing at the London Business School, predicts that Scots “would see a significant outflow of indies from Glasgow. Their domestic broadcaster would be so tiny.”

Stuart Cosgrove, Channel 4’s Director of Creative Diversity, disputes this as “most unlikely. The main reason people base themselves somewhere is their roots”.

He says that most Scottish producers work in a global market, “neither small nor shrinking”. Channel 4 works with 20-plus indies in Scotland and commissions £7m of content annually.

Frustratingly, the BBC is staying silent to avoid becoming part of the story. The corporation does not want yes campaigners pouncing on alleged bias and, in the process, possibly stifling discussion on the subject.

“JK Rowling found that any individual who puts their head above the parapet gets shot at,” claims Barwise.

“Frankly, the BBC can’t do anything about it. The SNP has a huge advantage, it is in power,” says Alice Enders, author of a critical study, Scottish Independence: Media and Telecoms, for Enders Analysis.

Media commentator Steve Hewlett worries that the situation leaves the public not as well informed as it should be: “It is a remarkably sensitive issue... the BBC doing nothing adds to the yes campaign.”

BBC official historian Professor Jean Seaton, a confidante of BBC Trustees, says of them: “They are hoping it won’t happen”.

Television www.rts.org.uk July/August 2014

But Anthony Fry, a trustee until 2013, lifted the lid on the grave threat he fears Scottish independence poses, in a letter to Standpoint magazine in March. There is a price to be paid by advocates of sharing the licence fee, he wrote. Critics, “having wrecked the institution”,

THE BIG ASK IS BBC ONE AND BBC TWO ON FREETO-AIR TERMS – THIS IMPLIES A SUBSIDY OF £270M TO SCOTLAND seem to believe they can have the bits of the BBC they most enjoy.

Hewlett, who has described Scottish independence as “possibly the biggest threat to the BBC,” believes: “It has an existential quality for the BBC. If Scotland leaves the union, at least one of the letters in the BBC is wrong. It is no longer a UK-wide institution. It is not what it was.”

The key policy document remains the SNP-led Scottish Government’s Independence White Paper, published in November 2013.

It assumes an independent Scotland would establish a Scottish Broadcasting Service. This would be initially founded on the staffing (1,000 BBC employees) and resources of BBC Scotland, based at the £188m David Chipperfield-­ designed Pacific Quays HQ and studios in Glasgow, opened in 2007.

The SBS (established by Act of Holyrood) would provide television, radio and online services, following a fast handover on 31 December 2016.

The SBS annual budget would be £345m, comprised of £320m from Scots’ licence fees, £13m of BBC Worldwide and commercial revenue (a share granted in perpetuity), and £12m from the Scottish Government for the two Gaelic services, Bòrd na Gàidhlig and MG Alba.

The White Paper says there “should be an increase in production for Scottish producers and productions that reflect life in Scotland.”

The licence-fee revenue and the share of income from BBC Worldwide is based on Scotland’s 2.5 million homes – Scotland has 8.2% of the UK population. But the SNP’s case assumes the settle­ment would provide the same

level of BBC network programmes as at present.

In addition, the SBS plan includes a new TV channel and radio network, drawing on Scots’ licence fees. SBS is expected to work in a joint venture with the BBC: in exchange for Scottish programming fed into the BBC network, SBS would obtain free-to-air terms from the BBC. Currently, BBC Scotland provides 939 hours of programming to the network, while 50,000 hours of BBC network TV programmes are supplied to licence-fee payers.

Enders says: “The big ask is BBC One and BBC Two on free-to-air terms – this implies a subsidy of £270m to Scotland. This seems very unlikely to be agreed by the rest of the UK, since BBC Worldwide offers only commercial terms to other countries.

“However, the BBC will not comment on this assumption, so the Scots will only learn of the facts after the referen­ dum. Surely, there will be howls of protest from [UK] licence-fee payers regarding this largesse to households north of the border?”

Another area in which the SNP is banking on negotiating a good deal for Scots is the iPlayer, which is not currently licensed by the BBC to any other organisation.

BBC Scotland’s private analysis is believed to back up Brown’s claim that Scots are net recipients under the current BBC licence-fee arrangements.

In fairness, however, the Scottish licence-fee funds might be spent more efficiently by SBC commissioners in Glasgow, and the country’s audio-visual sector is arguably underdeveloped.

Even so, Seaton insists that “the Scots are mad if they think they can have the BBC and have a separate SBC that is not the BBC”.

She also points to concerns raised in the no camp about governance: could a new national broadcaster find its news and current affairs output under intense scrutiny from an interventionist Scottish government?

Scotland’s broadcaster could become “frankly provincial”, Seaton adds.

Cosgrove believes a no vote is still most likely, but “it will have been the biggest democratic discussion Scotland has ever had. And that will be a force for greater change and accountability.”

In short, even if it is a no vote, there will be more devolution in broadcasting.

See page 31 for RTS Scotland event report.

21

Video-on-demand

It is successfully poaching broadcasters’ viewers and top writing talent, but can Netflix maintain its momentum? asks Tara Conlan

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or those of us climbing to the top of the food chain, there can be no mercy.

There is but one rule: hunt or be hunted.”

So says Frank Underwood in Netflix’s award-winning adaptation of Michael Dobbs’s political novel, House of Cards, starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright.

It is unlikely the streaming service – or internet TV channel as Netflix describes itself – would adopt such a tagline. But how, in such a short space of time, has it shaken up the content creation landscape to the extent that one major broadcaster reckons the service is its most feared rival for talent?

And what are its plans for the UK? Reports suggest Netflix was prepared to outbid both the BBC and ITV to commission The Crown, an epic 20-part, £100m drama inspired by Peter Morgan’s successful West End play, The Audience, which starred Helen Mirren as the Queen.

Produced by Left Bank, this would be the VoD company’s first original production to be made in the UK. After House of Cards picked up awards at the Golden Globes and Emmys (it is returning for a third season) and with prison show Orange Is the New Black hitting headlines, Netflix is marked firmly on the content creation map and is coming under more scrutiny from interested rivals.

The company describes itself as “the world’s leading internet television network”. Netflix was launched in 1997

by CEO and co-founder Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph, initially as a DVDby-post company.

Profits for the first quarter of 2014 for the California-based company were £32m; it has 48 million subscribers in more than 40 countries.

Its model is simple. Subscribers pay

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Netflix lays down the law Orange Is the New Black monthly – in the UK the cost recently increased by a pound to £6.99 a month – and for that they can watch as many shows as they want (both original and those acquired from other broadcasters) anytime and on almost any screen that is connected to the internet.

There are no adverts, and viewers can pause and resume watching later.

Netflix does not publish ratings – saying it knows how many viewers it has and who is watching what, but does not need to share that information widely as it is not beholden to the traditional advertising model.

According to Richard Broughton, Broadband Director of research company IHS Technology, by the end of 2014 Netflix – which launched in

EUROPE WILL SOON BE NETFLIX’S BIGGEST MARKET IN TERMS OF BROADBAND CONSUMER HOUSEHOLDS

Britain in 2012 – will be on course to have well over 3 million “paying consumers” in the UK. He also says Netflix is on track to break even by the end of the year.

“It has done better than anticipated, bolstered by its local catalogue,” says Broughton.

“In the UK we are starting to see Netflix compete with broadcast TV.” In Denmark the traditional broadcasters suffered an 8% decline in viewership between 2012 and 2013.

Their own research attributes a third of this to the rise of online video.

For Netflix, however, the danger is competing against rivals who offer bundled services, such as Virgin.

Broughton points out that sometimes it is “important to have a converged bundle,” and that, due to Netflix’s pricing structure, some consumers will pay for a month or two to get a big show and then perhaps cancel.

Hence the importance of headlinehitting content to keep viewers hooked. Unfortunately, there are no figures available that prove whether new content attracts new subscribers or keeps existing ones.

However, IHS does have numbers for Netflix’s total costs, which “reached

Netflix

$2bn at the end of last year – excluding marketing costs – of which a large proportion can be expected to be paid-for content.”

The IHS report goes on: “Of content costs, the vast majority (over 90%) are costs for licensing deals, that is, acquired movies and series. Netflix has confirmed that the proportion of original costs can be expected to grow this year.”

But how much is it planning to spend on its “must-see” original content?

This year Netflix announced it would raise $400m which, IHS says, “would, among other things, fund its original production budgets. Given the 11 original shows (of various levels of expense) on its slate for 2014, it would be easy to approach this figure on production spend alone.

“Of those 11 there are five dramas, including House of Cards season 2 and the as-yet-untitled Kessler-Zelman thriller, which represent a big commitment to the most cost-intensive type of production.

“While no single show’s budget has ever been confirmed, it is clear from the production quality and attached talent that they are dealing in cable network-type prices – that

Television www.rts.org.uk July/August 2014

is, several million dollars per episode.”

Interestingly, in the UK Netflix does not see its greatest rival as Amazon Prime Instant Video (formerly LoveFilm). Rather, it is the incumbent pay-TV operators such as Sky, with its on-demand box-sets and latest movies.

As Broughton’s colleague, Principal Analyst for TV Programming Intelligence Tim Westcott, points out: “Netflix might possibly carve out a wider range of US movie rights.”

He compares the streaming service with US companies such as HBO or AMC, and says it has done a good job of “becoming synonymous with the new way of programming”, such as releasing episodes all at once – allowing viewers to ‘binge-view’.”

Westcott also points out that the success of Netflix and its marketing means that, although hit show Breaking Bad was in fact commissioned by US

IN THE UK WE ARE STARTING TO SEE NETFLIX COMPETE WITH BROADCAST TV

cable network AMC, many people, particularly UK viewers, think of it as a Netflix show.

Netflix Vice-President of Communications for Europe Joris Evers says: “We are happy with how people have welcomed the use of Netflix in the UK. “It has become part of everyday conversation. Breaking Bad became a really big phenomenon and we were part of that. We are very pleased with how Netflix’s original series and other exclusive programming has gone.”

Although the company had invested in Lilyhammer with NRK in Norway, House of Cards was, as Evers says, “Our first big series. It was a calculated bet.

We are very happy with its success. It established us much more as a channel.”

He notes that Netflix spends about $3bn on content and acquisitions and around 10% of that is spent on original content – but that is a “growing percentage over time”.

Evers says that in the UK the company will be adding more Netflix series in addition to other exclusive content. Moreover, with launches in six more countries, including Germany, Europe will soon be the company’s biggest market in terms of broadband consumer households – more than in North or South America.

There are also likely to be more co-productions between Netflix and British production companies and global players such as MTV. The search for new content has become more urgent following the ending of a licence with Channel 4; this has led to the removal of older shows such as Peep Show from Netflix so they can only be seen on 4oD. Evers adds: “We are open to a lot of different things, we wouldn’t necessarily rule anything out.”

One senior television executive explains that the benefits Netflix offers – more creative freedom and relatively quick access to a global audience – have made it more attractive to the writers of some of the UK’s biggest dramas.

In other words, British broadcasters are vying with Netflix and Amazon for these writers’ talents as they look for dramas with big stories and plots.

I reel off a list to Evers of some of the most famous writers, from Broadchurch’s Chris Chibnall to Line of Duty’s Jed Mercurio. But, fittingly, the executive demurs along the lines of Francis Urquhart’s most famous catchphrase in the original House of Cards: “You may say that, I couldn’t possibly comment.”

23

International content

Discovery sprints for yellow Discovery’s acquisition of a majority stake in Eurosport will play a central role in the group’s response to fracturing audiences, learns Kate Bulkley

F

or 25 years Eurosport has effectively owned the pan-European sports television market. Its live, uninterrupted coverage of everything from World Cups to Grand Slams has helped it carve out a unique broadcasting niche.

The low-cost and basic production style of Eurosport’s output – like its Tour de France coverage – offers viewers a continuous live feed and audio commentary in many different languages, largely produced from its Paris headquarters.

This basic style can make for compelling viewing; the 2013 Tour de France ratings were up 12.5% on 2012, as 53 million viewers across Europe tuned in during the three-week race.

Indeed, Eurosport’s formula for covering live sports in 2014 doesn’t look that different from when the channel launched in 1989 as a joint venture between the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and the newly launched Sky Television.

The phrase, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, comes to mind. Eurosport achieved record breaking ratings for the 2014 French Open, the best ever on the channel, attracting an average live audience of 1.36 million European viewers, a rise of 17% year on year.

But Eurosport looks set for far-­ reaching change under its new majority owner, Discovery Communications, which first bought into the sports channel in 2012 and increased its stake to 51% in May. For Discovery, the

24

world’s leading factual broadcaster, to acquire control of a pan-European live sports channel – bought from French broadcaster TF1 for a cool €423m – represents a radical break with the past.

Live sport is a very different business to Discovery’s bread and butter of documentaries, science, lifestyle and factual-entertainment shows.

But Discovery insists that Eurosport is the “ultimate in factual TV”. It says that adding the sports broadcaster to its fast-growing international portfolio will not only lead to growth for Eurosport, but also help Discovery broaden its business base.

As audiences increasingly move towards multi-platform and non-linear TV viewing, having a live sports channel could help Discovery remain relevant to audiences, distributors and advertisers.

“This will not be your grandfather’s Eurosport,” says JB Perrette, the new President of Discovery Networks

BIG FRANCHISES AND BIG EVENT PROGRAMMING ARE MORE AND MORE IMPORTANT AND VALUABLE IN AN INCREASINGLY NON-LINEAR WORLD

International, who moved to London this month. “Did we buy it to just retain the status quo? No. “We will look at everything and we are going to apply a dual strategy of strengthening the pan-European channel and also diving deeper into being a bigger player on a local basis.”

Discovery sounds willing to invest significant sums to acquire the rights needed to take Eurosport to the next level.

To gauge the scale of Discovery’s ambitions, look no further than the recent bidding for top-tier Italian football. Eurosport was reportedly a surprise bidder for Serie A against Mediaset, FIC and Sky Italia; Sky and Mediaset won the rights.

Reports suggest that John Malone, a Discovery Executive Board member and a big shareholder in Discovery, is considering buying into Formula 1.

This could have repercussions for Eurosport.

The Eurosport purchase pitches Discovery into the intensifying competition for sports rights. Its rivals include traditional pay-TV platforms, such as BSkyB in the UK and Canal+ in France, as well as ESPN and newer entrants led by 21st Century Fox’s pay-TV broadcaster, Fox International Channels (FIC), and Al-Jazeera, which operates the beIN sports channels.

Discovery had originally planned to increase its stake in Eurosoport from 20% to 51% in December 2014, but it completed the purchase six months ahead of schedule, presumably to

Television www.rts.org.uk July/August 2014

with the much larger Discovery portfolio of channels.

“In a world where audiences are more fragmented, sport is one of the few areas left where watching live is important – and that’s important to advertisers because live TV attracts mass audiences,” says Andrew Johnston, Director of TV at Arena, part of the Havas Global Network.

“In the melee that is the UK ad market, we are all seeking something that stands out, and Eurosport has a specific audience, even though it doesn’t have the scale of some of its rival sports channels from Sky and BT,” adds Johnston.

In fact, Perrette’s boss, Discovery CEO David Zaslav, in a recent interview with The Guardian did not rule out a Euro­ sport bid for English Premier League domestic rights.

But one very big

question mark over rights is Euro­sport’s future relationship with the EBU. Its members have privileged access to, and preferred rates for, EBU-owned sports rights. TF1 is an EBU member, but Discovery is not – at least, not yet.

According to British-based trade publication TV Sports Markets, Eurosport’s future within the EBU may hinge on whether Discovery steers the sports broadcaster into competition with the consortium for sports rights.

Given Discovery’s ambitions, this could put them on a collision course.

“The question about EBU rights is unanswered,” says Tim Westcott, Principal Analyst for TV Programming Intelligence at IHS. “But I can’t believe that Discovery would have gone ahead with an investment in Eurosport of that magnitude without some assurances.”

Perrette says that Discovery looks forward to continuing to work with all its partners, including the EBU. He is also keen to leverage Euro­ sport’s digital footprint. Eurosport.com is already Europe’s number-one online sports destination, with 23 million unique users a month, according to Comscore.

“The online and digital elements of Eurosport are a big part of why we did the deal, because the data and information around sport is critical and we will continue to invest in that,” says Perrette.

He adds: “Big franchises and big event programming are more and more important and valuable in an increasingly non-linear world.

“That is part of the idea behind owning intellectual property, be it through our purchase of All3Media [in a joint bid with Liberty Global] or getting into sports, which is a driver of live viewing and of multi-platform consumption.

“We are positioning ourselves well for the gradual and inevitable shift to an increasingly non-linear consumption world.”

BSkyB

consolidate its competitive position all the sooner.

As chance would have it, the unpredictability of live sport recently gave Discovery an early indication of how the Eurosport bet might play out.

In early June, on the final day of one of tennis’s grand slam events, the French Open, the US broadcaster saw an opportunity.

Spaniard Rafael Nadal was a finalist once again. This invoked a clause in the contract, which stipulated that Spanish viewers must be able to see the match on a free-to-air channel.

Eurosport had the rights for Spain and was already airing the tennis tournament on pay-TV services there.

Discovery’s Spanish office had an idea: why not show the match simultaneously on Discovery’s free-to-air Spanish network, Discovery Max? As Nadal battled it out with Novak Djokovic in Paris, Discovery Max screened its first-ever live sports event and enjoyed its best-ever ratings: 2.1 million people tuned in, rising to 2.6 million during the post-match interview.

The audience share was even more impressive; 15.8% for the match and 21.8% when Nadal was speaking afterwards – a more than seven-fold increase on Max’s average share.

“These numbers are unprecedented for us,” says Perrette. “So right out of the box we are starting to see some of the benefits of bringing Eurosport into the Discovery portfolio.”

There are potentially other benefits, too. Eurosport has always sold its advertising on a pan-European basis, but Discovery plans to plug Eurosport into its local sales offices.

The idea is to ramp up localised versions of Eursoport across its footprint of 54 countries, using the model developed in the UK by British Eurosport.

In Asia, where Eurosport reaches 16 countries, the plan is to combine both distribution and The 2013 Tour de France ad sales efforts

25

What Twitter can do for TV

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s viewer behaviour gets more difficult to predict, broadcasters and producers are increasingly looking at Twitter to enhance viewer engagement. In some quarters, there is a belief that Twitter can cause more people to tune in.

A packed RTS early-evening event, “TV ReTweeted”, reported from the front line of broadcasting and social media.

With Twitter claiming more than 15 million active users in the UK, the night’s chair, journalist Kate Bulkley, quoted research suggesting that 40% of Tweeting during primetime is TV-related.

TV types routinely use the ubiquitous social network to gauge how their shows are faring live on air. They also deploy Twitter to encourage viewers to interact with shows and to discover upcoming shows.

The big question, however, is who occupies the driving seat – Twitter or the TV networks? In other words, does Twitter need TV more than the box needs the social network?

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Social media

Twitter is stoking the conversations around TV shows. But can it also drive ratings?

Steve Clarke sifts the evidence Before the panel discussion got underway, Dan Biddle, Head of Broadcast Partnerships at Twitter UK, gave a 20-minute presentation on what Twitter can do for TV. He set out to demonstrate how, for certain kinds of programmes (almost invariably entertainment juggernauts such as The Voice UK), Twitter not only adds to the viewing experience but in at least one case – MTV UK’s Hottest Summer Superstar vote last year – actually drove audiences to a specific TV promotion and channel portfolio.

Biddle, formerly BBC Vision’s Social

Media Executive, claimed that TV and Twitter share certain similarities.

“Twitter is very much about that rhythm and pulse that already exists in TV,” he said. “It’s about making the most of your audience; Twitter gives you the ability to understand your audience and then respond to it and programme accordingly…

“Beforehand, it’s about teasers, preview clips, getting the talent talking early about the show;… and then, during, it’s about sharing the moment, live games, getting people polling; and afterwards, driving them to video-­ on-demand.”

On-screen hashtags are becoming ubiquitous as Twitter establishes itself more and more as “the campfire around which everyone is telling stories”.

Twitter is powered by conversations and TV sparks conversations, especially around big events such as live sports and entertainment shows, but also pre-recorded campaigns such as Channel 4’s Fish Fight.

“The grammar of TV and Twitter are very similar,” said Biddle. “But there are

on,” observed Biddle – the figures started to grow.

“He called it #glassface and from there it just took off,” recalled Biddle.

“They were all in front of the TV, they were with the show and it was part of the show. There were 10,000 tweets around #glassface.”

Did it lead to a ratings spike? Biddle wasn’t saying. But he did add: “It might only be a [small] percentage of your audience that are tweeting about your show, but there’s a large percentage who are seeing those tweets.”

In terms of Twitter driving audiences to TV, MTV UK’s Hottest Summer Superstar was an outright win-win for both social network and TV station.

In the course of five weeks last summer 166 million tweets were sent as young people voted for the season’s hottest pop act.

One Direction pipped Justin Bieber in the contest; more importantly, audiences to the flagship UK MTV Music channel surged by 55%, according to MTV’s Virginia Monaghan, VP for Music Content and Commissioning.

“We found a perfect integration between online, Twitter and TV,” she said at the RTS event. “And it was the simplicity – such a simple hashtag, #MTVhottest. People love that; there is no point in trying to overcomplicate things.”

Monaghan said that, across MTV’s network of UK music channels, ratings rose by 22% over the five weeks: “Twitter obviously helped in pushing those social-media fans back into watching the channels.”

MTV’s Hottest began life as a UK vote, but went global as the social-media crowd jumped on board.

The evening’s next speaker, Channel 4’s Head of Advertising Research & Development, Martin Greenbank, expressed some scepticism about Twitter’s ability to boost ratings.

He said: “Channel 4 has always been interested in how it reacts to social media. Its audience are young and fairly tech-savvy. It’s a bit like MTV in terms of its attraction to that kind of technology.

“Our approach has been very experimental – with hashtags [we] have made a lot of mistakes as well as a lot

of sensible decisions… Because social media is so new I don’t think there is a set of rules that you can apply to everything you do…

“For producers, it’s very much a case of: you’ve got to start testing and trialling. There’s no point in hoping that what worked last year will work today.”

But do tweets drive viewing, probed Bulkley?

“There’s a dual effect at play,” replied Greenbank.

“I am not taking away anything from MTV’s Hottest – it is interesting because it drives viewers directly back to a programme and to a channel.

“But for a lot of hashtags, you can’t necessarily say that the hashtag has driven people back to viewing.

“In the commercial world I don’t think anyone would suggest that, from an advertising point of view, having a hashtag leads to selling more product.

They don’t think the scale is quite there to do that.”

Greenbank added: “The best Twitter examples out there about TV-related tweets are not just things like #glassface, rather it’s what the audience decides should be the hashtag associated with the content.”

A recent edition of Made In Chelsea provided an illustration: one of the show’s characters, Mark-Francis Vandelli, put his posh foot in it when he said he’d never heard of Nando’s. As far as he was concerned, it was a wine bar. The gaff immediately trended on Twitter.

“The best thing that Twitter brings to TV is audience engagement,” concluded Greenbank.

For the final part of the discussion, two shows that had used Twitter to help define their characteristics were put under the spotlight.

First up was the Channel 4 panel show, Was It Something I Said?, in which viewers are invited to play along via Twitter.

Dan Jones, Creative Director, Digital at the show’s producer, Maverick, outlined how the programme grew from an online commission, Quotables.

The original idea involved getting people at home to participate in the game.

“We didn’t think they would want to play along to the extent of download- �

Dan Biddle certain things that TV shows need to do to work with the Twitter audience.”

One of these is to incentivise users to create a buzz on social media about upcoming content.

In the run-up to the screening of Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary special, The Day of The Doctor, last autumn, audiences were offered a carrot to tweet #SaveTheDay. The prize: extra content that could only be unlocked once a certain number of tweets was recorded.

Communicating directly with talent (many of whom are Twitter addicts) is a way of cementing audience engagement. Biddle recounted what happened during this year’s live finals of The Voice UK, when will.i.am summoned up a Twitterstorm by appearing on the show wearing several pairs of glasses.

His initial tweet, in which he asked viewers to choose the pair he should wear on the show, was retweeted 8,000 times.

When the star carried on live tweeting during the programme – “He knows he’s got a campfire of his own that he can start throwing more logs

Television www.rts.org.uk July/August 2014

Paul Hampartsoumian

WHAT’S VITAL IS THAT THE HASHTAG DOES WHAT IT SAYS ON THE TIN

27

Paul Hampartsoumian

� ing an app such as The Million Pound Drop,” said Jones. “Twitter was the lowest-barrier entry point.”

Viewers were directed to the show’s Twitter account (@somethingIsaid) by host David Mitchell. They were then encouraged to answer questions at the same time as these were put to the TV panellists.

The more answers a viewer gave,

QUESTION & ANSWER Q

At what point is a hashtag you’re trying to engage the audience with too long? Has Twitter done any research on that?

Dan Biddle: I don’t think there’s too long a hashtag. It depends on what you’re trying to get from the audience.

Strictly’s #scd just sort of emerged, but with most other shows you’ll see that people tend to go with the natural length of the show. Unless you prescribe it on the show by putting up the hashtag and say it’s #benefitstreet rather than #benefitsstreet…

What’s vital is that the hashtag does what it says on the tin. If you obfuscate the hashtag with something… With Release the Hounds

A

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the more extra bonus content was unlocked – including behind-thescenes clips and deleted scenes, plus funny pictures and bonus facts and jokes from the show’s contestants.

As for the fundamental question of Twitter’s ability to boost audience levels, Jones said it happens occasionally in TV – but only when the talent has secured a big Twitter following.

(ITV2’s horror game show), they were going to go with #RTH – but if that trends, what does it mean?

I want to know what #releasethe-­ hounds means. What is this show where they are releasing dogs on people? Unless something abbreviates into something easily pronounceable, put the whole title up.

Does talent drive Twitter?

Q A

Iain Coyle: Talent intuitively know the power of Twitter.

They can harness the people who really like them and talk directly to them.

Dave Gorman (star of Dave’s Modern Life Is Goodish) is relentless on Twitter and finds it a really useful way to talk to his audience.

He tweets during the show. And he will reply to every single tweet.

He will stay up until 4:00am or 5:00am answering every last tweet.

He realises the power of that and the loyalty it engenders.

“In terms of us, rather than the audience, trying to create a buzz around a show, only once or twice has it affected ratings,” he said.

“That’s when the Twitter reach of the talent is 10 million and we’ve been able to take the Channel 4 audience from 1.5 million to 2 million.”

Ross Noble Freewheeling, commissioned and shown by Dave, is a travel show in which the comedian uses Twitter as his guide.

Iain Coyle, commissioning editor, entertainment, UK TV, said: “If you’ve ever seen Ross Noble live, he has no act. He literally goes into an audience and starts talking and spirals out of control. Everything he does is improvised. The show is an extension of that.

“Probably no other broadcaster would have taken the gamble on it because there are no rules. He puts a tweet out that says: ‘Where shall I go today?’ And he goes off and films it.

“It is the most honest programme you could ever make… It’s thrown all the rules of television out of the window.”

As social-media usage evolves, Twitter’s relationship with TV is bound to change. The jury is out on the precise correlation between Twitter and audience size, but there is no doubt that Twitter is helping to foster the national conversation about TV. The early-evening event, ‘TV ReTweeted’, was held at The Hospital Club in central London on 27 May. The producers were Kate Bulkley and Dan Jones.

July/August 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

RTS Craft and Design Awards 2013/14

Invitation for entries The awards will be presented on 1 December at the London Hilton on Park Lane Forms and criteria:

www.rts.org.uk/rts-craft-design-awards

Graphic Design n T rails and Packaging nP rogramme Content Sequences n Titles

Production Design n Drama n Entertainment and NonDrama Productions

Lighting and Multicamera n Lighting for Multicamera n Multicamera Work n Multicamera Work – Sport

Make Up Design n Drama nE ntertainment and NonDrama Productions

Effects n Digital n Special n Picture Enhancement

Sound n Drama n Entertainment and Non-Drama Productions

Costume Design n Drama nE ntertainment and Non-Drama Productions

Photography n Drama n Documentary/Factual and Non-Drama Productions

Music n Original Title Music n Original Score

Editing n Drama n Documentary/Factual n Entertainment and Situation Comedy n Sport Awards given at the discretion of the Jury Chairs n Design and Craft Innovation n Judges’ Award n Lifetime Achievement Award

RTS NEWS New awards for Scotland

T

wo hundred people from across the television industry celebrated Scottish production talent at the RTS Scotland Awards in June.

Actor, writer and director Peter Capaldi received the inaugural RTS Scotland Award for Outstanding Contribution to Television.

“Peter has achieved phenomenal success at home and abroad. Original, memorable, engaging and definitive – his contribution to television has been exceptional,” said the RTS Scotland

Awards Committee, which judged the awards.

The Drama award was presented to Slate North and BBC Scotland for Field of Blood, which the judges said “was one of the strongest dramas to emerge from Scotland in recent years”, with the design of the 1980s newsroom so convincing that “you could smell the stale alcohol and discarded Woodbines”.

Piper Alpha: Fire in the Night, from STV Productions and Berriff McGinty Films, picked up the Factual award.

Comedy

News Coverage

JJ

ohn Wilson, OBE, the long-standing Chair of the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC), has died, aged 82.

John was an RTS Fellow who served on the Society’s Council for three years and was the RTS’s representative on the IBC Committee.

He is widely credited with being the architect of the IBC we know today, thanks to his skills, contacts and vision.

John was pivotal in moving the convention from its old base in Brighton in 1990 and became Chair and later President of the new-look, radically transformed organisation.

“John Wilson was always the perfect gentleman, who in his own quiet way worked extremely hard for the benefit of IBC and the broadcast industry in general,” said David McGregor, founder of integrated broadcast systems firm TSL and a long-time IBC attender. “His chairmanship transformed IBC into the well-drilled organisation it is today.”

30

Under John’s guidance, IBC became an independent body, owned by six partner bodies: the IABM, IEEE, IET, RTS, SCTE and SMPTE, with a fulltime staff.

The strong association with these leading television bodies, plus the committee structures for the exhibition and conference, have ensured that the annual event is still run by the industry for the industry, but the dedicated staff permits the organisation to be flexible and responsive to change.

Prior to working for IBC, John was Sales Director at Link Electronics and the founder of displays business Anna Valley, one of the UK’s leading projector-hire companies.

In the 1960s he worked at EMI, among other things designing monitors for ABC Television.

John’s next job was at Prowest, where he held the position of General Manager. EMI took over the company in the late 1970s, which was when he went to Link Electronics.

John Wilson There, he set up a display division that subsequently became Anna Valley Electronics, after Link was liquidated by its owner, Quantel.

John is survived by his wife Jacquie, his daughters and son.

Steve Clarke

IBC

John Wilson OBE

All pictures: Dawn Martin / Gillian Sweeney

Scoop of the Year

The judges said the BBC Two programme was “an outstanding piece of work, demonstrating real ambition and storytelling strengths. It offers a fresh insight to a tragic event that remains the world’s worst offshore oil disaster.”

Limmy’s Show Christmas Special, produced by The Comedy Unit, won the Comedy award.

The News Coverage award was awarded to STV News, for its reports on the Clutha helicopter crash.

Scoop of the Year went to Mark Daly and Murdoch Rogers at BBC Scotland News and Current Affairs for Paedophilia in the Catholic Church. Daly was also awarded Television Journalist of the Year.

The Professional Excel-

lence craft awards went to Carlo D’Alessandro for Camera, John Cobban for Sound and, in the post-production categories, Laura Wilson for Editing and Damien Smith, Mark Breslin and Clyde Lawson for Graphics and Titling.

The awards were held at Oran Mor in Glasgow’s west end and hosted by BBC Scotland news presenter Catriona Shearer and comic Sanjeev Kohli.

“Everybody has been very kind in acknowledging the team effort to stage the awards and I’d like to thank all who helped out and to congratulate all the nominees,” said RTS Scotland Chair James Wilson.

For a full list of nominees and winners: www.rts.org.uk/ winners-first-rts-scotland-­ awards.

SNP lays out plans for Scots TV sector

S

cotland’s Culture Secretary has claimed the broadcasting industry in an independent Scotland could become as big as Ireland’s.

In a major policy statement, Fiona Hyslop MSP, the SNP Government’s Cabinet Secretary for Culture, told an RTS Scotland audience that the current TV and radio workforce in Scotland of 3,200 could almost double to match Ireland’s 6,000.

Hyslop said the broadcasting sector in Scotland lagged behind those in nations of comparable size, such as Ireland and Finland.

“Scotland is a creative and dynamic country and we must be ambitious to do more,” she told the audience of RTS members and industry professionals.

This would be achieved, she proposed, through the

John MacKay and Fiona Hyslop MSP establishment of a Scottish Broadcasting Service (SBS).

Radio and TV production in Scotland currently turns over about £400m.

Hyslop claimed independence would benefit both the industry and viewers.

Television www.rts.org.uk July/August 2014

She came under fire from some members of the independent production sector, who expressed concerns about commissioning levels if BBC Scotland ceased to exist and access to UK commissioners was undermined.

The Culture Secretary countered that SBS would be a key commissioner and that the BBC would continue to commission programmes from Scotland because of the quality of the its talent base.

“We have consistently championed Scotland as a location for international film and TV production, and we work hard to ensure Scotland is widely recognised for its world-class talent, facilities and locations.

Scottish Government ministers are committed to supporting a sustained increase in production,” she said.

The event was held in the TV studios of City of Glasgow College, and chaired by STV’s John MacKay. James Wilson

Scotland’s referendum: the high-stakes game for the BBC – page 20

31

Tough choices for Welsh CEOs

R

TS Wales brought together some of the country’s leading executives – BBC Cymru Wales Director Rhodri Talfan Davies, S4C Chief Executive Ian Jones and ITV Cymru Wales Head of News and Programmes Phil Henfrey – to discuss the state of the TV industry and their future plans.

Wales Centre Chair Tim Hartley, who interviewed the TV bosses at the May event, “Meet the CEOs”, remarked that the session should have been called “Location, location, location”, as all three Welsh broadcasters have announced plans to move headquarters.

S4C is relocating to Carmarthen and ITV to Cardiff Bay; BBC Cymru Wales will announce soon which of three sites it will select in Cardiff city centre and Cardiff Bay. Viewers in Wales watch more TV than any of the

Left to right: Rhodri Talfan Davies, Phil Henfrey, Theresa Wise and Ian Jones home nations and public service broadcasting still plays a big part in Welsh public life.

Henfrey said he recognised ITV’s role and that, alongside the BBC, it “provides genuine plurality in a Welsh context”.

He added that, without viewers, plurality is meaningless and that “delivering eye-

balls” – such as the 200,000 viewers of the peak-time current affairs series, Wales This Week, is one of ITV’s great strengths.

Talfan Davies responded to Ofcom statistics that highlighted how spending on English-language program­ mes for Wales has fallen significantly over recent years.

He also referred to BBC Director-General Tony Hall’s plea on a recent visit to Wales that the BBC should offer a medium for “national self-expression”, despite budget cuts to BBC Wales.

Talfan Davies said Hall had “recognised that the UK is changing and that this is something the BBC will have

■ More than 200 students and teachers attended the RTS North East and the Borders Centre Young Peoples’ Media Festival at the University of Sunderland’s David Puttnam Media Centre.

The festival in May celebrates the work of junior and senior pupils from schools and colleges throughout the region.

The showcase for young film-makers has been running for more than two decades and this year attracted more than 40 entries, involving nearly 180 young people.

Rachel Teate, one of the stars of CBBC show Wolfblood, which was made in the North East, and Chris Jack-

32

son, a BBC Senior Producer and presenter of Inside Out North East and Cumbria, hosted the events.

Benton Park Primary School won the Junior event with The Mask, a piece about bullying.

The senior awards were split into a number of categories. William Howard School in Brampton, Cumbria took the Drama prize for The Lantern. Gone, an individual entry from Katie Stubbs and Emily Bowles, was commended by the jury in the same category.

Kitman, another individual entry from Alex Ayre, Joe Kroese and Adam Young, scooped the Factual prize.

2tone Photography

Festival celebrates young film-makers

“During the past year we have seen media and media studies – in my view, wrongly – downgraded in schools and colleges and this has seen many people now working independently,” said Festival Director Tony Edwards.

William Howard School’s

Just One Scratch and Durham Sixth Form Centre’s We Will Know What It Is were commended in the Factual and Entertainment categories, respectively.

The Professionally Supported category is reserved for entries from courses run

RTS NEWS

The TV of tomorrow

for young people, which benefit from industry support. The winner was Traveller, from Newcastle-based Northern Stars.

“As a university we believe young people should be given every encouragement to grow their talent. Bringing together the students of the future with the professionals of the present was a real privilege,” said Graeme Thompson, Dean of Arts Design and Media at the University of Sunderland.

The festival was sponsored by the University of Sunderland, Gateshead College, Teesside University, Ubisoft Recollections and the RTS. Matthew Bell

D

igital Television Group CEO Richard Lindsay-Davies and Programme Manager Peter Sellar offered RTS London members a glimpse into TV’s future at the end of May, when they discussed the DTG’s newly launched “Future of Innovation in Television Technology” report.

“What did we find out?” asked Sellar. “Surprise, surprise, the TV industry thinks everyone is going to continue watching TV. Even though people are watching more on mobile devices, 98.5% of viewing is still on the main TV.” Sellar added: “Longer term, everything points to the fact that big-screen TV will continue. People will have their second screen, mobile devices and tablets, but, to a greater or lesser extent, it will be an extension of what’s on the main TV screen.”

In September 2012 Culture Minister Ed Vaizey asked the DTG to undertake an industry-wide review of TV innovation.

The resulting taskforce – Future of Innovation in Television Technology – published its report in May, which was split into five areas: consumer trends; the evolution of devices and applications; computing for the creative industries; data management; and future networks and infrastructure.

Formed in 1995, the DTG was originally charged with the task of “making terrestrial digital TV work in the UK”, recalled Lindsay-Davies.

The DTG’s role has expanded as TV has innovated and embraced interactivity and on-demand viewing, and migrated to multiple devices. Lindsay-­ Davies defined its current role: “We are trying to ensure

Television www.rts.org.uk July/August 2014

Samsung

to think very hard about in the run-up to Charter renewal”.

S4C has faced budget cuts of 36% and is now mainly funded through the licence fee. Following concerns expressed by Talfan Davies about a 17% fall in S4C’s ratings, Jones defended the Welsh channel’s record.

“We had to cut our spending on the size of the Barb panel we use, which led to a drop in our ratings,” he said.

Jones added: “Ratings for all the broadcasters have fallen since January and there has been a marked increase in online viewing.”

Looking to the future, he said that S4C would shortly launch a discussion paper on what constitutes “sufficient funding” for the service. The Secretary of State has a duty to provide that level of funding under the Public Bodies Act, Jones explained.

Hywel Wiliam

that there is a stable, reliable but also innovative platform in the UK on which to watch television.”

“The UK still has the most innovative digital television in the world,” he added, but warned: “If we’re not careful, we’ll all be watching Apple TV, which would be a bad thing for UK innovation. We need a vision for ensuring the UK’s place in [future] innovation.”

Innovation, Sellar argued, is crucial if the UK is to maintain its position as one of the world’s leading creative economies. Statistics published by the Government in January revealed that the UK’s creative industries, which include television, film and music, are worth £71.4bn a year.

The sector, Sellar added, “has been growing at three times the rate of the rest of the British economy”.

He addressed the problems faced by the post-production sector and gaming industries, which are having to handle more and more content in new Ultra-HDTV formats such as 4k and 8k.

“This requires enormous processing power. A single post-production house can’t

afford to support this amount of processing power by itself – it costs so much to use and then it still costs when you’re not using it. We need to find a way to support the industry and deal with these peaks and troughs,” he said.

The solution recommended by the “Future of Innovation in Television Technology” report is the creation of the UK Creative Cloud. Based on a successful initiative in Canada, it would provide processing power, connectivity and storage for UK post-production houses.

Fears have been expressed by many in the TV industry that digital terrestrial television is threatened by mobile companies, which want more access to the airwaves to provide 4G services.

The so-called “crunch on spectrum” was examined by the taskforce. Sellar said its objective was to ensure that “the population has access to free-to-air, public-service content at the point of consumption”.

He predicted that in 10 years’ time DTT, cable and satellite-TV would all remain important parts of the television landscape.

Matthew Bell

33

OFF MESSAGE

L

ife doesn’t seem quite the same now that media-land’s very own version of Jarn­ dyce vs Jarndyce – the eight-month marathon that was the trial of Rebekah Brooks is finally over.

But wait, isn’t the full story ripe for a TV adaptation? After all, the National Theatre is currently featuring Billie Piper as a tabloid hack on the make in Great Britain, directed by Nicholas Hytner.

Will TV be far behind?

Remember, Channel 4 satirised the subject in Hacks, penned by Guy Jenkin, a couple of Christmases ago.

Frankly, Hacks wasn’t exactly Jenkin’s finest hour and hardly up there with Outnumbered.

Now that the whole sorry affair has reached a watershed, perhaps it’s time for a heavyweight like Peter Morgan or David Hare to get their teeth into the subject and give viewers something genuinely serious and thought-provoking.

What great character studies Rebekah and Charlie Brooks would make, to say nothing of their powerful backers.

■ Everybody knows discussion concerning the BBC licence fee is guaranteed to get people warm under the collar.

The recent RTS event on BBC funding was no exception. But few could have expected the discussion to take a side turning into the murky waters of internet porn.

Claire Enders, who surprisingly confessed to struggling with the

34

complexity of the modern world, revealed the pornography market is financially challenged.

She said: “This is because so much of it is available for free online, much of it self-made.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” replied fellow panellist Lord Grade, once dubbed, unfairly, Britain’s pornographer in chief by The Daily Mail.

But the last word went to Enders.

“Ninety five per cent of British males have watched porn online. I am just saying it once.”

Off Message couldn’t possibly comment.

■ On a more serious note, one of several peers to attend the RTS All Party Parliamentary Group event was Baroness Floella Benjamin.

During the question and answer session the erstwhile presenter raised the issue of the BBC’s future responsibilities to British-produced children’s content.

“Children are really, really important in this new age we are talking about,” opined the baroness.

Pointing out that only the BBC invests significantly in domestic children’s shows, panellist Lis Howell (who supports phasing out the licence fee) agreed that, regardless of how the BBC is funded in the future, BBC children’s content needs to be protected.

■ It is too early to say with any certainty where two of British TV’s most gifted women executives, Sophie Turner Laing and Lorraine Heggessey, will fetch up next.

Turner Laing leaves Sky this autumn, while Heggessey’s unexpected departure from Boom Pictures

occurred last month.

What is worth noting, however, is that, although broadcasting remains a place where women continue to run important businesses, were Turner Laing and Heggessey to join Dawn Airey in the tech sector, TV would be all the poorer for their absence.

■ New Panorama editor Ceri Thomas is facing a big challenge to get the old warhorse firing on all cylinders again.

One thing looks likely – tighter budgets and a more streamlined operation all round. Thomas has been telling anyone who’ll listen that Panorama’s spending habits need to reflect this age of austerity.

So is that why he was given the job?

■ Tony Hall’s recent action plan for improving diversity at the BBC is, by common consent, long overdue.

Some of the stakeholders, notably Lenny Henry, believe Hall’s measures do not go far enough.

The actor added that the black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) community is suffering from “initiative fatigue”.

This is completely understandable.

But one ongoing initiative was left looking a bit “disconnected” by Hall’s announcement on 20 June. The Creative Diversity Network (whose members include Channel 4, ITV, Pact, Sky – and the BBC) had planned an announcement on non-whites working in TV. The CDN had not been informed in advance by the BBC of Hall’s announcement and was left having to pick up the pieces.

To think all concerned work in the communications industry.

July/August 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

RTS PATRONS RTS Principal Patrons

BBC

RTS International Patrons

Discovery Corporate Services Ltd Liberty Global The Walt Disney Company

Turner Broadcasting System Inc Viacom International Media Networks

RTS Major Patrons

Accenture Channel 5 Deloitte Enders Analysis

EY FremantleMedia 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

RTS Futures Camilla Lewis

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

Andy Batten-Foster 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

ITV

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

IBC Conference Liaison Terry Marsh

Student Television Awards Patrick Younge

Archives Steve Bryant History Don McLean

Television www.rts.org.uk July/August 2014

35

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James Harding Stewart Purvis CBE Director, and Current Affairs, BBC Professor of TV Journalism, University JamesNews Harding Stewart Purvis City CBE James Harding Stewart Director, and Professor Journalism, City University Director, News News and Current Current Affairs, Affairs, BBC BBC Professor of of TV TV Purvis Journalism, City University James Harding Stewart Purvis CBE CBE James Harding Stewart Purvis CBE Director, News and Current Affairs, BBC Professor of TV Journalism, City University Lorraine Heggessey Jim Ryan Director, News and Current Affairs, BBC Professor of TV Journalism, City University James Harding Stewart Purvis CBE Director, News and Current Affairs, BBC Professor of TV Journalism, City University Executive Chair, Boom Pictures Senior Vice President and Chief Lorraine Heggessey Jim Ryan Director, News and Current Affairs, BBC Professor of TV Journalism, City University Strategy Officer, Liberty Global Lorraine Heggessey Jim Executive Boom Senior Vice Executive Chair, Chair, Boom Pictures Pictures SeniorRyan Vice President President and and Chief Chief Lorraine Heggessey Jim Ryan Lorraine Heggessey Jim Ryan Executive Chair, Boom Pictures Senior Vice President and Chief Steve Hewlett Strategy Offi cer, Strategy Offi cer, Liberty Liberty Global Executive Chair, Boom Pictures Senior Vice President andGlobal Chief Lorraine Heggessey Jim Ryan Executive Chair, Boom Pictures Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Offi cer, Liberty Global Writer, & Media Consultant Strategy Officer, Liberty Global SteveBroadcaster Hewlett Keynote Executive Chair, Speakers: Boom Pictures Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, Liberty Global Steve Hewlett Writer, & Writer, Broadcaster Broadcaster & Media Media Consultant Consultant Steve Hewlett Strategy Officer, Liberty Global Steve Hewlett Writer, Broadcaster & The RT Hon Writer, Broadcaster & Media Media Consultant Consultant Kevin Lygo John Ryley Steve Hewlett Writer, Broadcaster & Media Consultant Chase Carey Sajid Javid MP JB Perrette Managing Director, ITV Studios Head of Sky News, BSkyB Kevin Lygo John Ryley Writer, Broadcaster & Media Consultant President and Chief Secretary of State for President, Discovery Kevin John Managing Director, Head Sky News, ManagingLygo Director, ITV ITV Studios Studios Head of of Ryley Sky News, BSkyB BSkyB Kevin Lygo John Ryley OperatingLygo Officer, ITV Studios Culture, Media and Sport Networks International Kevin John Ryley Managing Director, Head of News, James Purnell Kirsty Wark Managing Director, ITV Studios Head of Sky Sky News, BSkyB BSkyB Kevin Lygo John Ryley 21st Century Fox ITV Studios Managing Director, Head of Sky News, BSkyB Director of Strategy & Digital, BBC Broadcaster James Purnell Kirsty Wark Managing Director, ITV Studios Head of Sky News, BSkyB James Purnell Kirsty Wark Director Strategy Broadcaster Director of of Purnell Strategy & & Digital, Digital, BBC BBC Broadcaster James Kirsty Wark James Purnell Kirsty Wark Director of Strategy & Digital, BBC Broadcaster Director of Strategy & Digital, BBC Broadcaster James Purnell Kirsty Wark Director of Strategy & Digital, BBC Broadcaster events@rts.org.uk or via www.rts.org.uk Director of Strategy & Digital, BBC Broadcaster James Harding Stewart Purvis CBE

President, Royal Television Society

Director, News and Current Affairs, BBC

Professor of TV Journalism, City University