RTS Television Magazine February 2016 by RTStelevision

February 2016

Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s TV: Spoilt for choice

Apply now for the 2016 Shiers Trust Award

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

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

Objectives

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

Criteria

Grants will be given to assist in the completion of new or unfinished projects, work or literature specific to the objectives of the Trust. ‘Literature’ is defined as including audio-visual media such as DVDs and websites. The Trustees must be satisfied that the work they are supporting either could not be finished or published without the grant and that, with it, the work will be completed, or, the grant will provide the initial phase of a project that will be c ontinued and completed with other identified funding. Applications will be considered broadly in support of research, development, writing, editing or publication. Grants for research will require that the results of the work will be made known and accessible through appropriate means. In the case of literature, projects must have a real prospect of publication. Applicants must demonstrate that their work will have a clear e xpectation of making a significant contribution to the objectives of the Trust. Applicants will be required to satisfy the Trustees of the soundness of their projects, and identify any grants from other sources. The Trustees will not make commitments to support recurring funding, nor make grants to cover fees or maintenance of students undertaking courses.

George Shiers

George Shiers, a distinguished US television historian, was a long-standing member of the RTS. Before his death in 1983, he and his wife, May, provided for a bequest in their wills. The Shiers Trust grant, now in its 16th year, is normally worth £2,000. Grants will be considered and approved by the Trustees who may, at their discretion, consult appropriate experts to assist their decisions. In assessing priorities, the Trustees will take into account the sums of money available.

Application procedure

Applications are now invited and should be submitted to the Trustees by 31 March 2016 on an official application form (available from the RTS, address below). Applications should set out the nature of the project in not more than 500 words. Supporting documentation may also be included. Details of your experience or qualifications should be provided. Applicants should ensure that their project conforms to all the criteria. Applications should be accompanied by a budget that clearly identifies the sum being requested for a grant and the purposes for which it will be used. Application forms are available from the RTS and should be returned to the same address: lare Colvin, Archivist C Royal Television Society 3 Dorset Rise London EC4Y 8EN clare@rts.org.uk

Previous recipients

10 11

1 2 015: Oral history project by former Granada staffers Stephen Kelly and Judith Jones, with interviews published at: www.granadaland.org 2 2014: Shared between Dr Sheldon Hall, whose Armchair Cinema is a study of feature films on British television, and Marc Scott, whose research focuses on the unofficial development of TV in Australia 3 2013: Barry Fox has built a website (www.tekkiepix.com) to present his collection of historical consumer electronics imagery and documents. The picture shows a publicity still for Philips’s optical videodisc 4 2012: Paul Marshall researched a biography of Alan Archibald Campbell Swinton, the early visionary of all-electronic television 5 2012: Simon Vaughan digitised the 300-page ‘Black Book’, the first manual of the Marconi-EMI electronic television system, installed in 1936 6 2011: David Rose presented an illustrated retrospective of his exceptional career as a ground-breaking television and film producer to a large number of live audiences 7 2008/2010: Steve Arnold digitised back issues of Radio Times to make a searchable online archive of articles and schedules 8 2001: Simon Vaughan, archivist of the Alexandra Palace Television Society, printed a collection of 1,200 photos by the father of television lighting, Desmond Robert Campbell 9 2004: Don McLean compiled an authentically accurate audio two-CD presentation of the beginnings of television in Britain. 10 2005: John Grist wrote a biography of Grace Wyndham Goldie, the first Head of BBC Television News and Current Affairs 11 2009: Ronald Sandell, a key planner of the analogue terrestrial transmitter network, conducted research for a book, Seventy Years Before the Masts 12 2010: John Wyver conducted interviews on the presentation of theatre plays on British television

Journal of The Royal Television Society February 2016 l Volume 53/2

From the CEO The RTS’s 2016 events calendar has got off to a racing start. At our first early-evening event, Gary Davey, Sky’s Managing Director for Content, was “in conversation” with Pat Younge. It provided a fascinating insight into what Davey and his team are achieving at Sky. Many thanks to all those involved in putting together this very classy evening. It was also great to see people out in force to hear an industry heavyweight who is clearly at the top of his game. In January, the RTS jointly hosted a wonderful valedictory dinner with Channel 4 at the House of Lords for the broadcaster’s outgoing Chair, Lord

Burns. Interviewed by Sir Peter Bazalgette, this was another memorable evening. They touched on a number of burning issues, including the future of Channel 4 and the public service broadcasting landscape in the UK. I am thrilled that the Society’s programme for young people has started the year with a bang, too. In January, the RTS Futures Entry Level Training Fair returned for its second year. It was a sell-out success, attended by 400 young workers and students from all over the country. CV workshops were on offer and the RTS is very grateful to the organisations that contributed to making the event so effective: the BBC Academy, BBC Talent Network, Channel 4, Creative Access, Curve Media, Endemol Shine Group, Evolutions, FremantleMedia

Contents 5

Pat Younge’s TV Diary

Are children being spoilt for choice?

In an eventful week, newly independent producer Pat Younge is told he should forget TV and focus on digital

As Amazon, Disney and Netflix all compete online for young viewers, Tara Conlan asks if broadcasters can keep up

9 10

Our Friend in the North

Hype vs hard data

Graeme Thompson creates a new TV format, inspired by a Sunderland showcase for new inventors

Breaking the mould

Will Ade Rawcliffe play hardball to bring about long-overdue change at Channel 4 and its suppliers, wonders Andrew Billen

Are claims of a seismic shift in UK online viewing and the soaring popularity of Netflix accurate? Torin Douglas dissects the figures

UK, Guardian Edinburgh International TV Festival, ITN, ITV Studios, Latimer Group, London360, London Live, Mama Youth Project, Pinewood Studios, RDF Group, Roundhouse (Bloomberg Broadcast Programme), Sara Putt Associates, Viacom and Warner Bros Television Production UK. Finally, I’d like to extend a warm welcome to two new RTS Trustees – Jane Turton, CEO of All3Media, and Rob Woodward, CEO of STV Group.

Theresa Wise

16 20

The pay-TV guru returns

Mr Entertainment shifts into top gear

TV’s next big thing?

Can Perfect Curve save the BBC?

Veteran Murdoch lieutenant Gary Davey explains why Sky Television is committed to content, innovation and service. Steve Clarke takes notes

‘Don’t destroy a success story’

Outgoing C4 Chair Lord Burns explains why privatising the broadcaster would be bad for Britain. Steve Clarke reports

Maggie Brown meets the recently promoted Mark Linsey, who must help steer BBC Television through the Charter chicane

VR is concentrating minds in Hollywood and beyond. But what is its significance for broadcasting? David Wood investigates

As WIA prepares for season 3, the show’s creator needs to tread carefully, hears Matthew Bell Cover picture: Channel 4

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

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

Television www.rts.org.uk February 2016

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

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

Printing ISSN 0308-454X Printer: FE Burman, 20 Crimscott St, London, SE1 5TP

Legal notice © Royal Television Society 2016. The views expressed in Television are not necessarily those of the RTS. Registered Charity 313 728

RTS NEWS National events RTS AWARDS Wednesday 17 February 2016

RTS Television Journalism Awards 2016 Venue: The London Hilton, Park Lane, London W1K 1BE ■ Jamie O’Neill 020 7822 2821 ■ jamie@rts.org.uk RTS FUTURES Tuesday 23 February

Introduction to TV development Tickets: £10.00; 6:30pm for 6:45pm start Venue: Hallam Conference Centre, 44 Hallam St, London W1W 6JJ ■ Book online at www.rts.org.uk RTS AWARDS Thursday 3 March

RTS Programme Awards 2016 nominations breakfast Venue: The Hospital Club, 24 Endell Street, London WC2H 9HQ RTS EARLY EVENING EVENT Monday 14 March

Beyond YouTube: what are the new online channels?

RTS EARLY EVENING EVENT Thursday 14 April

Poldark: anatomy of a hit Panellists: TBC Venue: TBC JOINT PUBLIC LECTURE Wednesday 11 May

RTS/IET Joint Public Lecture with Sir Paul Nurse The former President of the Royal Society and Chief Executive and Director of the Francis Crick Institute was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine with Leland Hartwell and Tim Hunt. 6:30pm for 7:00pm Venue: British Museum, London WC1B 3DG RTS AWARDS Friday 3 June

RTS Student Television Awards 2016 Venue: BFI Southbank, London SE1 8XT

Local events BRISTOL Friday 4 March

Wednesday 4 May

Thursday 24 March

6:30pm for 7:00pm Venue: ITV London Studios, Upper Ground, London SE1 9LT ■ Daniel Cherowbrier ■ daniel@cherowbrier.co.uk

8:00pm Venue: AR4, RTÉ, Dublin 4 ■ Charles Byrne (353) 87251 3092 ■ byrnecd@iol.ie

Television Lighting

Student Television Awards

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

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

NORTH EAST & THE BORDER Wednesday 24 February

SOUTHERN Friday 4 March

The last Wednesday of the month, for anyone working in TV, film, computer games or digital production. 6:00pm onwards. Future dates: ■ 30 March ■ 27 April ■ 25 May Venue: Tyneside Bar Café, Tyneside Cinema, 10 Pilgrim St, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 6QG Saturday 27 February

Venue: Guildhall, The Broadway, Winchester SO23 9GH ■ Gordon Cooper ■ gordonjcooper@gmail.com

Networking evenings

Annual Awards/Student Awards

Annual Awards/Student Awards Venue: Newcastle Gateshead Hilton NE8 2AR ■ Jill Graham ■ jill.graham@blueyonder.co.uk

Annual Awards

Panellists: Julia Barry, Editorial Director, Online Video, Sky; Richard Broughton, Research Director, Ampere Analysis; Dan’l Hewitt, Managing Director UK, Maker Studios; Ashley Mackenzie, CEO, Rightster; and Tom Thirlwall, CEO, Bigballs Media. Chair: Kate Bulkley, media commentator. 6:30pm for 6:45pm start Venue: The Hospital Club, 24 Endell Street, London WC2H 9HQ ■ Book online at www.rts.org.uk

Venue: Old Vic, King St, Bristol BS1 4ED ■ Belinda Biggam ■ belindabiggam@hotmail.com

Venue: Compass Rooms, Lowry Theatre, Salford Quays M50 3AZ Thursday 17 March

RTS AWARDS Tuesday 22 March

Members visit to BBC R&D

RTS Programme Awards 2016 Venue: Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane, London W1K 7TN ■ Callum Stott 020 7822 2822 ■ callum@rts.org.uk

EAST ANGLIA ■ Contact TBC LONDON Wednesday 24 February

From 6:00pm to view demos. Presentations start 7:00pm Venue: BBC R&D, Centre House, Wood Lane, London W12 7SB Wednesday 9 March

An evening with Kirsty Wark

RTS Anthony H Wilson lecture with Professor Brian Cox Venue: TBC Wednesday 27 April

Crime tour

Venue: Meet at Manchester Town Hall, Albert Square, Manchester M60 2LA ■ Rachel Pinkney 07966 230639 ■ rachelpinkney@yahoo.co.uk NORTHERN IRELAND ■ John Mitchell ■ mitch.mvbroadcast@btinternet.com

Speciality cameras

REPUBLIC OF IRELAND Tuesday 1 March

6:30pm for 7:00pm Venue: ITV London Studios, Upper Ground, London SE1 9LT

8:00pm Venue: AR4, RTÉ, Dublin 4

AGM

THAMES VALLEY Wednesday 17 February

Small cameras for sports 6:30pm for 7:00pm Venue: Pincents Manor, Calcot, Reading RG31 4UQ Thursday 17 March

Ultra-HDTV backwards compatibility – place your bets, please

NORTH WEST Monday 7 March

DEVON & CORNWALL ■ Kingsley Marshall ■ Kingsley.Marshall@falmouth. co.uk

Your guide to upcoming national and regional events

A joint event with SMPTE, introduced by Mark Horton, who is responsible for Ericsson’s encoding portfolio. 6:15 pm Venue: Pincents Manor, Calcot, Reading RG31 4UQ Wednesday 11 May

Annual NAB Review

Venue: Pincents Manor, Calcot, Reading RG31 4UQ ■ Penny Westlake ■ info@rtstvc.org.uk WALES Monday 29 February

Behind the scenes at Real SFX 6:30pm-8:00pm Venue: Real SFX, Unit 9A, Freemans Park, Penarth Road, Cardiff CF11 8EQ ■ Hywel Wiliam 07980 007841 ■ hywel@aim.uk.com YORKSHIRE ■ Lisa Holdsworth 07790 145280 ■ lisa@allonewordproductions. co.uk

February 2016 www.rts.org.uk Television

TV diary In an eventful week, newly independent producer Pat Younge is told he should forget TV and focus on digital

tart the week reviewing Sugar Films’ cash flow and trying to get my head around a new accounting software system. Any of my former CFOs will know that I wasn’t put on planet Earth to do this, but I plough on gamely. One of the things I discover is that the BBC pitch system doesn’t tell you when a commissioner has been made redundant. So an idea that I thought must be getting lots of consideration has actually been languishing, lonely and unread, in a dead Dropbox on the BBC server. Note to self – don’t take it personally. ■ Lunch with Kim Shillinglaw. It had been hastily cancelled and rearranged the previous Friday, when she was Controller of BBC Two, and then yesterday (Monday) when it was announced that Kim was leaving the BBC. Turns out our cancelled appointment was on the day she found out that she didn’t have the top job and took redundancy. I have to say, she didn’t appear at all crestfallen. Quite the opposite, in fact, almost like a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Irritatingly, she remained very tightlipped about the detailed sequence of events. Biggest surprise was how they managed to keep it all secret inside

Television www.rts.org.uk February 2016

the BBC until the announcement. Which is how it should be, and maybe a sign that some things at the BBC have changed for the better. However, shame on the BBC Trust for trying to play it as senior headcount reduction and cost saving, as it likely delivers neither. ■ Kim’s news came on the back of a series of other departures and changes: Fincham, Lygo, Hincks, Bellamy, Hadlow, Bedell and with Cohen and Yentob not so recently leaving the stage as well. It is a lot of good people and collective creative brainpower leaving the system. When the non-competes and gardening leave are over, it will be interesting to see where they emerge, especially the balance of those going into production, broadcast and digital roles. ■ Been playing catch-up with the American series Empire, the story of a record label led by a dysfunctional (to put it mildly) black family. Its storylines and story mechanics are definitely more Dynasty than War and Peace, but it’s an enjoyable romp. One thing that struck me was how weird it was to see black people kissing black people on TV, which I know does happen in the real world, even if I rarely see it on UK television.

Wonder if the Creative Diversity Network’s new Project Diamond monitoring scheme will capture authenticity as well as numbers? ■ End the week with a digital insight. Our start-up, Sugar Films, has been doing the rounds, seeking investment. Someone told me that you have to kiss lots of frogs to find a prince, and I do feel that every frog and toad with an investment account has now been given plenty of love by the Sugar team. For me, one of the really interesting things is that, with just one or two notable exceptions, very little time gets spent discussing our digital plans and perspective. I guess TV can be modelled, and digital doesn’t fit that model, but it does feel quite 20th century. Anyway, just had coffee with a digital pioneer who said we’d got it all wrong. “TV is a sunset industry,” he opined, “so you should have put your digital offering out front and you could have secured three times as much investment because no investor can afford to miss the next big thing in digital.” Not sure if he’s a genius or totally bonkers, but it did provide food for thought for the weekend. Next week could be another interesting week. Pat Younge is Managing Director of Sugar Films.

Are our kids being spoilt for choice? Frozen

Children’s content

As Amazon, Disney and Netflix all compete online for young viewers, Tara Conlan asks if broadcasters can keep up

o many adults, the choice of viewing options for children is as incomprehensible as the whistling language of The Clangers. There is now a myriad of platforms, apps and subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) services offering access to children’s shows. They include Amazon, Netflix, Freeview Play, YouView and Sky Go. Children can watch their favourite CBBC shows, such as The Next Step, via the BBC iPlayer – or catch up with Nickelodeon brands, such as SpongeBob SquarePants, on the app Nick Play. Thanks largely to the rise of tablets, kids have become an important target for the newer entrants to the content market, such as Amazon and Netflix. Children may not hold the purse strings, but they do know how to pull on their parents’ heartstrings to make them spend money. And record amounts are being ploughed into content aimed at youngsters. According to IHS Technologies Senior Home Entertainment Analyst Jonathan Broughton, in 2014, broadcasters “spent more on kids’ content than ever before, with European broadcasters alone investing just under $1bn”.

Amazon and Netflix both have large catalogues of children’s shows. They began investing in their own content a couple of year ago. Their programmes include Tumble Leaf (Amazon) and the forthcoming Lego Bionicle: The Journey To One and Lego Friends: The Power of Friendship (Netflix). IHS figures show that, while Netflix’s total content spend has ballooned, the number of hours of original content as a proportion of its kids catalogue across all territories rose only slightly from 26% in 2013 to 28% the following year. And it has since fallen back to 19%, due largely to a still bigger increase in the amount of original drama and comedy in Netflix’s catalogue. Amazon’s content spend has also rocketed but the proportion of hours of its original children’s programming over the same three years (2013-15) increased from 14% to 37% before falling back to 28% last year. Broughton says both companies have moved into original production because they have found it “more cost-efficient to produce their own content. That way, they don’t have to make deals for every single market. “They don’t need global rights deals for anything they produce themselves.

CREATING AN ENVIRONMENT THAT IS TRUSTED AND SAFE IS REALLY IMPORTANT TO US They’ve got the rights as standard.” Now that Netflix has an estimated 75 million subscribers worldwide, it has the financial heft to license big brands such as the hit CBBC reboot of Danger Mouse – the online company holds all rights outside the UK. The BBC, however, remains the biggest game in town when it comes to UK public-service funding for children’s content. The corporation accounts for 97% (£84m) of the investment in shows for younger viewers in the UK, according to Ofcom. Its range of shows is unique. They encompass the acclaimed My Life documentary series, Absolute Genius with Dick and Dom, preschool favourite Mr Tumble and CBBC drama The Dumping Ground. Overall, the BBC is spending less than it used to. But then, so, too, are ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. Their expenditure on children’s fell by a massive 74% between 2008 and 2014, to a current combined total of £3m. One of the few positives is that Channel 5’s new owner, Viacom, wants to reinvigorate the channel’s muchloved Milkshake! brand. Channel 5 Director of Digital Media and Commercial Development James Tatam says: “Our current focus for driving digital

Television www.rts.org.uk February 2016

growth in the children’s sector has been influenced by the huge success Milk shake! has enjoyed on connected-TV platforms over the past 12 months.” Milkshake! is an “essential part” of the widely available Demand 5, says Tatam, adding: “Our children’s content has enjoyed growth of 25%, year on year.” Interestingly, on YouView, “where Milkshake! has a standalone presence via its own app… we’ve seen our audience rise by two-thirds during the past year, surpassing all of our growth targets and enabling us to leapfrog our competitors.” Tatam continues: “We’ve seen similar growth for Milkshake! within Demand 5 on platforms such as Amazon Fire TV, Freeview Play and Sony TV. “While developing a mobile proposition remains an important strand of our digital growth strategy, we’re also keen to build on our success in delivering a great VoD experience to the TV screen.” One of Milkshake!’s key properties is the popular porcine entertainer, Peppa Pig, also seen on Channel 5 stablemate Nick Jr, Nickelodeon’s preschool channel. Towards the end of last year, Nick Jr scored its highest-ever daily and weekly share of viewing by

BBC

Disney

My Life

children aged 4-15, according to Viacom. Which is good news for Alison Bakunowich. She recently took over as UK General Manager and has responsibility for Nickelodeon’s network of seven channels and their associated multi-platform properties. Among her brands are Dora the Explorer and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Bakunowich points out that Sky and Virgin, the platforms that carry her network, “have enormous reach, second to none and are evolving and developing their products at an amazing rate. Sky has Sky Go and Virgin has launched our My Nick Jr app. Families can actually curate their own Nick Jr channel.” Nickelodeon has relaunched its Nick app as new mobile streaming service Nick Play. And, in January, it launched its first original online animation, Tinker shrimp & Dutch, voiced by Star Wars actor John Boyega. Bakunowich explains: “Everyone wants what they want when they want it and where they want to watch it. Our strategy is to serve them the best way possible – using our affiliate partners or Netflix and iTunes, and also our website, plus additional channels such as YouTube, to make sure that our content is wherever they are.” Keeping up with technology is key to retaining young viewers since gaming and coding are popular with youngsters. Nickelodeon, for example, launched a coding app in the UK so that “kids can code SpongeBob to make him do things”, says Bakunowich. “This was brilliant and agenda-setting. In the UK, it was the number-one game on our website.” Broughton points out that parents warm to SVoD services such as Netflix because they are advert-free. But the “major advantage a bespoke kids service has over a generic one, such as Netflix or Amazon, is that it is an inherently safe environment for children. Any brand wants to be trusted and well regarded. But when you are a kids’ brand, a safe environment is essential.” Another trusted traditional children’s brand, Disney, is also evolving. In November, it launched DisneyLife, its first SVoD service. The studio is mindful that British parents are prepared to pay more for screen entertainment than their counterparts in the US and Europe, according to Broughton. The new streaming service offers �

Netflix

Lego Bionicle: The Journey To the One � Disney content for young and old and provides different options depending on the device (for example, laptop or tablet) it is viewed on. Subscribers can create up to six profiles per membership contract, to use across 10 different devices. Broughton applauds the research that went into tailoring the experience for different users. He says that it is “the first time that Disney has properly got control over the whole experience of their audience”. DisneyLife EMEA General Manager Paul Brown says the reaction, “so far [has] been great. The ease of use, design and the wide range of films, books, music and games available on DisneyLife have all been received really well. “We are learning all the time and constantly adding further exciting films, series, books and music.” As we know from Christmas Day’s Gogglesprogs on Channel 4, there are certain films, such as Frozen, that kids watch again and again and again. Gogglesprogs featured children’s responses to different kinds of TV during 2015. One of the highlights was the sheer joy of watching a little girl’s excitement as Frozen came on. Brown explains that DisneyLife is “the only service that allows UK families and Disney fans to instantly stream or temporarily download” its huge digital library of films, books, songs and TV episodes. There are also extras, such as “curated character worlds” and deleted scenes.

“Families and Disney fans are at the centre of everything we do,” added Brown. “Creating an environment that is trusted and safe is really important to us. “During the development of DisneyLife we carried out a lot of in-depth research and looked at what parents wanted from a service like this. For example, we designed DisneyLife with built-in controls that allow parents to personalise their children’s use of the service. Their profiles can have different time limits for weekdays and weekends.” Despite the big bucks being invested by the newer players, Broughton thinks that, ultimately, the older players are still winning. “The vast majority of viewing is still live and, of course, there’s also the time-shifted viewing,” he says. “So, when we talk about viewing of TV that is not broadcast, it’s a very small proportion. “Also, children’s viewing is quite regulated. There’ll be set times to watch, say on Saturday or Sunday mornings, so it’s quite easy for broadcasters to maintain that kids’ window in the morning. “I don’t think they’re overly threatened by the fact that children are increasingly using tablets in primetime, because they weren’t particularly scheduling to them anyway. “I think a lot of this is quite additive. Even though this looks disruptive on the surface, it’s not a huge threat to broadcast content.”

BRITISH PARENTS ARE PREPARED TO PAY MORE FOR SCREEN ENTERTAINMENT THAN THEIR COUNTERPARTS IN THE US AND EUROPE

February 2016 www.rts.org.uk Television

OUR FRIEND IN THE

NORTH

Television www.rts.org.uk February 2016

Graeme Thompson creates a new TV format, inspired by a Sunderland showcase for new inventors

Paul Hampartsoumian

very now and again, a show comes along to define the times. The Likely Lads examined the tensions resulting from a new generation of educated, working-class people striving for middle-class lifestyles in a changing North East landscape. Now comes a programme to cele brate the role of artists and designers in a world increasingly obsessed with science and engineering. Inventors! is a new, interactive TV format, where viewers’ weird and wonderful inventions are prototyped by a telegenic young inventor working with top technologists. Of course, it hasn’t been broadcast yet. Or, indeed, commissioned. That’s because it only occurred to me a few days ago, when I visited an event in Sunderland that brought together more than 400 inventors of all ages. We were treated to the work of a primary school pupil who had created a pair of glasses that would let him see what was happening behind his back. Then, there was the Liftolator, a house built to withstand bombs and pestilence in the event of a world war, and a device to shelter ladybirds during rainstorms. A pop-up gallery was created in the centre of Sunderland to showcase these and other wonders orchestrated by inventor and artist Dominic Wilcox. He has been working with pioneering arts organisation The Cultural Spring to manufacture ideas dreamed up by imaginative members of the public. Among the hundreds of visitors to the exhibition was Sir Peter Bazalgette. He was fascinated by the Liftolator, the brainchild of 11-year-old Charlotte Scott. Charlotte’s concept of a home

and a pre-planted vegetable garden on a hydraulic platform, inside a protective glass dome, was modelled by Erin Dickson at FabLab Sunderland, a thrilling fusion of arts, design, engineering and science. It’s a theme that the five North East universities will be exploring as part of a new £3m research project called the North East Fuse. At a time when many schools are cutting their arts, crafts and performance provision in order to fall in line with league-table criteria and the focus on the new English Baccalaureate, Bazalgette is passionate about the importance of creativity in science, technology and engineering. We met dozens of youngsters busying themselves drawing and

modelling new inventions. These included a boy creating a tropical, palm-tree-lined island in the mouth of the River Wear as a tourist destination. And it got me thinking. The Inventors! format is not simply great television. It’s also topical. Right now, the creative industries are Britain’s boom sector, expanding at a rate of 9% a year – far faster than the wider UK economy. Music, film, TV, visual effects, computer games, crafts and publishing are worth more than £84bn to the country. And yet the latest statistics from the DCMS don’t seem to have registered with their Whitehall neighbours, the Department for Education – which has been famously dismissive of the arts and humanities. Sparing the blushes of the RTS, the charity this month launched its third year of bursaries to encourage students to apply for university courses in TV and related media. Speaking of talent, if I were pitching my programme idea, I would point out that our star inventor, Wilcox, has already done some TV. He chalked up a memorable appearance on the Late Show in the US. His stained-glass, driverless car of the future has been packing them in at the National Glass Centre in his home city of Sunderland. And he can easily find his way to any television studio, because he’s invented a rather stylish pair of brogues with in-built GPS. So there you have it: Inventors!, a TV phenomenon. Commissioners, please form an orderly queue. Graeme Thompson is Chair of the RTS Education Committee and Dean of Arts, Design and Media at the University of Sunderland.

Channel 4

Breaking the mould The Billen profile

Will Ade Rawcliffe play hardball to bring about long-overdue change at Channel 4 and its suppliers, wonders Andrew Billen

ack in the late 1990s, Ade Rawcliffe was working on Ainsley Harriott’s show, Party of a Lifetime. They were in Teesside, filming with children from a housing estate. They all had a question: was Rawcliffe Harriott’s wife or was she his “girlfriend”? Ade (pronounced Addy) thinks that they were not used to seeing two black people in the same place at once. They might, it occurs to me, have been equally puzzled by the spectacle of two black people working on the same television programme. Rawcliffe is now Channel 4’s Creative Diversity Manager, at the vanguard of challenging such assumptions about and within the industry. So how much has changed since then, I ask her. “I would say we are definitely out of the blocks,” the former pentathlon champion replies. “We’re improving. Not there yet, is what I would say.” We meet the week after a successful couple of days for Rawcliffe. At a meeting in Parliament to celebrate the

first anniversary of Channel 4’s 360° Diversity Charter, actor Idris Elba hit the evening news for his speech. In it, he described how he left for the US because he felt he was about to hit the glass ceiling for black actors in Britain. The next day, at a diversity “festival” at Channel 4, research was presented on social mobility. Writer and actor Jessica Hynes lambasted television’s “flabby mainstream” and Baroness (Oona) King, Channel 4’s Head of Diversity, revealed the Communication Research Group’s finding that there were five sexist “incidents” an hour on mainstream, prime-time TV. But, I protest, isn’t that just a reflection of our culture, of the jokes we currently find funny, the attitudes ordinary people have? Should we really be doing anything about it? “I think the thing about it is that television operates in a unique space, in that it is beamed into everyone’s homes, every night of the week. I think that, with this, comes an extra responsibility about how we shape opinions.” At the conference, Grayson Perry spoke of white, middle-class men being

saddled with a “rucksack of privilege”. As one of them (privately educated and middle aged), I wish I could shed my rucksack for this interview with the formidable Rawcliffe, a black Nigerian woman adopted by white, working- class parents in Macclesfield. But if I spend the next hour checking my privilege, we shall get nowhere. I challenge Rawcliffe when I can. First, I want to know what the main argument is for encouraging, if not quite enforcing, diversity. The alternative is only to let creative people work with whomever they want. “For me, the strongest pull for diversity is the creative argument,” says Rawcliffe. “I’m all about creative people, but I think those creative people should be from a diverse range of backgrounds, because I think talent is evenly distributed across the nation. And I think our job is to make sure that the opportunities are the same.” So, she explains, you get Shane Meadows (white, working-class, Midlands) writing This Is England and you get Michaela Coel (black, Ghanaian, East London) writing Chewing Gum

Television www.rts.org.uk February 2016

– and you could have an even wider range of stories. At their best, they feel universal, as with the documentary Muslim Drag Queens, which came down to a son’s relationship with his mother. The question, it seems to me, is not how far you open the doors to these new stories but how prescriptive you are about the old ones. Last year, for instance, Rawcliffe recruited the former Big Brother producer Ramy El-Bergamy to help increase on-screen minority representation and sent him off to help Studio Lambert find a disabled sofadweller for Gogglebox. What happens if he finds a disabled regular who is a bit racist? It strikes me that this campaign is not really to provide a perfect reflection of Britain but a perfected one. “It’s a really good question,” she says. “We’d want someone disabled who could give an authentic view of their perspective but… I wouldn’t want some one racist on Gogglebox, if I am honest.” We then get on to the tricky problem of casting and editorial freedom. This is an issue that Channel 4’s own Chief �

Channel 4

Chewing Gum

WE’RE NOT A POLICE FORCE.… WHAT WE’RE ABOUT IS INCREASING THE RANGE OF VOICES THAT GET THE OPPORTUNITY TO TELL THEIR TALES

Channel 4

Rawcliffe’s resumé

Ade Rawcliffe, Creative Diversity Manager, Channel 4 Married To Jeremy Kemball, teacher, Westminster School; two sons Lives Pimlico, London Born 27 December 1972 Parents Peter Rawcliffe, plasterer; Elaine Rawcliffe, hairdresser Brought up Macclesfield Education All Hallows Catholic College, Macclesfield; Loughborough University (communications studies) First jobs Runner, Stars in Their Eyes; researcher, Ready Steady Cook; producer, Big Brother, Right To Reply, A Question of Sport, 2004 Athens Olympics 2006 Diversity and Talent Manager, Channel 4 2009 Works with Oona King, overseeing Channel 4’s chairmanship of the Creative Diversity Network 2011 Creative Diversity Manager, reporting to Stuart Cosgrove 2014 Commissioning Editor, Features 2015 Creative Diversity Manager. Appoints two diversity executives, one for on-screen and one for offscreen diversity Commissions Ainsley Harriott’s Street Food, Britain’s Youngest Carers, Don’t Blame Facebook Source of pride Adam Pearson, who is facially disfigured, being appointed a reporter on Tricks of the Restaurant Trade What she’s watching Deutsch land 83, Downton Abbey, Empire What her dad says ‘You work all these hours and there is still nothing on the telly’

� Creative Officer, Jay Hunt, fell foul of in her previous job, when Miriam O’Reilly won an age discrimination case against the BBC for dropping her from Countryfile. Rawcliffe may be pleased that Strictly Come Dancing has broken the cliché of an older male presenter being paired with a younger female one, but is she really suggesting that on-screen recruitment should be conducted as blind as an early round of The Voice? “It’s a tricky question because, clearly, television is a visual medium. I understand that. But I also think that, sometimes, we get into a situation where we underestimate what the viewer wants. “Sometimes, what the viewer really wants is expertise at handling a situation as much as they want to look at someone who is attractive. I think it probably depends on the genre of the programme.” The real problem is probably the pool of talent from which to fish. She certainly believes that the biggest change needs to come in recruitment. Channel 4 has pledged that a fifth of its staff will be BAME (black, Asian or minority ethnic) by 2020. It also intends the proportion with disabilities to triple to 6%, and for 6% of staff to be LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered), up from 2.4%. Internally, the “Diamond” monitoring survey is also working on finding how many of its staff are from poor backgrounds. I wonder how many in this building were on free school meals growing up. None? “It wasn’t zero,” she says, but she does not think the figures are being made public. She offers that she went to a state school herself but prefers not to say what type of school her two sons, 13 and 9, attend. Meanwhile, in the wider industry, too many jobs are not advertised: familiar faces are hired at the last minute. Oxbridge continues to exert its magnetism; unpaid work experience goes to chums’ kids. She is encouraging production companies to meet talent in calmer moments, and she holds pop-up career days. Channel 4 has launched an apprenticeships scheme in Glasgow and has invested in “BAME” companies – defined as ones whose owners are BAME. It is, she says, a five-year project. What, however, if Channel 4 were privatised before 2020 and a new owner was less sympathetic to the cause?

She believes the remit would stay intact but admits: “My own personal view is that it would be difficult to satisfy the remit if we were a commercial organisation. That would be my concern about it.” Some might say there was enough to concern a creative diversity officer about the present Channel 4. It is not only the home of the Paralympics but of Big Fat Gypsy Weddings and Benefits Street. In each case, she says, she likes the programmes and refuses to criticise the titles. That only provokes the question of whether there is a conflict between her as a campaigner and as an employee of a TV channel looking for market share. She assures me that she would let any discomfort she felt about a project be known. “What we’re not, is a police force – and that’s really important because the creative process needs to happen. What I’m about is increasing the range of voices that get the opportunity to tell their tales. “I really don’t think that I should be a police force saying, ‘You can’t say this, you can’t say that.’ I don’t think that’s the role of me and my team.” This sensible, truly liberal stance comes from a woman who was called a “Paki” by other children as she was growing up in Macclesfield, as much an indication of their insularity as of their racism. “It is not even the right continent. So when you get into that, it’s sort of ludicrous.” Did it hurt her? “I found it sort of tiring by the end, but I think that being in a community where I was one of not very many also had advantages for me. I think that the teachers probably looked after me quite well. “I think that I had opportunities. There’s negatives, but positives as well that probably, in the end, make it a neutral experience.” Did it make her stronger? “It probably did make me stronger, but I think that when you speak to anybody about their life, we’ve all had adversities that have made us stronger.” In fact, she describes her childhood as very happy. She was adopted when tiny by Peter, a plasterer, and Elaine, a hairdresser. Later, two biological daughters joined the family. It was a racially homogeneous town. People would ask her if she had ever seen snow before. “Every winter,” she would reply, for this was Cheshire. Her self-confidence was boosted by not

Television www.rts.org.uk February 2016

Curtis Brown/Channel 4

Muslim Drag Queens

only being good academically but also excellent at sport. For 13 years, Peter would take her training 22 miles away in Stoke-onTrent. At 15, she represented England and won her first national pentathlon championship. She was very good, but not quite good enough to make athletics her profession. It was in 1994, while studying communications at Loughborough, a sporty university, that she was approached on a night out in Manchester to be on a game show. She notes that the glamorous blonde she was with was not asked. “I think that, even then, people were aware that we needed to get more diverse people on television,” Rawcliffe muses. The show was Sabotage, shown on Channel 4, and she ended up on three editions. “I thought, ‘Do people really get paid for this?’ It was amazing. My dad would come home dirty because he’d been plastering all day.” Sabotage was made in Manchester by Action Time, one of 30 companies she next wrote to for work experience and the only one that offered it. She worked on Mum’s the Word and was hired as a runner on Stars in Their Eyes. She followed one of its researchers to work in London for Bazal on Ready Steady Cook. Intending to stay for three months, she never left. She worked on Big Breakfast and Right To Reply as a producer-director, and then at the BBC for four years, producing A Question of Sport and working on the Athens Olympics. From there, she arrived at Channel 4 to work in talent and diversity as Media Project Manager. Has she ever personally experienced discrimination in the industry? “I wouldn’t say I have experienced racism in my career in television, but I would say that people have made assumptions because I am a black woman. I once arrived at an interview for a job with a major broadcaster. I was asked by the receptionist if I was there for the debate on racism. I got the job!” If Rawcliffe’s career is still exceptional for a black woman from a working-class background, it is made no less so by the fact that her two sisters have made it, too. Katie Rawcliffe is Creative Director at ITV Studios, while Rebecca Rawcliffe is an Account Manager at BBC Studios. Ade Rawcliffe swears she never gave any help beyond suggesting names to write to. But then, of course, Katie and Rebecca are white.

Hype

vs hard data

ast month, a media storm broke out about a landmark change in children’s TV viewing habits. It was widely reported that, for the first time, “young people are spending more time online than watching TV”, according to “The Monitor Report 2016” by Childwise. This was quickly challenged by Thinkbox, the marketing body for commercial television. But it highlighted some fundamental questions about the rapidly changing landscape of TV, online and mobile viewing: n How fast are the habits of the young – and the rest of us – changing in the age of tablets and smartphones? n Is traditional TV on its last legs, as viewers embrace the likes of Netflix, YouTube and Amazon Prime, or are the viewing claims for online content also “over the top”? n And are the industry measurement systems keeping up with the changes? On 26 January, BBC News reported: “Young people are spending more time playing and socialising online than watching television programmes,

Ratings

Are claims of a seismic shift in UK online viewing and the soaring popularity of Netflix accurate? Torin Douglas dissects the figures

Netflix commission, The Crown

Netflix

according to an annual survey tracking UK children’s media behaviour. Staff at research agency Childwise describe it as a ‘landmark change’.” Significantly, it said: “Asked about their viewing in the previous week, 50% had watched programmes on Netflix, compared with 47% on ITV1 and 46% for BBC One.” If true, that might appear to sound the death knell for traditional broadcasting, as today’s five- to 16-year-olds become the adults of tomorrow. However, could some youngsters simply have been keeping up with their peers by claiming to watch the much-talked- about Netflix? The story was prominently reported on Radio 4’s Today programme, Radio 5 Live and BBC Breakfast, which tweeted: “Does this sound familiar? Young people are spending more time online than watching TV”, with a link to the BBC News online piece. For the team at Thinkbox, this was like a red rag to a bull. They started tweeting in response: “Please stop positioning the future of TV as broadcast vs online – the broadcasters are online, they’re on any screen anywhere…” So what is really going on? Who is measuring what we view on TV sets and online? And who should we believe, as we try to sort fact from propaganda? Two years ago, in Television, I reported on the boom in sales of tablets, as prices dropped and parents started buying them for children. I also examined Project Dovetail, an initiative by Barb – the TV industry “gold-standard” measurement service – to integrate viewing on PCs, tablets and mobiles with viewing on TV sets, which it has measured since 1981. Barb has made progress since then. It now publishes a weekly “TV Player Report”, measuring viewing for the broadcasters’ online offerings on computers, tablets and smartphones. This includes live-streaming and on-demand viewing to All 4, BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, Sky Go and UKTV Play. Barb has also awarded prototype development contracts to Kantar Media and Nielsen to work out how best to integrate the TV and online data. And, since December, it has made it possible to identify exactly what device is providing the content to the TV set, be it broadcast television (within the last 28 days) or non-TV broadcast activity such as playing games or listening to the radio.

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Another cross-industry body, Ukom (UK Online Measurement), produces official figures for online media, including video viewing. Ofcom produces regular reports on people’s use of media, including its annual survey, “The Digital Day”. And the TouchPoints research by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising also adds to our knowledge of what’s going on. Combining these sources, Thinkbox’s Research and Planning Director, Matt Hill, has published a chart of video

PEOPLE’S HABITS ARE CHANGING MORE QUICKLY THAN RESEARCH MEASUREMENT SYSTEMS CAN KEEP UP WITH consumption across all platforms and devices. Despite the widely believed claims that YouTube, Netflix and others are killing broadcast TV, the chart shows the reverse: 81% of all individuals’ viewing in 2014 was to live television and the catch-up and online offerings of the broadcasters. YouTube accounted for just 3.5%, with other online video (including Netflix) on 4.5% and DVDs on 3.8%. Even among 16-to-24s, widely reported to have abandoned television, the broadcasters’ share was still 65%. Figures for 2015 will be published soon and it will be fascinating to see how far they’ve changed. Barb Chief Executive Justin Sampson showed me a similar chart, which illustrates, in graphic form, television’s continuing dominance of viewing in the UK. A bit like old maps of the British Empire, it’s a mass of red. Barb urges people to take a “reality check” over what it sees as less rigorous claims for Netflix and other online providers. On the SVoD (subscription video- on-demand) update page of its website, it says: “If its prospects were to be measured solely in terms of favourable media coverage, then Netflix would be guaranteed a very bright future indeed.” Netflix’s coverage has continued favourably. Last month, it announced it had 75 million subscribers and had

gone live in a further 130 countries and would be in “the whole world” by the end of 2016 (give or take China). Its first UK-produced series, The Crown, airs later this year and that is expected to boost its UK profile and viewing. Netflix doesn’t publish viewing figures or subscription figures for local markets, so it is not clear how it is actually doing in the UK. But Ukom and the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) shed more light. They have jointly published a “definitive” figure for the time people spend online – two hours, 51 minutes a day. Tim Elkington, the IAB’s Chief Strategy Officer, says the latest Ukom figures show that YouTube has 31 million unique users in the UK and Netflix has 2.5 million (though that doesn’t include those who watch it on a connected TV). He says 37 million people watched a video online in December 2015 – and, on average, they watched nine different videos a day for a total of 43 minutes. But he’s frank about the difficulties. “People’s habits are changing more quickly than the research measurement systems can keep up with, so we are often playing catch-up,” he says. “The living room in the next two to three years will look very different from the living room of today.” And Barb’s own figures show that, for all the accusations of hype, Netflix subscriptions are growing in the UK, particularly among families. Latest figures from Barb’s Establishment Survey, based on 56,500 interviews a year, show that 18.8% of all TV homes claim to subscribe to Netflix (up from 14% at the end of 2014). Among households with children, it’s 29.9%. So could that Childwise survey be right? Could 50% of all children and young people have watched Netflix in the past week? Childwise Research Director Simon Leggett says: “We ask if they have viewed at all – not just at home – in the last week, so a fair proportion could be watching at friends’ houses.” Childwise is certainly not the only organisation reporting that children are spending less time in front of the TV. Ofcom reported similar findings in two reports last year, noting that YouTube is very popular among children and is becoming “an increasingly important alternative to traditional TV”. Broadcast television is much stronger than many give it credit for. But there is no doubt that the picture is changing fast.

Pay-TV

Veteran Murdoch lieutenant Gary Davey explains why Sky is committed to content, innovation and service. Steve Clarke takes notes

ary Davey is one of pay-TV’s most experienced executives. He was part of the team that launched Sky TV in the late 1980s. Now, after holding senior positions in Sky Italia, Sky Deutschland and Star TV (when he was based in Hong Kong), he is back in the UK. He was appointed Sky’s Managing Director for Content in January 2015. At an RTS early-evening event at the beginning of this month, he told his audience how he’d been rescued from a life as a TV reporter by Rupert Murdoch more than 35 years ago. “I was a news anchor in Australia,” recalled Davey, a self-deprecating and straight-talking Antipodean. “One day, I got a phone call from the board of News Corp – they told me Rupert Murdoch was going to call me tomorrow. “I thought it was as joke but, sure enough, Rupert called and said: ‘I want you to come and work for me in New York.’ I said: ‘Doing what?’ He said: ‘I don’t know. We’ll figure it out when you get here.’ We still haven’t figured it out.” His first job working directly for the media mogul had him trying to predict what was likely to happen in electronic media. Cable TV was in the ascendancy in the US, but Davey championed satellite broadcasting. The idea was to challenge established markets in Europe. In the early 1980s, he crossed the Atlantic and acquired “a tiny company called Satellite Television plc”. It had around 12 staff and was experimenting with an orbital test satellite beaming two hours of programming a day, Davey recalled. “We didn’t even have a brand then. One of the staff suggested that we call it Sky Channel,” he said. Getting to that point was not easy. Even Murdoch was sceptical that satellite broadcasting could work.

The pay-TV guru returns “I remember there was a meeting in Rupert’s office,” said Davey. “By that time, he’d bought The Times of London. He really didn’t get the idea. He said: ‘Gary, the smallest satellite dish you’ve got is 12 feet in diameter. How is this ever going to be a business?’ “We were sitting at a table a bit like this [pointing to a round table the size of a small bicycle wheel]. Murdoch said: ‘It’s never going to work until you give me a satellite dish that big.’ “Remember, I was supposed to be the company’s expert on satellites. I said: ‘Sorry, boss, that’s physically impossible.’ But his vision was so strong. “He said: ‘You’ve got three component parts to this thing – the set-top box, the electronics and the satellites themselves, all of which will evolve. That evolution will make this happen.’ He was absolutely right.” By 1988, with the UK television industry coming to terms with Margaret Thatcher’s reforming zeal, Sky was ready for lift-off in London. In February 1989, Sky Television launched.

“The passion is still there today,” emphasised Davey. “The company has a unique DNA. One of the things I find moving is that whenever one of the executives talks about the business they always use three key words – content, innovation and service.” Davey explained that, nowadays, Sky’s customers can access Sky content in seven different ways: live linear, recorded linear, catch-up, pull VoD, push VoD, box sets and NowTV. But Barb measures only two of these, he claimed. The imminent launch of Sky Q would allow greater flexibility to watch, stream and record content, and provide Davey and his team with new ways of entertaining audiences. “Sky Q is a really interesting challenge for me because it opens up all kinds of content opportunities that we’re only just starting to address,” he observed. But finding accurate ways to monitor and assess who’s watching what is exercising minds at Sky. Davey gave the example of The Last Panthers, the recent,

NETFLIX HAS BEEN VERY SUCCESSFUL IN THE UK, BUT AT A TIME WHEN WE HAVE GROWN AS FAST AS WE HAVE EVER GROWN high-profile heist series. Only 16% of viewing was live, he said. “We don’t care how our customers consume our content, so long as they are engaged by it.” Audience share as a viewership metric is banned at Sky. Overnights remain part of the currency of audience measurement, however. “Share of viewing is evil incarnate,” fumed the content supremo. “It makes you a complete victim of the tyranny of ratings and it means that you are only thinking in terms of live linear. “That makes no sense to us.… What matters most to us is that the customer is prepared to keep paying. “The moment they lose that desire to keep paying for the product, we’re in big trouble.” Sky’s consumption data for the channels owned by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 on the Sky platform is something the satellite company’s terrestrial rivals covet. Why didn’t Sky give it to them, asked the evening’s chair, Pat Younge, Managing Director of Sugar Films. “Because it’s ours,” Davey retorted.

Television www.rts.org.uk February 2016

But it is their shows that are being watched and the UK PSBs continue to drive a lot of Sky viewing, Younge persisted. Wasn’t that a bit one-sided? “We’ve invested a lot of money in the infrastructure.…They’ve got Barb, which is there to measure the economic model that drives the advertising-supported industry. Our business is about pay-TV, which is a much longer-term time frame. “It’s all about engagement, devices and convenience. And that information is really important to us. It is something we use for insight into our consumers’ behaviour. We’ve spent 27 years building this.” Sky dropped the BSkyB name in late 2014, following the takeover of sister stations in Germany and Italy. The pan-European behemoth is utterly unrecognisable when compared with the four-channel fledgling that started transmitting to the UK in 1983. The 2014 consolidation was driven by a desire for synergies, cost savings and as a means of future-proofing Sky in a fiercely competitive online world .

Paul Hampartsoumian

Gary Davey (left) and Pat Younge

Recently, the company’s willingness to make more programmes, especially scripted shows, and reduce its heavy reliance on US imports has marked a significant break with the past. Nowadays, the broadcaster commissions on both a pan-European and a local basis. Just how much it actually spends on UK-originated content (apart from sport) remains something of a sensitive issue. Davey claimed that, over the next four or five years, Sky’s investment in non-sports content would double. Younge asked for some specific figures. Davey demurred. “This year,” he said, “Sky will spend about £5bn on content, including sport. ... Our entertainment budgets are grow ing at a faster rate than ever before.” Was Davey bothered that paying £10m for the rights to a single mid-table Premier League match was diverting money away from drama and arts shows, probed Younge. “An important part of my job is to make entertainment a primary reason to get Sky… then, the company can make choices,” said Davey. “One day, maybe, we’ll take less football and do more drama.… We’re on a journey. I am pretty happy where we are, but we’ve got a long way to go.” So the investment in non-sports content is a strategic one, pressed Younge? “We’re not doing it to keep the production community happy. This is a business,” Davey replied. “We think through really carefully what’s going to drive customer engagement. If we get our storytelling right in entertainment, it’s just as engaging as football.” Davey argued that Sky now had “a very aggressive portfolio” of content across the businesses in the UK, Germany and Italy. It was a sign of maturity that several British Sky dramas and comedies (a notoriously difficult genre to get right), including Stella, Trollied and Mount Pleasant, were returning series. How did Sky approach drama from a pan-European perspective? “The way that we’re managing it is we want the creatives to come from the bottom up,” said Davey. “I am not sitting around pushing ideas down to my guys.… We want great ideas and I don’t care where they come from – from Munich, Milan or anywhere.” Each of Sky’s “communities” was developing programmes. “When we see an opportunity to develop on a big scale we jump on it.” �

QUESTION Q & ANSWER A Q A

Do television channels have a future? Gary Davey: Channels will always be around. I cannot see a future when they don’t exist. There is a revolution going on, but it’s happening a lot slower than people think… Our customers still tune in for that big live event.… If we’re really smart we can use social media to make an episode premiere feel like a Champions League semi-final, by being live – and it’s essential that you are there as part of that live conversation. We just need to manage linear TV and make it all feel like an event. Our industry will adapt. If we stand still, we’ll get rolled over. People have been predicting TV’s demise on an annual basis for 40 years. Somehow, we’ve bounced back and we work our way through it.

Your investment in independent producers is relatively subscale. Are you likely to scale up in the next few years? Gary Davey: We will treat that opportunistically. We don’t have a fixed strategy that says we need to get to this critical point by such and such a time. We’re not frantically chasing acquisitions.

Was Sky’s recent Showtime deal for Sky Atlantic only possible because of the scale created by merging Sky with Sky Italia and Sky Deutschland? Gary Davey: I had always imagined a world in which we had HBO and Showtime [Sky already

The fact that we were able to develop a pan-European proposition, to be the custodians of their brand… those deals take a long time to come together… two years for the Showtime deal.

Q A

How worried is Sky by competition from Netflix and Amazon Prime? Gary Davey: We kicked this journey off way before either Netflix or Amazon Prime became an issue. This journey took a lot of development and a lot of thinking through.... I think we would have been on this journey with or without Netflix and Amazon. The interesting thing about Netflix

Q A

What is your view of privatising Channel 4? Gary Davey: I don’t have a strong view, but I am always a little bit nervous when people start mixing public and private finance. Everybody in the business will adapt to a changing environment, including Channel 4. Can you explain your strategy for Sky’s distribution business, Sky Vision, and the strategy for investing in production companies? Gary Davey: We need to have a meaningful place in the world of distribution. We are investing an enormous amount of money in our own original content. We need to have a structure by which we can optimise a return on that. Sky Vision is that vehicle. In order to reach a critical mass, we need to have a balance between Sky original content and investments in distribution and production assets through partnerships… From the point of view of Sky originals, we like to have distribution rights through Sky Vision, but we will never lose a good project by insisting on it.

Paul Hampartsoumian

Q A

Gary Davey has a deal with HBO for exclusive rights]. They are the best two story tellers for television in the world. To be able to develop Sky originals, where we can proudly sit alongside those two propositions is, to me, the fulfilment of a dream. The three entities working side by side is an enormously powerful thing. It would not have been possible without the scale of Europe, that’s the key point. Sky UK would not have pulled off that deal on its own.

and Amazon is that nobody knows how successful any of those shows are. There is no data to prove whether their shows work or not. The truth is, Netflix has been very successful in the UK, but at a time when we’ve grown as fast as we’ve ever grown and our churn rate is at the lowest level it’s been in 10 years. The existence of Netflix does not seem to have damaged our customer base at all. It is a supplementary service.

� The Young Pope, developed by Sky Italia and directed by the Oscar-winning Paolo Sorrentino, was an example of a scale production. Like The Last Panthers, The Lost Pope would be shown by Sky in the UK, Germany and Italy. Starring Jude Law and Diane Keaton, the producers include Sky Italia, HBO and Canal+. Don’t expect to see too many clips of The Young Pope or, come to that, a lot of Sky shows on YouTube and other non-Sky websites. “We talk about this all the time,” said Davey. “I think giving stuff away on the internet is not something we should do. I know it’s an old-fashioned view.” Sky, however, has found that freeto-air can work for the broadcaster. “We have two free-to-air channels (Sky News and Pick). They’re very profitable and we’re quite happy with them,” said Davey. Sky Italia’s free-to-air strategy was more aggressive than the UK’s but changes were coming: “In free-TV, we are powering our set-top boxes, particularly NowTV, with a digital terrestrial tuner. It will automatically capture all of the Freeview content.” Meanwhile, last year’s decision to “merge” Sky Arts’ two channels into one channel was, according to Davey, a symptom of the company evolving into “a hybrid of linear and on-demand”. “We’re all about deep engagement with our customers,” Davey stressed. “We’re looking for little niches of quiet

Television www.rts.org.uk February 2016

Sky

The Young Pope

I THINK GIVING STUFF AWAY ON THE INTERNET IS NOT SOMETHING WE SHOULD DO

The reinvention of Sky One Gary Davey: ‘Sky One has always been a real challenge. It’s been through so many iterations. I know quite a bit about it because I launched the thing. ‘It was a mess and it’s been messy for a very long time. It’s probably been under-resourced and it’s probably too big an ambition to populate that channel with the right content unless you’ve got a budget… ‘We had to define a profile around the idea and then find the right content. Although it’s not yet perfect, something clicked last summer… ‘Supergirl was like the final piece in a really delicate puzzle. You, Me and the Apocalypse was the perfect Sky One show.’

passion. Sky Arts was perfect for that.” A new Sky Arts production hub based in Milan is up and running. One of its first initiatives is an up-market-sounding talent show, the pan-European eightpart Master of Photography. The series aims to find the best photographer on the continent. Another high-profile show is Mystery of the Lost Caravaggio; digital restorers have recreated a Caravaggio painting stolen by the Mafia from a church in Palermo in 1969. Davey (who likes to sketch on planes) concluded by saying that big changes were planned for Sky News this year. The old newsroom was being mothballed. A new, state-of-the-art digital facility was being built. “Because we ran news and sports operations in Italy and Germany that had evolved at different times… we were able to take advantage of some really modern techniques,” he said. “The Munich newsroom is light years ahead of anything here. And the Italians have linked from that.… At Sky News [in London], we’ve had the opportunity to completely rethink the whole idea.” Gary Davey was ‘in conversation’ with Pat Younge, Managing Director of Sugar Films, at The Hospital Club in central London on 4 February. The producer was Martin Stott, Head of Corporate and Regulatory Affairs at Channel 5.

‘

Don’t destroy a success story

f George Osborne is intent on selling off Channel 4 to the private sector, he should consider carefully before he acts the arguments advocated by Lord Burns, who stood down as the broadcaster’s Chair last month. “One of the things often lost in this conversation is that Channel 4 is basically an intermediary between private- sector organisations,” he stressed. “It’s not as though Channel 4 is a public-sector organisation doing everything itself. Essentially, it raises £1bn from advertising and uses that almost exclusively to purchase things (that is, programmes) from the private sector,” he added. With privatisation very much back on the Government’s agenda, it was inevitable that Terry Burns should devote most of his remarks to the subject when he spoke at an RTS/Channel 4 valedictory dinner last month. His distinguished audience at the House of Lords was a roll call of the sector’s great and good. Present and past Channel 4 board members were in attendance, including former Deputy Chair David Puttnam.

Channel 4

Outgoing C4 Chair Lord Burns explains why privatising the broadcaster would be bad for Britain. Steve Clarke reports John Birt, who once applied to be the station’s first CEO, was there. So, too, was the man who actually got the job, Sir Jeremy Isaacs, now 83 and still deeply passionate about the broadcaster (see box on page 23). Regulators were also out in force: Ofcom Chair Dame Patricia Hodgson and the head of the BBC Trust, Rona Fairhead, together with her predecessor but one, Sir Michael Lyons. The night’s master of ceremonies, RTS President Sir Peter Bazalgette (himself an erstwhile Channel 4 board member), began by asking Burns if he knew anything about broadcasting

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when he was appointed Chair of Channel 4 in 2009. An economist, Burns served as Permanent Secretary to the Treasury from 1991 to 1998. “I knew a little,” he replied, somewhat disingenuously. Burns led a review for then-Secretary of State Tessa Jowell MP that looked at the remit, finances and governance of the BBC during the last Charter review, a decade ago. Moreover, Burns was reportedly in the frame to become Chair of the BBC Governors in 2001 and the BBC Trust in 2007, and was said to have been considered for the top job at Ofcom when the watchdog was set up in 2003. He recalled: “Back in the 1970s, I was a talking head on Weekend World and I had the great fortune to meet John Birt, then in charge of the show. “It turned out that we had houses quite close together in Wales. I spent many hours tramping over the hills of Wales hearing John’s tales of the broadcasting industry. “He and I have been close friends ever since and I learnt a great deal from him.” As befitted a Whitehall mandarin who served six successive chancellors – five Tory and one Labour – Burns was

Paul Hampartsoumian

Burns on BBC governance

SUBSTANTIAL CHANGE TOWARDS AN EQUITY-BASED OWNERSHIP OF CHANNEL 4 WOULD BE VERY DAMAGING

keen to stress the economic case for preserving Channel 4’s status quo. He said that he had been involved in a lot of privatisations during his Treasury tenure. “There are always two reasons put forward for looking at ownership,” he explained. “One is whether or not there is any financial reason for doing it. The other is whether it will actually improve the industry. “I assume that there are investigations to see whether a change in ownership and the way in which Channel 4 is set up will improve public service broadcasting in this country.” However, as far as we know, Ofcom is not yet looking into this important question. Taking these two tests, probed Bazalgette, could the broadcaster be improved? “On the first test, it seems there is no financial reason for it at all,” replied

Television www.rts.org.uk February 2016

Burns. “The Govern ment has got as much in the way of asset sales available to it as it could possibly hope to need over the forthcoming years. “If you recall, it is still quite heavily into banks and other organisations. “No doubt, there is a debate to be had and I am more than happy to engage in the issue of whether or not it could improve public service broadcasting in this country. “My view, quite clearly, is that any substantial change in the ownership of Channel 4 towards an equity-based ownership would be very damaging.” One of Burns’s first acts at Channel 4 was to appoint David Abraham as the organisation’s CEO, replacing Andy Duncan. The outgoing C4 Chair pointed out that Abraham believes privatisation would risk cutting the programme budget by a third – from £600m to �

‘One of the concerns I have about the BBC is that it’s never been in a position where the executive has seen the board as a particularly supportive, helpful body. ‘David Clementi [former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England] is looking at whether the regulator should be OffBeeb, Ofcom or some combination. ‘I am slightly reluctant to get into this debate because I think it is much less important than the first part of it, which is that there should be a proper board put in place. ‘I could live with either of the main options being discussed as far as the oversight part is concerned.’

Burns on BBC Charter terms ‘It would be a terrible mistake [if the next Charter was for five years]. Charter review is a very long, drawn-out process and an important issue for the BBC. ‘If the BBC’s independence is to be maintained and it is not to spend all its time planning for the next Charter, it should be 10 years. ‘If we are going to have fixed-term parliaments, it stands at a rather awkward point. Maybe something needs to be done about that. ‘I can see no merit at all in a very short Charter period.’

All pictures: Paul Hampartsoumian

QUESTION & ANSWER Q

Chris Bryant MP, former Labour Shadow culture secretary: Is Channel 4 still naughty enough? Lord Burns: I am not sure I am the person to answer that question. There are things that it shows which tell us something about the UK that, I have to say, do shock me. Some of the dramas, some of the health programmes.… If the message is that we want a bit more of that, Jay [Jay Hunt, Chief Creative Officer] is here – she creates these wonderful programmes – and we will take it on board.

Steve Morrison, ex-CEO, All3Media: If there is a hybrid solution, with a minority private investor, would that be a good outcome? Lord Burns: My present view, without having seen any work on the proposal, is that it would not be. You wouldn’t be one thing or the other.… I am pretty happy to have investors in Channel 4 if they receive a fixed rate of return, but once they want a return that is an equity- style return, it depends upon the long-term shareholders and that begins to cause a problem. It wouldn’t cause problems immediately. I don’t want to exaggerate this.… We have a schedule

that can be adjusted. But this is something that would gradually eat away.… If you look at the whole history of ITV and Channel 5, there’s been a gradual erosion of the requirements previously placed upon them. I am not blaming them for that. It’s not surprising. That is what happens.

Chris Curtis, Editor, Broadcast: Does Channel 4 need to be based at its expensive HQ in Horseferry Road, which it owns, and has Channel 4’s relatively aggressive stance on the terms of trade impacted on potential support from the indie sector, its most obvious supporter, against privatisation? Lord Burns: On the latter, I am already very impressed with the support we’ve had from the indie sector and, indeed, from the advertising sector, which has pointed out the very important part we play in reaching hard-toreach audiences. I don’t think there’s any problem with indies and the terms of trade. We’ve had quite a lot of support from them. As for Horseferry Road, bear in mind that Channel 4 commissions all of its programmes… it is very convenient being in Horseferry Road for people who want to come and visit us. But I don’t think that there is any absolute reason for being there. There are lots of locations that could do. Frankly, this is a sideshow. It makes very little difference.… The deal on Horseferry Road has been very good.

� £400m. With shallower pockets, a reduction in creative risk taking and the possible end to comedy commissioning – latterly, one of the jewels in the broadcaster’s crown, thanks to Catastrophe and the final season of Peep Show – would be on the cards. The quantity of imports would probably increase, too. Fans of shows such as The Returned and Fargo might consider this a good thing. The independence of Channel 4 News could be threatened, while current affairs coverage might be marginalised. More dramatically still, privatisation risked putting 19,000 independent production jobs in jeopardy. Bazalgette reminded Burns that Secretary of State John Whittingdale MP thought that Channel 4 could be privatised with its existing remit intact. Did Burns agree? “The fact is that Channel 4 is a very extraordinary invention. The notion that you should have something in the public sector with a remit from Parliament that is commercially funded and that commissions all of its programmes from independent producers has worked extraordinarily well. “I think the secret is that it is, essentially, a not-for-profit business. “I say essentially because what the Act says is that Channel 4 has to return or use all of any surpluses that it generates on the purposes of the channel. This means that any surpluses that we make are put back into programmes. “That generates a particular set of incentives and enables us to meet the remit that Parliament has given us.” The framework allowed Channel 4 to “cross-subsidise across programmes” – enabling unprofitable shows (the esteemed Channel 4 News) to be partfunded by cash cows such as Humans and Gogglebox, which itself was tweaked before finally becoming a hit. “We are not under pressure as commercial, equity-funded organisations are: they, of course, have to cut out those things that lose money and concentrate on the things that make it,” stressed the peer, a coal-miner’s son. Burns, like many before him, including media consultant Claire Enders, highlighted Britain’s unusual broadcasting ecology and Channel 4’s place within this. “We really do have a mixture of different models,” he said, “the BBC, funded by a licence fee, advertising- funded ITV and Channel 5, not-forprofit Channel 4, and subscription-

It becomes the chase to the centre, each wanting to outdo the other by doing the same type of programming. “Our system has generated this very happy result, probably largely by accident.… Different incentive systems provide different kinds of programming, aimed at different kinds of

Rex Features/Tony Buckingham

based Sky. “They have different ownership systems and different incentive systems.… They match each other very well and provide us with a variety.… “You see this around the world: the great danger with public service broadcasting and free-to-air broadcasting is that they are forced to be like each other.

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Isaacs: why C4 is still essential ‘As you know, I was there when it started. I hope I’m not going to be there when it finishes. We live in interesting times. ‘It seems to me that Channel 4 is tasked with adding a distinctive flavour to the mix of media in this country. Well led, it does that pretty well and, sometimes, excellently well. The coverage

Paul Hampartsoumian

I THINK THE SECRET OF CHANNEL 4 IS THAT IT IS, ESSENTIALLY, A NOTFOR-PROFIT BUSINESS

audiences: some for profit and others that can fund loss-making programmes.” Remarkably, despite the onward march of the internet, Channel 4 “has managed to hold its place to an extraordinary degree and remains successful, particularly in peak time, where most viewing takes place,” Burns noted. He emphasised: “I would be reluctant to meddle in any significant way with this ecology. I am very supportive of the BBC continuing to play the role it does.” But there were ways of changing the Channel 4 model that fell short of full privatisation, suggested Bazalgette. There could be outside investors, with government keeping a golden share. Burns had speculated that the Government could go for mutualisation, had he not? How would that work? “I don’t think I have ever used the word mutualisation. It is not a word I am very fond of,” Burns replied. He added: “Government has been very nice, because it has left us to do this without taking any return at all. It’s been a very happy situation. We have no debt interest costs.” So, should there be a return for the Government? Were one to be agreed, the state could then share in the success of Channel 4 – which may lie at the root of privatisation being back on the agenda, Bazalgette mused. “That is something that could be debated. That is something that could be constructed,” said Burns. “I would be much less opposed to something that would require that we paid a fixed return than to being owned by people who had the responsibility of realising shareholder return.” The sound of a kind of compromise had reared its head in the House of Lords. Watch this space.

of the Paralympics was public service broadcasting at its very best. Nobody else in Britain would have done that. ‘“Stand up for free enterprise, won’t you?” Margaret Thatcher said to me before we went on air. I know that, in the end, she didn’t think our programmes did quite enough of that. ‘But the fact is, by the Government insisting that Channel 4 take its programmes from independent producers, it created a great wave of new enterprise in our society.’

Mr Entertainment shifts into top gear Profile

Maggie Brown meets the recently promoted Mark Linsey, who must help steer BBC Television through the Charter chicane

ark Linsey’s career in television has progressed from producing An Audience with Freddie Starr to the heady heights of running BBC Televis ion. As Acting Director of Television – following the abrupt departure of Danny Cohen – Linsey finds himself playing a critical part as Charter renewal gathers pace. Ask how an executive with 30 years in entertainment shows might play such a crucial role, and this safe pair of hands reaches for the word “distinctive”. This, after all, was the challenge issued to the BBC by a combative Secretary of State, John Whittingdale MP, at the RTS Cambridge Convention in September. Linsey continues: “There is the dayto-day job, monitoring output, the commissions… definitely, I’ll be taking the overview. “I will be across all the high-profile things. Keeping everyone focused on the output, on the audience, making sure that we maintain our distinctiveness. Serving all parts of the audience with distinctive programmes.” At BBC Television’s Christmas launch in November, he made the same point more passionately. He dismissed as “balderdash” criticism that the corporation’s output lacks distinctiveness. He proved his point by refusing to enter a bidding war for The Voice UK. As BBC Television’s Controller of Entertainment for the past seven years, Linsey’s ascent included responsibility for bedding in Cohen’s controversial 2011 acquisition of The Voice UK. It was Linsey who insisted that the

best bit, the rotating chairs, be a feature of every show. He also kept The Apprentice and Strictly Come Dancing fresh. Before that, he handled the replacement of Jonathan Ross in 2010 with The Graham Norton Show. After missing out on the post of Controller of BBC One in 2013, he was appointed Cohen’s deputy. Linsey had already replaced George Entwistle as Head of Editorial Standards in 2011, where his job was to sort out flashpoints. His initiatives included the swift publication of new guidelines covering the ownership of formats developed internally by BBC staff. This issue resurfaced again, with considerable disquiet during the development of Saturday-night show Prized Apart. In his current role – which might be of indefinite duration – Linsey has oversight of: the critical waterfront of drama, under newish commissioner Polly Hill; scripted comedy; specialist factual; the new online BBC Three; the creation of BBC Studios; and implementing budget cuts. The breadth of his portfolio concerns external and internal critics. “Mark’s expertise is entertainment, very domestic, focused, it is one small area. He has not gone outside of light entertainment. International deals underpin most dramas, some documentaries and specialist factual,” says one senior broadcaster. Another says: “We are used to there

A GENTLEMAN AND VASTLY EXPERIENCED. AN HONEST MAN

being these big beasts as Director of Television. Mark’s fallen into roles, he’s got promotions when no one else is around,” said another. “He’s not very strategic, or good at managing conflict. You can’t do that job by consensus – it’s leadership.” Linsey takes these criticisms calmly when the comments are replayed to him. On the breadth point, he says: “A fair criticism. Without doubt, you learn a lot in this job, you learn a great deal. It’s one reason I’m enjoying it. “I can be strategic. In seven years in charge of entertainment, I was incredibly strategic, looking at the bigger picture, delivering something for everyone.” Sony executive and former BBC entertainment supremo Wayne Garvie observes: “He’s a gentleman and vastly experienced. An honest man, someone you can do business with.” A respecter of craft skills, Linsey took the Heathrow Express to greet the Top Gear production team in October 2014 on their return from a controversial drive through Argentina. Many Argentinians interpreted the number plate on Jeremy Clarkson’s Porsche as a triumphalist reference to the Falklands war, and the production team fled the country. Linsey worked as a researcher on the earlier, pre-Clarkson Top Gear in 1986. “I’ve grown up through production, I have a huge regard for craft skills in this country,” he says, adding: “We should take more pride in them than we do, from research to the lighting, and producers who work really hard. They are wonderful, great people to spend time with.” “Acting” Director of Television is a slightly ambiguous title. Linsey explains the deal: “I’ll be here for a few

BBC

How BBC TV’s new structure works Mark Linsey says that it has been broadly ‘business as usual’ since the surprise abolition of BBC channel controllers was announced last month. The move, designed to save money, saw the promotion of BBC One Controller Charlotte Moore to Controller of Television Channels and iPlayer. She still reports to Mark Linsey. For more than 50 years, BBC channel controllers were powerful figures. Their influence gradually diminished as more decision-making switched to genre commissioners.

months more and we’re not sure what the post will be.” That is a reference to BBC Project King, which is about redesigning commissioning for the online/ digital age, as outlined by Director-General Tony Hall in September. No conclusions are anticipated before the spring, but the post of Director of Television may be subsumed into a more powerful Director of Content position, with genre commissioners reshaping programming. In effect, Linsey notes, the job of Director of Television is already being halved, with the decision to float off BBC Studios. “I support it. It’s good for the BBC. Competition is good”.

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Some of British TV’s most influential figures ran either BBC One or Two, including David Attenborough, Paul Fox, Michael Jackson, Lorraine Heggessey, Jane Root and Alan Yentob. Under the new structure, controllers have been replaced by channel editors. Interviewed by Broadcast, Linsey explained: ‘The whole point of it is that the flow of ideas and talent between channels can happen in a much simpler way. ‘They are complementing one another, not competing.’

The context for his promotion is that the BBC finds it difficult to recruit externally for top jobs. The next few months include the return of Top Gear and the launch of a new Saturday-evening entertainment format on BBC One, Can’t Touch This. Like the current new series Getaway Car, it is a physical game show. They are both part of the increasingly tense hunt for a new entertainment hit, a challenge that the BBC shares with ITV. The commitment to these program mes follows a succession of discarded commissions under Linsey: Don’t Scare the Hare, That Puppet Game Show, I Love My Country, Tumble, Reflex – and Prized

Apart. Happily, his regime did strike lucky with comedians such as Michael McIntyre, Russell Howard and John Bishop. The son of a primary school teacher and “modest” businessman, Linsey grew up glued to television. “Everything from Rising Damp to Nationwide. I wanted to get into it” as a producer, he says. He was educated at Cambridgeshire High School for Boys and Hills Road Sixth Form College, Cambridge, and did a performing arts degree at Leicester Polytechnic. Now 54, he is married to a yoga teacher. The couple have three sons and live in Sevenoaks. Linsey broke into production through commercial radio, subsequently working at BBC Pebble Mill, Central TV and LWT. The last company was “the place to be for weekend entertainment”. There, he worked with “Nasty Nigel” – Nigel Lythgoe – and had a notable encounter with Freddie Starr. “As Controller of Entertainment and Comedy at LWT, I asked Mark to produce An Audience with Freddie Starr in 1996,” Lythgoe recalls. “I knew he had the patience, common sense, fortitude and political nous to cope with the craziness and genius that was Freddie Starr, ingredients that would later serve him well at the BBC. “The only hiccup was when Mark and Freddie had a disagreement about Freddie setting fire to his head. “‘Freddie wants to set fire to his head,’ said an exasperated Mark. ‘What can we do?’” “‘If Freddie wants to, let Freddie set fire to his head,’ was my best advice. “Mark left my office shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head. I didn’t tell him that it was a trick I’d used previously, which involved a hood and a metal plate. I’d already discussed it with Freddie. “He incorporated it, and it was hilarious. The show was truly one of his best. Mark and I insisted he rehearsed it.” Linsey was turned down for a BBC entertainment post as “a bit too Dale Winton” before landing an executive role in 2007. In this job, he was responsible for mainstream studio entertainment and lottery shows. Whatever 2016 brings, he says, Top Gear “is one we have to get right. I think we will. The world’s most popular programme and we are reskinning it.” If the show succeeds, it might cement Linsey’s role, however transitional, as the boss of BBC Television.

Virtual reality

VR is concentrating minds in Hollywood and beyond. But what is its significance for broadcasting? David Wood investigates

VR recording of the 2015 MTV Music Awards

re we on the threshold of another television revolution similar to the introduction of colour or multichannel? There is a lot of excitement around virtual reality in show business and media circles. But can broadcasters successfully deploy VR – or will it turn out to be as ephemeral as the recent commotion over 3DTV? VR promises to enthral viewers with a pulse-quickening range of new immersive entertainment experiences. It is already making waves in Hollywood, where film studios such as 21st Century Fox are investing in the technology. Undoubtedly, some of the world’s biggest media companies are excited about the prospects for VR. Facebook kick-started the VR craze two years ago with the $2bn acquisition of Oculus VR, whose $600 Rift headset goes on sale worldwide next month. Mobile-phone manufacturer HTC is also planning a headset launch. Last year, Samsung launched its Gear VR headset, and Google, Microsoft and Sony are busy readying their own VR hardware offerings.

For these big players, most of the investment in VR content to date is in gaming; the prospect of immersive VR on Xbox and PlayStation is expected to be a big driver for the future of video games. But what significance does VR hold for television? There is no doubt that broadcasters are keen to join the party. To date, the genres where we have seen the most experimentation are entertainment, natural history and live events, particularly music and sport. When broadcasters talk about their involvement with VR, they are talking about 360° video, where the experience is only accessible from a fixed, predetermined point.

VIRTUAL REALITY COULD ENHANCE A CRIME DRAMA, TO GIVE VIEWERS THE ABILITY TO EXPLORE A SCENE FOR CLUES

MTV

TV’s next big thing?

True VR, where viewers are able to move around autonomously in a virtual world, is still best experienced in VR games. A third type of VR, augmented reality (AR), has virtual components inserted into the real world. AR as a product is still some way off; Google and Microsoft remain distinctly in the R&D phase. Given the chastening experience with 3D, broadcasters are taking a cautious approach. The BBC has experimented with 360° video versions of shiny-floor entertainment shows Strictly Come Dancing and The Voice UK. Meanwhile, Atlantic Productions has produced a VR spin-off of BBC One series Great Barrier Reef with David Attenborough, reportedly booked solid for the next three months at London’s Natural History Museum. The show’s producer, Atlantic boss Anthony Geffen, declares: “What VR does best is extend the journey. It’s an incredibly powerful medium, which we don’t think will compete with TV, but will enhance it. “Great Barrier Reef, the TV show, piqued your interest and the Reef VR experience takes you further. You can

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increasing preference of the Millennial Generation for new content providers over legacy brands. “The traditional players are more interested in VR because they need to find new ways of attracting audiences,” says Kapellos, whose company produced live VR for the 2015 MTV European Music Awards. “VR is certainly one way of attracting a younger audience, which we know is driven by smartphones and tablet use. In their world, traditional TV doesn’t exist. If you want to get to them, this is the best way.” Producers wanting to attract younger audiences should also consider VR, he suggests: “We were talking to a sports producer seeking to get a sport included in the Olympic Games. The International Olympic Committee wanted the company to prove that it had a young audience. So it has to be on mobile and tablets. This is where VR and 360° video comes into play.” The evidence is that it’s worked for Strictly, suggests Greg Furber, Creative Producer at VR specialist Rewind, which helped to make the BBC’s Strictly VR experience. “It’s opened up an entirely new audience, compared with the show’s predominantly older, female audience,” he says. “The Strictly VR has been watched by a much younger, male demographic.” While 2016 looks as if it will be the year that VR takes off in gaming, it is clearly going to mark TV’s first serious experimentation with the technology. Everybody involved is hoping that it proves more durable than 3DTV.

Google

VIRTUAL REALITY IS GOING TO BE ONE OF THE MAJOR BENEFICIARIES OF THE SMARTPHONE REVOLUTION

also imagine it being used to enhance a crime drama, to give viewers the ability to explore a scene for clues.” Atlantic has more high-end VR in the pipeline aimed at exhibitions and museums; Reef and its VR forerunner Life have been licensed to museums around the world. “There is a real appetite for this kind of content,” insists Geffen. Sky, often a pioneer in technology, spotted the potential of VR two years ago. It invested $1.65m in Jaunt, a West revolution, where penetration is Coast VR company boasting its own already very high.” brand of hi-tech “cinematic VR”. Mobiles enable people to consume The broadcaster has used Jaunt’s VR content by downloading VR apps expertise on a broad range of producand watching on low-cost Google tions. These include the drama Penny Cardboard headsets. Dreadful, boxing, motor racing and a “At Sky, we are assuming that Card360° Sky News report on the migrant board will be the dominant headset crisis. The latter is viewable on mobile for consuming VR for the next 12 to via the Jaunt app or as a piece of 2D, 18 months. Penetration of the more- 360° video on YouTube. expensive, higher-quality headsets will Says Sky News Executive Editor remain low,” Lloyd believes. John McAndrew: “We were quite She adds: “So far, we have done amazed by the results. What occurred around a dozen VR pieces but, over the to me instantly was that it is a comnext 12 months, we are ramping up short-form VR across news, sport, pletely immersive experience. It’s as entertainment and movies. Our objecnear to being there as possible. “You can see the migrant’s footprints tive is to learn and build expertise.” in the sand and it’s really very moving. Early indications are that VR appeals We are keen to do more.” to younger audiences and could even For McAndrew, the biggest drawback be used to inject new life into ageing is the time it currently takes – up to a entertainment formats such as The X week – to create a VR report. However, Factor. with Jaunt’s own production facilities According to George Kapellos, Head coming to London, the turnaround time of Marketing and Partnerships at VR for reports should be cut drastically. specialist Mativision, VR could be an The Sky News team’s next VR shoot important weapon for traditional is under wraps, but expect more soon. broadcasters to combat the growing “It really suits stories where you are popularity of online players such as giving people an insight into someNetflix, Amazon, Google and YouTube. thing they wouldn’t ordinarily see, This threat was taking them to places they wouldn’t underlined in a ordinarily get to,” says McAndrew. recent report “It would have a natural fit with some from consulof our big foreign stories, but it wouldn’t suit a conflict-based story as the [rather tancy LEK. pricey] camera has to sit still for a It highperiod of time. lighted “Wouldn’t it be fantastic to do a VR the version of Prime Minister’s Questions or the State Opening of Parliament and offer a new perspective on these colourful occasions?” Sky Director of Corporate Business Development Emma Lloyd stresses that VR enjoys one big advantage over 3D – audiences can sample VR on their smartphones. She predicts: “VR is going to be one of the major beneficiaries of the smartphone Google Cardboard

BBC

Can Perfect Curve save the Beeb?

1A has enjoyed two successful series gently mocking its BBC pay master and delighting audiences. But with govern ment pressure on the corporation mounting, Writer/Director John Morton faces some tricky decisions as he prepares a third series. “It will be harder to pretend that I don’t hope the BBC survives,” Morton told a packed RTS London Centre event, “W1A: the story behind the series”, at the end of January. Morton explained that he had tried to steer a path between making the programme “too cosy, so that it reads as a gloriously expensive vanity- publishing project on behalf of the BBC” and “making something that hands the detractors of the BBC yet another stick to beat it with”. For the first two series, Morton had avoided becoming polemical. Now, he admitted, “I can’t avoid it. I don’t know quite how but, in some way that I can’t

Comedy

As WIA prepares for season 3, the show’s creator needs to tread carefully, hears Matthew Bell articulate yet, in the fictional world that is W1A, Hugh Bonneville’s character, Ian Fletcher, and the people around him will somehow, by hard work, accident or fluke, contrive to save the BBC.” Morton, a former teacher, enjoyed his first TV success with spoof BBC Two documentary People Like Us, star ring Chris Langham, which originally ran on BBC Radio 4. He was joined at the London event by W1A Executive Producer Jon Plow man. The comedy veteran has had a hand in numerous TV comedy classics, including Absolutely Fabulous, The Office and The Thick of It.

W1A’s forerunner, London Olympics mockumentary Twenty Twelve, was initially poorly received by the corpo ration, revealed Morton. “Twenty Twelve had a bit of a bumpy start – it wasn’t always liked very much in the BBC,” he said. “When it went out and did OK the music changed from ‘We don’t think this is very good’ to ‘Can we have more of these wonderful characters?’” That presented the writer with a problem. His comedy about organising the 2012 London Olympics, which ran for two series, on BBC Four in 2011 and BBC Two in 2012, had “obsolescence built into it”. Once the Olympics were over, so was the programme. Morton’s solution was to transfer Twenty Twelve’s key protagonists to the BBC. Bonneville’s character swapped one meaningless title, Head of Deliver ance at the Olympic Deliverance Com mission, to another, Head of Values at BBC headquarters – postcode, the eponymous W1A. Jessica Hynes’s appalling PR guru, Siobhan Sharpe,

‘W1A: the story behind the series’ was an RTS London event held at ITV Studios in central London on 27 January. David Poyser chaired and produced the event.

Television www.rts.org.uk February 2016

I DIDN’T WANT PEOPLE TO PLAY THE GAME OF ‘WHO IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE?’ BBC

brought the team from her gruesome agency, Perfect Curve. And narrator David Tennant came too. New characters included clueless entertainment producer David Wilkes (played by Rufus Jones), fearful execu tive Anna Rampton (Sarah Parish) and inept intern Will Humphries (Hugh Skinner). Morton and Plowman had discussed setting the series in other public bodies, such as the NHS and the army, but the only one Morton “sparked at”, said Plowman, was the BBC. “The thing that the BBC shares with the Olympics is that we all pay for it and feel we have investment in it,” argued Morton. “What Hugh does brilliantly is to give us the sense of a man who is trying to do the right thing all the time, which is what you get in a public-service organisation.” Nevertheless, he added: “If all the characters were paragons of virtue, making the right decisions all the time, there would be no comedy.” “The spirit behind the show is that the BBC is a good thing,” added Plow man. “The things to be laughed at are the small things that human beings do, not the big things that the institution tries to do.” W1A rails at the idiocies of modern office life, as well as satirising the BBC. “I didn’t want it to be an inward- looking, exclusively BBC story,” said Morton. “The aspiration was that enough of this nonsense happens in big corporations.” Perhaps surprisingly, in view of the stupidity of the job titles (Director of Better), the programme ideas (“Britain’s Tastiest Village”) and the staff (too many to mention), the BBC adopted a laissez-faire attitude to W1A. “You would think that if there was ever a project that would get some kind of interference from above, this would be it. But I have not had a single note about anything from anyone,” revealed Morton. “There’s a very BBC way in which it’s been handled,” said Plowman. “Had it been made for a big American net work, the network, I suspect, would have been all over it like a rash. “No one told us to do or not to do anything – it was handled very well by the people who didn’t contact us.”

Mockumentary masterclass Casting: ‘It’s impossible to believe now but the roles were unattached to any real actors. The only voice I could hear was Hugh [Bonneville’s]. We had a brilliant Casting Director, Rachel Freck, and Producer, Paul Schlesinger, and as a team they were formidable.… [Casting] is an exhausting and exhaustive process.’ Writer/Director John Morton

Filming: ‘Getting permission to film in Television Centre required documents to be signed in at least triplicate by a lot of people who, as far as I knew, had never made a programme. We went to see a man at New Broadcasting House who immediately said, “Yes, we want this to be a working building.”’ Plowman

Acting: ‘I can’t begin to say how hard the actors work to make it look easy. If you look at a page of script, there are very few lines that are complete –they run into each other.’ Morton

Narration: ‘The last thing we do is to get David Tennant to record the narration. It’s a cheat, really, because, in editing, if we have to flip something around or cut something out, I can rewrite the voice-over and David can say something else. It’s a very useful piece of architecture for stitching things together.’ Morton Real people: ‘Clare Balding and Carol Vorderman were written in and I hoped they would do it. In general, I’m not really a big fan [of casting real people] because I don’t get particularly excited about people playing themselves; also, most people are very poor at playing themselves. ‘We had a scene with Alan Yentob and Salman Rushdie arm wrestling and I’d just written, “Ian Fletcher opens the door and sees Alan Yentob and someone he can’t believe he’s just seen doing something”. For a while, it was going to be Kylie Minogue and then Amir Khan.… ‘On the day of filming, Salman Rushdie and Alan Yentob were doing a photo shoot and [we were offered] Rushdie.… What were they going to do [in W1A]? All I could think of was that they were arm wrestling.’ Morton

‘None of it is improvised – it’s entirely written by John.’ Executive Producer Jon Plowman Research: ‘It is all made up. None of the job titles are accurate. I didn’t want to invite people to play the game of “Who is that supposed to be?”… I was trying to create a parallel universe that is very like the BBC.’ Morton ‘We had a series of lunches with the relatively great and the relatively good, from which John emerged saying, “I think that’s enough.” People were telling you their best stories, which are great to have, but not really of any use.’ Plowman Set design: ‘The designer gave us a set that is like the BBC, but turned up a few notches. The Frankie Howerd and Tommy Cooper meeting rooms don’t exist but the colour and feel of them [gives] the show the flavour of the BBC.’ Morton

RTS NEWS

Yorkshire honours students

Calendar's Sally Simpson awards the RTS certificates The News category was won by the University of Sheffield for Sexabled, a brave and frank discussion of sex and sexuality in the disabled community. Sheffield Hallam took home the Factual prize for Scratch, which told the uplifting story of Matt Howes, a

How to restore classics n Digital re-mastering experts Kevin Shaw and Keith Nicholas explained how old shows can be given new life at a Southern Centre event in Basingstoke in November. The digital age could allow unlimited access to ageing material, explained Shaw, but as formats and playback systems become obsolete and the oxide on tape becomes fragile, preservation is not guaranteed. Nicholas, Shaw and their colleagues at BBC Digital Media Services have been developing systems to preserve, store and migrate material to digital master copies. The work can be lengthy and expensive. Shaw showed clips from

ITV's The Professionals, an episode of which takes four people about a week to remaster. This restoration is at the cheaper end of the process. The outstanding results were shown alongside the original 16mm film. Nicholas revealed that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is keen to use digital re-mastering, as are DVD and video-on-demand services. There has been less interest from broadcasters, possibly because of their need to focus resources on current business needs. In April 2016, the work of the re-mastering unit will become independent of the BBC. Gordon Cooper

Paul Harness

nyone with concerns about the future of the TV industry may have found comfort at Yorkshire Centre’s Student Television Awards at York Racecourse in November. Presented with great aplomb by ITV News Calendar’s Sally Simpson, the theme of the evening seemed to be “quality not quantity”. As several of the judges who attended the event commented, while the number of entries might have been down, the quality was up. There was some sensitive and impressive journalism in the Factual and News categories, which saw a huge range of stories, from an enduring love story to a surprise wedding to a tale of adrenaline- junkie motorcyclists.

talented club DJ who lost his arm in a moped accident. Standards were also high in the Animation category. The judges felt compelled to recognise all four entrants, but the ultimate winner was Sheffield Hallam University, with the inventive and bittersweet film, Illuminated.

Animation skills were also honoured in the Open category, with the University of Leeds winning the award for the amusing Fridge Wars. The scripted categories showed incredible promise. The Comedy and Entertainment award was contested by a wacky game show and a dating format, but the ultimate winner was Sheffield Hallam’s cheeky, edgy sitcom ICT. The Drama category also gave cause for great optimism, with an emotional war drama and a creepy thriller about the dangers of social media catching the judges’ eyes. However, the winner was a well-paced and chilling supernatural horror film, The Unveiling, from the University of York. Lisa Holdsworth

Midlands immersed in TV entertainment n RTS Midlands Centre and the Institution of Engineering and Technology joined forces to host an evening with TV technologist Dr NicoLodge las Lodge at the IET in Birmingham, in December. In an informative and entertaining lecture, “New directions in immersive entertainment”, Lodge discussed the history of immersive media, before moving on to the current production technologies that create this effect, such as 360° cameras and virtual reality headsets.

Looking to the future, Lodge considered whether immersivity would amount to more than a gimmick and thus find a place in domestic entertainment. Lodge worked in R&D at the Independent Television Commission, the commercial TV regulator, in the 1990s, before heading technology company Pro vision Communications. He now runs his own consultancy, Lodgical Solutions, and is a Fellow of both the RTS and the IET. Matthew Bell

kindness could have made a big difference,” she said. Explaining her approach to adapting Rowling's novel, Phelps added: “It’s about asking what is the beating heart of the novel – and remaining true to its spirit, rather than sticking to the letter of the text.” Treasure Island has been adapted many times, and Kindle Entertainment Co-director Melanie Stokes said it was important to make her company’s 2012 version for Sky 1 resonate with a modern audience. “I wanted to draw a parallel with the banking crisis – that period of unbridled greed – and it’s why we cast Squire Trelawney as not just a buffoon, as he is in the book, but as a very selfish character,” she said. “It’s remaining true to Robert Louis Stevenson, but making the story relevant to a modern audience.” The casting, Stokes argued, was key – and none more so than Eddie Izzard as Long John Silver. “He’s mercurial and felt absolutely right for the part,” she added. Nick Radlo

ITV News anchor a wave of interest Julie Etchingham in the videos we’ve shared her advice on made. A recording how to prepare for a of our evening with political interview. Google DeepMind’s Among her tips Demis Hassabis has to young journalists racked up nearly was to occasionally 20,000 views, and change the pace of a total viewing time questioning to proof 340,000 minutes. Etchingham duce a better result. See the video at She is nominated for rts.org.uk/demis. Network Presenter of the Year The digital team has been at this month’s RTS Television busy collecting more career Journalism Awards, alongside guidance for our Tips in 60 SecChannel 4’s Matt Frei and the onds video series. This month,

BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire (rts. org.uk/tags/etchingham). For many in the television sector, the site is becoming a go-to place for bite-size news from the world of TV. The news and features section is updated every day with short items on commissions, broadcasting, ratings and Society news.

JK Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy

From the page to the screen

he November London Centre event – “It started with a book” – examined how books are adapted for the telly, drawing lessons from three very different projects. The Hank Zipzer books for children – written by Henry Winkler, who played the

Fonz in vintage US sitcom Happy Days – have been turned into a returning CBBC series. Walker Productions Managing Director Helen McAleer, who had seen Winkler play Captain Hook in pantomime, was determined to make a version with the actor.

BBC

In the series, which is relocated from the US to Britain, Winkler takes a key role as the favourite teacher of Hank, who struggles with dyslexia. Much of what the main character goes through in the books is internal, so more was made of the other characters for the TV series. JK Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy, which has 37 main characters in a chunky novel, presented a different set of problems. Yet, the BBC One adaptation, which aired last year, ran to just three 60-minute episodes. “It’s a convoluted story with not much plot – it’s very much about the characters,” said producer Ruth Kenley-Letts from Bronte Film and Television. Screenwriter Sarah Phelps saw it as a 19th-century industrial novel, examining how cruel small communities can be. Two French films, Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources, were in her mind when she was writing the script. “All that raw hurt and a series of heartbreaking events, when just a little

n Last year was a big one for the RTS. The launch of a brand new site at rts.org.uk helped us increase web traffic by 30%. The site had more than 830,000 page views in 2015 and 230,000 unique users. In January 2016, we had nearly 30,000 users, up 42% on the same month last year. We’re also celebrating passing 10,000 Twitter followers. You can find us at www.twitter.com/ rts_media to discover what all the fuss is about. On YouTube, we’re enjoying

Television www.rts.org.uk February 2016

ITV

ONLINE at the RTS

If you have any thoughts about what we should be covering online, please contact Digital Editor Tim Dickens (TDickens@ rts.org.uk).

RTS NEWS Lloyd serves up a history of Welsh TV n Former HTV executive David Lloyd revealed some gems from the National Screen and Sound Archive in Aberystwyth at an RTS Wales event in November. Lloyd showed clips from the ITV archive spanning 57 years of TV in Wales. The films were transferred to the archive in 2012. RTS members and local TV buffs saw some of the greats of the Welsh screen, including opera singer Sir Geraint Evans and rugby superstar Barry John in John Morgan’s profile Valley Dreams of Glory. Welsh-language program mes were also shown, including Tweli Griffiths’

Nordic lesson for Wales

t is said that “TV tells stories for a nation about a nation” but a Wales event in November showed how Nordic drama producers are finding international as well as local audiences. The event, held in partnership with the University of South Wales, followed a daytime conference on TV production in small nations. Anne Blohm Rudbæk from SF Film Productions and Eva Novrup Redvall (University of Copenhagen) argued that success on the world stage sustains domestic output. Nordic noir in the UK, with series such as The Killing, Borgen and The Bridge, has challenged the accepted wisdom that English-speaking audiences won’t accept content in other languages. BBC Four’s success with these dramas inspired S4C to commission Y Gwyll/ Hinterland, a back-to-back English and Welsh language

Left to right: Noonan, Rudbæk, Redvall and Waade co-production, which travelled to BBC Wales, BBC Four, DR Denmark and Netflix. The success of Nordic noir is no fluke. Danish producers aimed high and moved to using writers rooms, developing new talent and producing longer runs. It paid off and they picked up an Emmy or two along the way. Now they want to show a grittier Denmark. New series Norskov, which is co-produced by Rudbæk, is set in a provincial town with law and

Local-TV: content will prove critical interview with Colonel Gaddafi on S4C’s current affairs series Y Byd ar Bedwar. The audience saw the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1982 and a young Catherine ZetaJones treading the boards in West End Girls, a documentary produced by Alan Rustad. Lloyd, a former Head of Features at HTV, has written a book about his television career, Start the Clock and Cue the Band: a Life in Television. The ITV archive in Wales comprises around 250,000 items, including cans of film, tapes and other formats. Hywel Wiliam and Tim Hartley

n Sanity or vanity? That was the question posed at a special Yorkshire Centre event in November, which considered the future of local-TV. Held as part of Leeds Trinity University’s Journalism Week, the event brought together Dave McCormack, Chief Operating Officer of Made TV Group, which has four of the local-TV licences, including Made in Leeds; Matt Freckelton, Managing Director of Hello York, the York local-TV station due to launch next year; Chris Johnson, Chair of the Local TV Network; and Martin Corri-

gan, Investment Director of global media agency Mediacom. Made in Leeds was celebrating its first anniversary and McCormack said he had always believed in its success: “It hasn’t been easy. We have had to rejig the business model and try a fresh approach, but if local-TV is going to work it has to be financially viable.” It was a point echoed by Freckelton, who said Hello York had gained valuable lessons by learning from the experience and mistakes of existing channels. “It’s got to

order problems, including a thriving drugs scene. But the series also depicts a community on the rise. In one scene, the mayor says: “Some people say Norskov is on the edge. I guess they don’t know the world is round.” It is a suitable metaphor for the place of small nations in today’s global TV markets. Caitriona Noonan from Cardiff University and Anne Marit Waade (Aarhus University) were also on the panel. Hywel Wiliam and Tim Hartley

work as a business commercially,” he said. Johnson told the largely student audience that local-TV channels could offer opportunities for aspiring journalists and presenters. As a young reporter, he had sent stories to his local newspaper – and now local-TV channels could provide the same springboard. “Local-TV is making history,” Johnson added, “and this is something Britain should have had for the past 40 years.” The speakers agreed that, while financial viability was important, content would prove critical: if local stations offered distinct programming, they argued, viewers would tune in and local-TV would prosper. Mike Best

n TV and communications technology is playing an ever more important role inside sports stadia as their owners seek to boost commercial opportunities. Tim Dudding, Production Manager at Brighton and Hove Albion, addressed Thames Valley Centre in January about the Championship club’s relocation from a ground with open terraces to a modern, all-seated stadium with some 300 displays and two permanent giant screens. The thinking behind the installation of screens was to increase the time fans spend at the venue – boosting food and drink sales and managing crowds by spreading fans’ departure times. Brighton uses a fivecamera, HDTV set-up to produce match-day coverage, which is viewed in the ground, on social media and by other media organisations. A typical production starts with a 50-minute section

Decipher MD calls for data to be shared Brighton's five-camera HD coverage

Football gets into HD big-screen TV anchored from the pitch, using a wireless camera. Match coverage follows, including slo-mo replays, and closes with interviews and coverage of other games. Ian Rose, Account Manager at ICT supplier Huawei, said that the deployment of dense wi-fi networks, using in excess of 100 directional access points across the stadium, could meet fans’

expectation of high-speed mobile connectivity. And harvesting fans’ data from the connection process drives commercial activities such as selling club shirts and apps for ordering half-time food. A Brighton-branded TribeHive mobile phone app was introduced in 2014, providing fans with team news, live scores and travel information. Geoff Love

Edinburgh bags awards

Paul Reich

wildlife programme from the University of Edinburgh picked up three prizes at the RTS Scotland Student Television Awards, held at BBC Pacific Quay in January. Dipper from the Water of Leith won the Factual award, as well as the Craft Excellence awards for Camerawork (Kris Kubik) and Sound (Lewis Jones). “This was a stunning and beautiful wildlife programme, engaging and well crafted. Kris, Lewis and the rest of the production team should be very proud,” said RTS Scotland Chair James Wilson. The Animation category was won by Ben Cresswell from Edinburgh College of Art (University of Edinburgh)

RTS Scotland Chair James Wilson (left) with student winners

for The Armadillo and the Earwig. The jury, chaired by Henry Eagles, who also hosted the ceremony, praised the film’s characters as well made and drawn, with effective music and sound effects. Royal Conservatoire of Scotland students Louise Dawson, Dayna Baptie and

Television www.rts.org.uk February 2016

Fergus Thom won the Drama award for Starfish. The jury said the film was clearly directed, with strong performances and an engaging story. Another Conservatoire student, Bethany Angus, won the Editing award for the drama Skin Deep. Rhiannon Adele Melrose

n Co-operation between broadcasters and the big platform companies is vital if the UK is to hold its own against the huge US-based media conglomerates. So argued Nigel Walley, MD of media strategy consultancy Decipher, at an RTS London event in December. Centre members visited iBurbia Studios, Decipher's interactive media research lab in Chiswick, to hear Walley talk about how the consumption of television content is likely to develop. TV has come a long way from the days of four channels, received via a roof-top aerial, said Walley. With multichannel programming from satellite, cable and digital terrestrial platforms, plus broadband bringing the internet to TV sets, the choice is now enormous. While the use of devices other than TVs to watch programmes is increasing, argued Walley, linear broadcasting remains dominant. He said that co-operation between broadcasters and platform operators should focus on the acquisition of the essential data that tells networks and platforms exactly what their customers are watching. This would help to improve scheduling and maximise ad revenues. Currently, broadcasters have their own systems for collecting data, none of which are compatible – and they don’t share the information. Walley said they would have to change that approach to fend off competition from the global media companies: “The fight will be Sky and the broadcasters fighting off Netflix and Amazon.” Nick Radlo

OFF MESSAGE

re you suffering War and Peace – or should that be Phwoar and Peace – withdrawal symptoms? You’re not the only one. Off Message’s Sunday nights seem a little flat minus BBC One’s surprisingly nimble reboot of Tolstoy’s massive tome. Crunching Tolstoy’s sprawling story down to a mere six episodes was a considerable achievement. Take a bow, Andrew Davies. But was the show, as some commentators have claimed, really the best TV costume drama ever? Where does that leave the brilliant Brideshead Revisited? Intriguingly, the last time the BBC tackled War and Peace – in 1972 – the series ran to an epic 20 episodes. What was that about less is more? ■ War and Peace is likely to feature heavily in next year’s awards ceremonies. Meanwhile, those anticipating being feted in 2016’s TV kudos season should start preparing their acceptance speeches. One show expected to clinch some silverware this year is Peter Kosminsky’s superb interpretation of Wolf Hall. The show has already triumphed at the Golden Globes. There, Executive Producer Colin Callender used his speech to urge the Prime Minister to “protect” the BBC. Kosminsky was conspicuous by his absence from the ceremony, held at

the Beverley Hills Hotel. In case you wondered, he was busy back home writing a new drama – this time focusing on British Muslims signing up to fight for Islamic State. No stranger to controversy – he made The Government Inspector about the disappearance of the weapons expert David Kelly – Kosminsky will be hoping that his latest project comes close to equalling Wolf Hall’s impact. ■ On to lighter topics and it doesn’t – or at least shouldn’t – get much lighter than a perfectly baked soufflé. At the RTS’s recent valedictory dinner for outgoing Channel 4 Chair Lord Burns, joint organiser Channel 4 decided to serve a soufflé as the first course. As all aspiring Mary Berrys know, timing is all with a soufflé. Imagine, then, the stress of getting 120 people (including several peers and prominent MPs) all sitting down together at the correct time. Had this task not been expertly handled, the distinguished diners would have been faced with a soufflé as flat as a…. No, it doesn’t bear thinking about. ■ Seasoned observers may have noticed that more than a few senior TV executives have recently quit their jobs. In fact, such has been the unusually high number of top telly people leaving their employers that it’s been hard for even the trade press to keep up.

Well, here’s a go. So far this year (and in no particular order), Peter Fincham, Kim Shillinglaw, Janice Hadlow, Richard Klein and Elaine Bedell have all said they are leaving their day jobs. With Sky’s Stuart Murphy last year exiting to write scripted shows, will any of the above quartet follow suit? Unlikely. The betting is that Fincham and Bedell are teaming up to form a new indie. And if Off Message’s spies are on their game, expect other big TV names to set up new independents in the weeks ahead. ■ Anyone who missed the recent RTS event with Sky content supremo Gary Davey missed a great session. Few high-powered TV folk readily acknowledge any of their mistakes. Yet Davey was prepared to admit he’d turned down an idea for a show that went on to become a monster money spinner. A bit like Decca rejecting The Beatles.... Davey confessed: “The most spectacular screw-up was… at the time, I was commuting between London and New York. Two young guys came into my office in New York and said we’ve got this fantastic idea. It’s about these crime fighters who eat pizza all day. “One’s called Michelangelo, the other’s called Leonardo. They live in the sewer and they’re martial arts experts. They also happen to be turtles. “I said, ‘Look, I really am terribly busy...’” Did he ever own up to Rupert Murdoch?

February 2016 www.rts.org.uk Television

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BBC

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History Don McLean

Vice-Presidents David Abraham Dawn Airey Sir David Attenborough OM

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Who’s who at the RTS

CH CVO CBE FRS

Baroness Floella Benjamin OBE Dame Colette Bowe OBE Lord Bragg of Wigton John Cresswell Adam Crozier Mike Darcey Greg Dyke Lord Hall of Birkenhead Lorraine Heggessey Ashley Highfield Armando Iannucci Ian Jones Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon OBE Rt Hon Baroness Jowell of Brixton DBE PC David Lynn Sir Trevor McDonald OBE Ken MacQuarrie Gavin Patterson Trevor Phillips OBE Stewart Purvis CBE Sir Howard Stringer

Television www.rts.org.uk February 2016

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Honorary Secretary David Lowen Honorary Treasurer Mike Green

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Tim Davie Mike Green John Hardie Huw Jones Jane Lighting Graham McWilliam David Lowen Simon Pitts Graeme Thompson Jane Turton Rob Woodward

EXECUTIVE

Chief Executive Theresa Wise

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Lynn Barlow Mike Best Charles Byrne Isabel Clarke Alex Connock Gordon Cooper Tim Hartley Kingsley Marshall Kristin Mason Graeme Thompson Penny Westlake James Wilson Michael Wilson

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22 March

Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane

RTS Programme Awards 2016 In partnership with Audio Network The awards recognise the very best in British original programmes first aired between 1 November 2014 and 31Â October 2015

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