Television March 2014

MARCH 2014

The Billen Interview

New Dawn for a TV Legend

nt winners Previous gra 1

Appl

4 1 0 2 e h t y n ow f o r

2

ing towards publish 0 0 ,0 2 £ to p u ake a grant of of television The Trust can m ry to is h e th f o spect work on any a

3

n, including the to country of origi ard reg t ou th wi e results d , provided that th all its aspects an y of ­television in particular aspects tor on his hs e th rap of og on rch and resea blication. raphies and m through the study ledged in any pu cts such as ­bibliog public education be suitably acknow d associated proje all an sh ns st tio Tru e ca th The promotion of bli by pu t of ribution made d encouragemen and that the cont ­development an shall be published rch ea res is defined d an of such study e trust. ‘Literature’ e objectives of th th to ific ec sp e rk or literatur it, the work ished projects, wo n of new or unfin ant and that, with tio ple om ­ c e th d without the gr t in he sis lis s. as ub ite . to p ­ bs ing en or we nd giv ed d not be finish Grants will be her ­identified fu ch as CD-Roms an s mpleted with ot orting either could -visual media su uire that the result rk they are supp ­continued and co wo be e ll as including audio research will req th wi for at at ts th th d an ct tion. fie Gr ca oje n. tis bli pr sa tio a pu ca be of t of bli e us ct pu as m pe or ph es The Truste iting, editing ve a real pros provide the i­nitial , development, wr projects must ha , or, the grant will case of literature, support of research e in tives of the Trust. th will be c­ ompleted jec In dly . ob oa ns e br ea th m red to te ll not be conside rough appropria ificant contribution m other sources.The Trustees wi th ign ­ s ble a ssi Applications will ce ing ac ak d m an of n fro ion ts ow tat an kn ec gr e y xp ad e ­ an be m ve a clear ses. , and identify of the work will their work will ha undertaking cour s of their projects demonstrate that of the soundnes ance of students es ten ste ain Tru m e or th Applicants must s fy fee ants to cover required to satis ing, nor make gr Applicants will be ort re­curring fund pp su to ts d en itm wife May ­provide make comm in 1983, he and his e ath th de by his e ed for ov pr Be ber of the RTS. nsid­ered and ap g-s­ tanding mem account Grants will be co lon o 0. a s int ,00 e wa £2 tak n, ll ria rth wi to wo television his s, the Trustees ar, is normally distinguished US assessing prioritie w in its 14th ye George Shiers, a s Trust grant, no their decisions. In ier t Sh sis e as Th . to lls rts wi pe their opriate ex for a bequest in ion, consult appr ay, at their d­ iscret Trustees who m ey available. the RTS, the sums of mon m (available from cial a­ pplication for luded. offi inc an be o on als 14 ay ocumentation m by 31 March 20 ­ d es g ste tin or Tru tions e pp ca th Su pli . to than 500 words all the criteria. Ap ld be submitted ject conforms to invited and shou tion project in not more ca w e pro pli th no eir of Ap th . are re s ed at tu th us on na re ati be e Applic s for which it will should set out th cants should ensu se pli ns po tio Ap . ur ca ­ p ed e pli th vid Ap d ). pro be d for a grant an address below fications should m being requeste perience or quali y identifies the su arl cle Details of your ex at th et ss: dg dre panied by a bu d to the same ad should be accom should be returne chivist from the RTS and le ab ail av Clare Colvin, ar are s form n Society sio vi le Te l Roya e us e Ho Kildar 3 Dorset Rise 8EN London EC4Y

Objectives 4

Criteria

5

6

rs

George Shie

7

rocedure

p Application

BBC

8

BBC

9

uk

clare@rts.org.

10

BBC

imagery and

Do you need

0 0 0 , 2 £ for aof historyion televisct? proje

onics consumer electr ts n ie on of historical ip cti c lle e co r his s nt se Previou ilt a website (www.tekkiepix.com) to preeodisc television of all-electronic

ionary optical vid Fox has bu inton, the early vis still for Philips’s evision system, 1 2013: Barry ibald Campbell Sw ows a publicity ch sh EMI electronic tel Ar re n nitu Ala rco pic of e Ma y Th ph the gra of al bio a nu documents. ing ma t rch firs resea “Black Book”, the arshall, has been producer to ing the 300-page 2 2012: Paul M evision and film n has been digitis ha ug Va on und-breaking tel gro a as r 3 2012: Sim ree ca his exceptional d retrospective of s installed in 1936 sented an illustrate es and schedule pre s ha se Ro d e archive of articl n 4 2011: Davi father of televisio a searchable onlin ke the es by ma nc s to die oto es au ph e Tim liv 00 dio a collection of 1,2 a large number of back issues of Ra d ed nte itis pri dig ty, s cie ha So eve Arnold Palace Television 5 2008/2010: St Britain. of the Alexandra gs of television in ughan, archivist Va on m Si 1: 00 ion of the beginnin 6 2 tat airs sen ll Aff pre be nt CD rre mp oCu Ca d d Robert accurate audio tw evision News an lighting, Desmon ok, Seventy Years t Head of BBC Tel d an authentically bo ile firs a mp the for co e, s ldi rch ha Go ea n ea e Wyndham ork, conducted res 7 2004: Don McL biography of Grac l transmitter netw ist has written a alogue terrestria an the of 8 2005: John Gr er nn pla Sandell, a key British television 9 2009: Ronald of theatre plays on sts Ma the presentation on s Before the iew erv int g tin Wyver is conduc 10 2010: John

Journal of The Royal Television Society March 2014 l Volume 51/3

From the CEO It’s that time of the year when the RTS goes into overdrive on the awards front. I was delighted to see such a starry turnout for the RTS Television Journalism Awards last month.

Huge congratulations to all the winners and a big thank you to all the judges and to the Awards Chairman, Richard Sambrook, who did such a great job on the night.

On that theme, there are few regions who know how to party like our North East & the Border, and they did just that at the Centre’s Awards at the beginning of this month.

For those of you who have not yet reserved a place at the RTS Programme Awards on 18 March, please do so right away.

I am thrilled to announce that the RTS bursaries, announced by HRH The Prince of Wales last October, are now open to applicants. This is a very significant moment in the history of the Society as it marks our increasing commitment to young people and those training to work in our industries.

We are offering 20 bursaries a year to those from lower-income families to study full-time, accredited degree courses in Television Production or Broadcast Journalism.

I am looking forward to receiving the

Contents 5 6 10 12

Stewart Purvis’s TV Diary

14 18

Bowe’s last blast

As he prepares to fly off to Azerbaijan, Stewart Purvis draws valuable lessons from two high-profile RTS events

Dawn keeps on rising

Now running Yahoo!’s UK business, Dawn Airey is thinking big, hears Andrew Billen. She wants to overtake Google

Who benefits from Benefits Street?

Responsible investigation or poverty porn? Tara Conlan explores what Benefits Street tells us about Britain in 2014

Atlantic crossing

Award-winning president of NBC News Deborah Turness tells Maggie Brown how she is turning around the network’s news operations

Ofcom’s outgoing Chairman, Colette Bowe, bows out with a dramatic flourish, reports Steve Clarke

The future’s bright for TV ads

Online advances are strengthening TV’s appeal to advertisers, learns Steve Clarke

Editor Steve Clarke smclarke_333@hotmail.com

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

Television www.rts.org.uk March 2014

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

first applications and am so grateful to the Society’s patrons for their support for this unique initiative.

Our patrons and friends packed the Members’ Dining Room in the House of Commons to hear the RTS President, Sir Peter Bazalgette in conversation with Dame Colette Bowe, as she reflected on the state of our industries.

Her comments are reported in this issue – and she was refreshingly candid.

Theresa Wise

22

Cash 4 concepts

24 27

Dave’s family strikes gold

28 30

How to reboot reality

35

RTS News

Channel 4 is buying minority stakes in indies to capture a bigger share of valuable programme ideas, reports Raymond Snoddy

Torin Douglas watches UKTV come of age as its combined commercial impacts overtake Channel 5

Our Friend in the North

London is not the only magnet for film and TV production.

Stuart Cosgrove witnesses a new dynamism in Belfast, Cardiff and Glasgow

Neil Midgley looks at recipes for refreshing long-running reality TV shows

RTS Television Journalism Awards

The winners and nominees of this year’s awards, presented at the London Hilton on 19 February and hosted by Sian Williams

Reports of RTS Centres’ events around the UK and Republic of Ireland

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

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

Legal notice © Royal Television Society 2014.

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

3

RTS NEWS National events RTS AWARDS Tuesday 18 March RTS Programme Awards 2013 Venue: Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane, London W1K 7TN ■ Callum Stott 020 7822 2822 ■ callum@rts.org.uk Friday 16 May

RTS Student Television Awards Booking not yet open Venue: TBC RTS FUTURES Wednesday 26 March

Sun, sex and suspicious formats With Jack Bootle (RDF) and Linda Green (BBC) Venue: Hallam Conference Centre, 44 Hallam St, London W1W 6JJ ■ Callum Stott 020 7822 2822 ■ callum@rts.org.uk

Local events BRISTOL ■ Andy Batten Foster ■ andrewbattenfoster@hotmail. co.uk DEVON & CORNWALL ■ Contact TBC EAST ANGLIA ■ Contact TBC LONDON ■ Daniel Cherowbrier ■ daniel@cherowbrier.co.uk MIDLANDS Thursday 13 March

Birmingham Film and TV Summit 2014 In partnership with Birmingham City Council, Film Birmingham, the Producers’ Forum, City TV, Creative England, the Screenwriters Forum and the Writers’ Guild. 11:00am for 12noon Venue: Centenary Square, Broad St, Birmingham B1 2ND Followed by:

RTS Baird Lecture: The integration of social and digital into broadcast

Speaker: Mars El Brogy 6:00pm for 7:00pm Venue: Council House, Victoria Square, Birmingham B1 1BB ■ Jayne Greene 07792 776585 ■ jayne@ijmmedia.co.uk Dr Michael Lynch RTS/IET LECTURE Tuesday 13 May

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

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

4

NORTH EAST & THE BORDER ■ Jill Graham ■ jill.graham@blueyonder.co.uk NORTH WEST Thursday 13 March

TV Quiz

Venue: The Lowry Theatre, Pier 8, Salford Quays, M50 3AZ Thursday 1 May

Liverpool locations tour: part 2 Pick-up point TBC ■ Rachel Pinkney 07966 230639 ■ rachelpinkney@yahoo.co.uk NORTHERN IRELAND Tuesday 25 March

Student Television Awards Venue: E3 Campus, Belfast Met,

Your guide to upcoming national and regional events

398 Springfield Road Belfast BT12 7DU Thursday 27 March

RTS Futures: Meet the Pro – Michael Wilson in conversation with Brooke Allen Michael Wilson, Managing Director of UTV Television, will talk about his career and how he thinks students and young people can stand out from the crowd in the digital age. He will also talk about plans for UTV Ireland and give an insight into the world of news making in Northern Ireland.

Brooke Allen is Chairman of RTS Northern Ireland. Tickets will be available on EventBrite.

2:00pm for 2:30pm Venue: Ormeau Road, Belfast BT7 1EB ■ John Mitchell ■ mitch.mvbroadcast@ btinternet.com REPUBLIC OF IRELAND ■ Charles Byrne (00353) 87251 3092 ■ byrnecd@iol.ie SCOTLAND ■ James Wilson: 07899 761167 ■ james.wilson@ cityofglasgowcollege.ac.uk SOUTHERN Wednesday 26 March

Meet the professionals An opportunity for media-based HE and FE students from across the South to meet a range of media professionals informally to discuss current TV issues and opportunities. 2:00pm-5:00pm Venue: Bournemouth University, Poole, Dorset BH12 5BB ■ Gordon Cooper ■ gordonjcooper@gmail.com THAMES VALLEY Wednesday 14 May

NAB Review

Thames Valley Centre’s annual trip to Las Vegas. Our panel of experts always provides a lively, topical debate. 6:30pm for 7:00pm Venue: Pincents Manor, Pincents

Lane, Calcot, Reading RG31 4UH ■ Penny Westlake ■ info@rtstvc.org.uk WALES Friday 21 March

Student Television Awards Presentation of the winning entries at the Zoom Film Festival, Wales’ largest film festival for young people. 6:30pm Venue: Sony Theatre, Bridgend College, Cowbridge Road, Bridgend CF31 3DF Thursday 27 March

Getting into factual

Joint event with Media Academy, Wales. Aimed at new entrants and young aspiring factual producers/documentary makers.

Panellists: Phil George, Paul Islwyn Thomas, Deborah Perkins and Samantha Rosie Venue: Zen Room, The Atrium, University of Glamorgan, Adam Street, Cardiff CF24 2FN March/April – date TBC

Science on television

A profile of S4C science series Dibendraw, produced by Telesgop. This event is held in partnership with Swansea Metropolitan University.

Venue: TBC Thursday 15 May

AGM

Members only. 6:30pm.

Followed by:

Meet the CEOs

7:00pm Venue: Park Plaza, Greyfriars Road, Cardiff CF10 3AL ■ Hywel Wiliam 0798 000 7841 ■ hwyel@aim.uk.com YORKSHIRE Friday 27 June

Programme Awards A number of new awards have been introduced – including one to be voted on by guests on the night – for this, the 10th annual awards Venue: TBC ■ Lisa Holdsworth 07790 145280 ■ lisa@allonewordpoductions. co.uk

March 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

TV diary As he prepares to fly off to Azerbaijan, Stewart Purvis draws valuable lessons from two high-profile RTS events

T

he Members’ Dining Room at the House of Commons is, unusually, full of media folk who’ve come to hear one of our own speak after dinner. It is a smart way of the RTS marking the end of Dame Colette Bowe’s term as Chairman of Ofcom.

Some past or present MPs are with us. I’m sitting next to Lord (Chris) Smith of the Somerset Levels, fresh from flood relief in the West Country and blame games in Westminster.

When Dame Colette is asked about the future of the licence fee she says she’s “got sympathy with the idea that some more of the funding currently available for public service broadcasting should be contestable.”

She concedes that it might be very difficult to make it work in practice and cites the previous Government’s plan to use licence-fee money to fund regional news on ITV. As the adviser to Richard Hooper’s panel, which chose the winning bidders in three pilot areas, my own memory is that the process worked smoothly and produced exactly the “competition, dynamism and innovation” that economists such as Bowe hope for out of contestable funding.

But the incoming Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, preferred his own idea, local TV, which also uses some of the licence fee.

■ By coincidence, a week after the RTS dinner, it is announced that regional news will continue on ITV for another 10 years, as ITV plc and STV accept Ofcom’s terms for

Television www.rts.org.uk March 2014

renewing their Channel 3 licences.

Obviously, the current ITV regime takes a different view from its predecessor, Michael Grade, who said back in 2009 that “viewers would benefit” if regional news disappeared entirely from ITV. ■ The RTS Television Journalism Awards recognise the best in news and current affairs at both regional and national level. This year the best includes former colleagues at ITN, Mark Austin, Michael Crick and Deborah Turness – now President of NBC News – who gets the Judges’ Award as “a uniquely talented journalist who has shattered more than one glass ceiling and doesn’t take no for an answer”.

I’d say the same about a current colleague who is my unheralded winner of the night. Channel 4’s head of news and current affairs, Dorothy Byrne, deserves credit for the channel winning News Programme of the Year (again) and both current affairs awards.

■ There’s a special mention before the awards ceremony for Peter Greste and the Al Jazeera team held in prison in Egypt for allegedly “having links with a terrorist organisation” – that’s the Muslim Brotherhood, which was the elected Government until overthrown by the military.

At the Frontline Club the founder, Vaughan Smith, has called some of us together to meet the Egyptian Ambassador and put the case for foreign correspondents who are simply doing their job.

What was said at the meeting is off the record, but suffice it to say that correspondents such as Jon Snow, Peter Oborne and John Sweeney tend to make their arguments fairly forcefully.

■ Off to Sky News for the late-night slot previewing the morning papers, which is a chance to talk about the coverage of the crisis in Ukraine.

I got to know Kiev well after the Orange Revolution, when I was asked to help a leading TV station reform itself from the inside. The corruption was so deep I can’t count my 15 trips there as much of a success.

During election campaigns journalists would ring up the political parties and invite cash bids for slots on that night’s news. And when the head of news was appointed as the presidential spokesman, she insisted that she could easily do both jobs simultaneously. I begged to differ.

■ Now I’m off to Azerbaijan as a tourist, part of my plan to visit all of the countries in Europe. Depending on how you define a country and how you define Europe, this is 48th on my list – just five to go.

Azerbaijan doesn’t sound very European, but it meets the main criteria as a member of the Council of Europe. The best-known qualification seems to be that it has hosted the Eurovision Song Contest.

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

He is a former editor-in-chief and CEO of ITN.

5

The Billen profile

Dawn keeps on rising

Y

ahoo!’s Senior Vice President in the UK, Dawn Airey – one of those few TV executives who has done so much and made such a din doing it that, at 53, she is known even outside the industry– says she has never worked so hard.

Her 14-hour days rarely end before 10:00pm. When she gets back to one of her (three) homes, there is no guaranteed peace.

6

The day I meet her, she will set her alarm clock for 1:00am and a two-hour phone conference. That is the price, I suppose, of working for an American company, even when you are mum to two young children.

It might also be what happens when the company you work for has a rival called Google – whose yellow-fronted London HQ looms ominously through the windows of Yahoo!’s offices in Shaftesbury Avenue where we talk.

“You’ve got to remember,” she

parries when I mention her neighbour, “in the US, Yahoo! is the second-mostloved brand after Disney. We’re the number-one internet destination. In the UK our position is we’re behind Google.

“I’d love to be number one. I’d love to be bigger than Google – and never say ‘never’ because we aspire high.

What do I think of Google? I think it is a fantastic service.”

Yahoo!, however, is focused on something rather different, she

Yahoo!

Now running Yahoo!’s UK business, Dawn Airey is thinking big, hears Andrew Billen.

She wants Yahoo! to overtake Google

Television www.rts.org.uk March 2014

SOMETIMES PEOPLE CAN MISTAKE CANDOUR. I’M ACTUALLY THE BIGGEST PUSSYCAT GOING Airey left when she felt she could take it no further. The board had vetoed her commissioning Big Brother, she had been outbid for The Simpsons, and at the time there was not the money to buy Neighbours.

The rumour was that ITV wanted her, but she chose Sky instead. In 2007 she did return to ITV, but Grade, who was now back there himself, did not have the surprise and delight of his Director of Global Content for very long.

With its demographic skewing the wrong way, Five, as it now was officially, wanted her for its Chairman.

Grade was apoplectic.

“He’ll

never forgive me. Because I embarrassed him. He thought I behaved appallingly.”

Did she? “Did I? No. I exercised a right in my contract. I absolutely accept I left unusually early, but he didn’t want to know about the compelling nature of something that I’d grown, built, was so attached to.

“The reason I took a very deep breath and went back to Five wasn’t even arrogance. I thought, ‘Actually – you know what? – I can get it back to a bit more what it should be,’ especially with the investment that [major shareholder] RTL told me it was going to make.

“But my timing was immaculately bad. I was shoved on gardening leave because ITV was well pissed off with me, and understandably so. I eventually returned in October 2008, three weeks after Lehman Brothers collapsed.”

Advertising revenue crashed. From growing the channel, her new brief from Bertelsmann, RTL’s owner, was to fight for its survival. She reduced �

The Spice Girls promoted Channel 5’s launch in 1996, when Airey was the channel’s director of programmes

Channel 5

explains: “We’re there to make your daily habits easier. We want to surprise and delight you with the content that we deliver, whether that’s our own creative content or the curated content that we get from all around the web that we trawl and bring to you.”

For almost 30 years, Airey’s reputation has not been so very different – although her former boss, Michael Grade, who managed to lose her twice to Channel 5, might want to add “frustrate” to “surprise” and “delight”.

She is short, slim, speed-talking, a whirligig of energy. She is good with people, and she is good with me. The first thing she shares are photographs of her girls, Dulcie, 7, and Matilda, 4, whom she shares with her civil partner (“wife”) Jacqueline Lawrence, a former producer of some rather racy documentaries and now chair of a children’s charity.

How then, I wonder, did she earn her nickname “Scary Airey”?

“Oh, that was my old boss. I don’t know why he called me Scary Airey and Zulu Dawn. It’s probably being northern and dead straightforward.

Sometimes people can mistake candour. I’m actually the biggest pussycat going.”

Was that boss Michael Grade?

“No, it wasn’t Grade. I’m sure he has far worse names for me than that. No, it was the dear, late, lovely Andy Allan.”

Allan, who died two years ago, took the Cambridge graduate on as a management trainee in 1985 at Central, where she became Controller of Programme Planning before moving to the ITV Network Centre.

She regarded him as her mentor, although it was Channel 5 that made her – even as she helped make it, sleeping in its office in Long Acre in the months up to its launch.

When she left Grade’s Channel 4 to be 5’s first Programme Director, he warned her that first directors of programmes were always fired.

She, on the contrary, was promoted to chief executive and hacked out a 6.5% audience share. “It really was a very, very joyous period. It was also hard,” she recalls.

7

8

Above: Airey at BSkyB in 2003, which she joined as Director of Sky Networks What did we introduce? Father Ted, Friends, ER, Without Walls: I’d say those are pretty significant shows.

“Launching a free-to-air channel, bringing it from zero to 6.5% share – I would say that’s pretty good.

“I would say starting off at Sky responsible for its wholly owned channels and ending up running everything apart from sport, including third-party relationships, in terms of content; building it up to be taken seriously – nowhere near as seriously as now, but without the budgets it has now – I would say that is an achievement.

“So it’s very easy to say, ‘What’s Dawn done?’ But actually, I’ve done quite a lot. Would what I’ve achieved be acknowledged if I’d stayed at places a lot longer? Very possibly. But that isn’t how I’m wired.”

She is wired, we have established, to surprise and delight. Certainly, friends were surprised when, in the middle of starting a business with super-agent Russ Lindsay, she allowed herself to be

Right: Airey at the RTS Cambridge Convention 2009; her after-dinner speech was sponsored by Channel 5’s owner, RTL. Sitting opposite was her old ITV boss, Michael Grade headhunted by Yahoo! Her confidantes did not so much warn her not to go as ask if Yahoo! was still going.

Bells then tended to ring for them, she says, and they remembered it had a glamorous, new, young CEO called Marissa Mayer.

Airey eventually met Mayer at Yahoo!’s Sunnyvale Campus in the Phish Food Room (Yahoo! offices are quaintly named after ice creams). She found her “seriously impressive” and noted Mayer talked even more quickly than she did.

As for achievement, Yahoo! has its own way of “calibrating” the delight it takes in its employees through their quarterly performance reviews: “If you fail, you are out.”

Such was the fate, a few weeks before we meet, of Airey’s immediate boss, the Chief Operating Officer, Henrique de Castro: fired after 15 months. She assures me she is not scared.

Airey certainly has no reason to be.

Whatever happens, she must have

BSkyB

� the cost base by 25% and stripped back the programme budget.

Audience share nevertheless grew.

But with the advertising outlook remaining grim, Bertelsmann decided in 2009 to sell. Five’s eventual buyer was Northern & Shell, owned by Richard Desmond.

Airey never entertained the idea of working for him: “Put it like this, I think we would not have survived a couple of weeks with each other.

Either I would have walked out, or he would have fired me.

“I like a degree of autonomy and Richard likes a very high degree of autonomy.”

Desmond is now looking to sell Channel 5 himself at a considerable profit. I wonder if she is a little jealous?

As one former Five staffer I approached asked: “How come Richard Desmond turned Channel 5 into a £700m business in two years while she – with a four-year gap – took more than a decade to make it a £100m business that barely made a profit?”

She points out that after the sale the ad market defied the soothsayers and rose more than 15%. Because of the costs already stripped out, Channel 5 was in a rather good position, although she salutes Desmond’s coup of salvaging Big Brother.

“I know he’s been quite rude about the previous management, but the previous management handed over to him a business where a lot of the heavy lifting had been done and he bought it on a fantastic rising tide that nobody [expected].”

Here, however, we come to what some see as the paradox at the heart of Airey’s career.

It has been meteoric, varied and sustained, but where lies its crowning achievement? I ask what she thinks it is.

“My greatest achievement is still breathing after the rich life I have led,” she jokes.

Her hell-raising years? “I certainly know how to have a good time.”

So I ask her again, more seriously.

From the fluency of her answer, I judge it is not the first time she has delivered it.

“I would say I have achieved in quite a number of places. Being the first Controller of Network Children’s and Daytime Programmes at ITV, and in the kids’ schedule beating the BBC in terms of performance.

“I’d say at Channel 4, when I was Controller of Arts and Entertainment…

Simon Albury

In the path of a pint-sized tornado

Paul Hampartsoumian

Dawn Airey, Senior Vice President for Europe, Middle East and African Business, Yahoo!

I LIKE TO PUT MYSELF UNDER CONSTANT PRESSURE… THERE MUST BE SOMETHING WRONG WITH MY PSYCHE SOMEWHERE, THIS CONSTANT NEED TO PROVE MYSELF amassed enough wealth, at least in bricks and mortar, to tide her over.

What is more, she has her family.

In her 19 years with magazine publisher Martin Pearce she had never wanted children. When she unexpectedly fell in love with Lawrence, her views on the subject did not change.

“I didn’t want children. She did. And if you’ve met Jackie or people who know her, you know that she tends to get what she wants.”

So she changed everything for her?

“I was single, living in a nice flat and suddenly we’re living in a semi-detached house with two kids. How did that happen?

“It wasn’t that sudden, of course.

She’s delightful and wonderful, but if you are two women and you want to have children, actually a lot of planning has to go into it because you can’t have them naturally.

“I needed convincing, but I wouldn’t be without them now. They’re wonderful. They’re the most wonderful,

Television www.rts.org.uk March 2014

life-affirming, funny little things that I’ve ever come across.”

Does she see them enough? “Yes, I see them at weekends, and during the week. To be honest, I like to get home one night a week to do stories, and in the morning at least take Dulcie to school – and I do usually manage. But they understand. They’ve been here.

They know where I work.”

She becomes something near reflective. “I like to put myself under constant pressure, which is a bit weird really. There must be something wrong with my psyche somewhere, this constant need to prove myself.”

I can see now why that achievement question stings. What would be the point of spending so much time in offices, away from your partner and now your children, without achievement?

Perhaps, one day, it will be Yahoo! that will supply her definitive riposte.

Dawn Airey is Senior Vice President, EMEA, Business, Yahoo!

Civil partner Jacqueline Lawrence, TV producer turned chair of Elma Trust, charity for underprivileged children in Cambodia; two children Born Preston, Lancs, 1960; moves with father, a civil engineer, to Plymouth, following parents’ divorce Education Kelly College and Girton, Cambridge (studying geography) 1985 Management trainee, Central Television 1988 Director of programme Planning, Central 1993 Controller of Network Children’s and Daytime Programmes, ITV 1994 Controller of Arts and Entertainment, Channel 4 1996 Director of Programmes, Channel 5 at its launch 2000 Chief Executive, Channel 5 2003 Director of Sky Networks 2007 Rejoins ITV as Managing Director of Global Content 2008 Defects to Channel 5 (then called Five) as Chairman and Chief Executive 2010 Leaves to join former Five owner, RTL 2012 Plans start-up with Russ Lindsay of Infinity Creative Media 2013 Joins Yahoo!

On Channel 5 ‘I cared about it more than I cared about pretty much any other broadcaster because I’d given it everything’ On her tombstone ‘Channel 5 stands for film, fucking and football’ Fuller quote ‘It’s actually about a lot more than that’

9

Documentaries

Who benefits from Benefits Street?

Responsible investigation or poverty porn? Tara Conlan explores what Benefits Street tells us about Britain in 2014

F

10

them taking part [in the series to being] on social media with people [threatening] to kill or petrol bomb them”.

Jaddoo is scathing about the programme-makers, claiming: “Did they take advantage of vulnerable people?

Yes they did. This is totally tasteless television production.”

He calls on industry bodies to “lay

James Turner Street residents Mark and Becky: Richard Ansett/Channel 4

rom the House of Commons to Channel 5 and everywhere in between, Channel 4’s Benefits Street and the welfare of its inhabitants have been a topic of debate since the series began in January.

Is it so-called “poverty porn” or searing, observational television bringing 5 million viewers to an issue that rarely makes it into the mainstream?

Let’s face it, welfare cuts do not usually draw such ratings in primetime nor create a Twitter storm.

The series drew around 1,800 complaints. Such was the reaction that an additional show, Benefits Street: The Last Word, and a live debate were installed.

Rival Channel 5 got on board, staging its own debate, and Work and Pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith mentioned the programme in a speech.

But local activists working with inhabitants of James Turner Street in Winson Green, Birmingham, argue that the programme has left a scar on the community.

Desmond Jaddoo, part of the Birmingham Empowerment Forum, has been working with Sharon Thompson, a local magistrate who was homeless as a teenager, and community organisers Lorraine Owen and Tyrone Fowles.

Jadoo claims: “One of the key things we were concerned about in the first place was that someone could have lost their life.

“Some people were on the edge of suicide. We’ve had to spend a lot of time with them to help turn them around and to cope.”

He says that many of them were finding life tough enough but, “it went from

Although he concedes there were “one or two grumbles” in the run-up to transmission, he says the scenario painted of unhappy participants is “not a fair picture of what they are saying to us”.

He says that some chose not to take part because of the series title, which he says was “finalised relatively late”.

WHERE IS THE LINE BETWEEN MAKING POLITICAL DOCUMENTARIES AND POLITICAL PROPAGANDA? down standard rules that television companies [must] follow when they engage [with] communities. There needs to be a protocol – a set of ground rules.”

However, Channel 4 head of factual Ralph Lee argues that “by and large the participants have been very supportive of the programme”.

Lee says the show “was about community and benefits. It was clear what we wanted to capture about James Turner Street.”

Kieran Smith, factual creative director of Love Productions, which made the programme, says he was “massively surprised” by the ratings and

sode just as the Government instigated another set of cuts…

“Actually, what’s happened is that there has been a focus on the issues.

“If we’ve sparked a debate about welfare and people’s attitude towards it, then it’s all part of what we hoped it would achieve.”

Chris Bryant MP, who appeared on the heated Channel 4 debate show, attacked the broadcaster for focusing on shoplifting in the first episode.

Author and writer Owen Jones agrees: “Channel 4 [by] having a show called Benefits Street and in the first episode focusing on petty thieves and shoplifters – and that’s not to say they don’t exist – ends up propagating the narrow view of people on benefits.

“It is completely unrepresentative of the majority.”

Jones’s 2013 RTS Huw Wheldon Memorial Lecture called on the industry to ensure a range of voices are heard on-screen instead of what he claimed are the current crop of gross caricatures.

He tells Television that if the industry does not provide paid internships then it will be populated by people who

IF WE’VE SPARKED A DEBATE ABOUT WELFARE… THEN IT’S ALL PART OF WHAT WE HOPED IT WOULD ACHIEVE Lee explains that Channel 4 picked it up knowing that, due to the political timetable, welfare would be a key talking point during the filming of the series.

He reflects: “Why this series particularly struck a chord… some of it was the timing. We launched the first epi-

Television www.rts.org.uk March 2014

“can afford to live off the bank of mum and dad” – something Smith agrees with. “It’s a very middle-class industry,” he says.

Jones adds: “The whole proliferation of these programmes… they [producers] will say it’s a topic of debate. But where is the line between making

James Turner Street resident White Dee: Richard Ansett/Channel 4

response: “We thought it might get 2 million and that people would think it was a well-made documentary.

“In the first instance, when programme one went out, there was a lot of negative criticism, saying it was ‘poverty porn’. I was taken aback by that.”

Smith says he was particularly proud of programme two, about immigration.

Overall, he says the series “quite rightly deals with difficult subjects” and has “compassion”.

He strongly rejects accusations that participants were not cared for: “I think we took a great deal of care.

[They] saw the programmes before they went to air… the main characters were happy when they saw them.

“We were there openly and publicly for a year. At no point did Desmond Jaddoo or others come and ask what our intentions were. Nor did the local school’s new owners… I’m highly sceptical; a lot of self-serving is going on.”

Love pitched an early version of the programme to the BBC two years ago with the working title, The Benefit Street, but was turned down because the BBC had similar shows in development.

political documentaries and political propaganda?

“It’s set by a media elite who film prejudices about social security. If they focus on the most unrepresentative people [that will] fuel that narrow view.”

A second series of Benefits Street has been commissioned, but not in Birmingham. A new area has yet to be found.

Smith says that, due to the negative press, “I slightly worry if it will be too hard to get anybody… it’s going to be incredibly hard to find a street that wants to take part.”

But some good has come out of the programme for some of the participants – Mark Thomas was offered a job and Sherrell “SB” Dillion is doing modelling work.

And you can imagine Endemol considering some participants for Celebrity Big Brother.

Jones thinks it will be harder to find people who will not “play up for the cameras” in series two (“you will get larger-than-life characters”). But Lee asserts that “we made a documentary series not an entertainment show… we’ll approach it as a documentary” and exclude people who are “doing it for self-promotion”.

Jones highlights True Vision’s stark Poor Kids, which aired on BBC One in 2011, as an example of a good programme about welfare that “gave a platform to speak that wasn’t sniggering or patronising.

“I’m not saying there isn’t morally problematic behaviour. It’s about balancing, so it’s in proportion.”

Jones appeals to broadcasters not to “prey on people” or use them as “fodder”, and to think about the “impact on people’s lives”.

According to Jaddoo, “We’ve got some people [who] ended up OK out of it and some not at all.”

Children at the local school were being heckled, but that has abated after police made arrests.

However, Jaddoo says “attendance at the school did drop”, and it remains to be seen what the long-term effect on residents will be.

Invitations were issued to all the leading politicians to visit James Turner Street.

According to Jaddoo, none has accepted yet: “They can laugh and joke about it in Parliament, but no one’s got the bottle to come down and face these people – which as an elected politician they should do.”

11

Atlantic crossing

Award-winning president of NBC News Deborah Turness tells Maggie Brown how she is turning round the network’s news operations Profile

12

Richard Kendal

‘‘I

took an awful lot of my learning to NBC News,” says Deborah Turness, the former Editor of ITV News, reflecting on the whirlwind change she has imported during her first six months as the US’s first female head of news.

She was renowned in London for her enterprise in restoring the punch to News at Ten. A key challenge on her arrival as President of NBC News last summer was finding a way to rescue its morning show, Today, which was suffering from a ratings collapse.

But, arguably, her most tangible contribution so far has been the relaunch of NBCNews.com, driven by Turness from vision to execution.

It is also crucial to her longer-term, overall vision. This involves refreshing and remoulding NBC News into a multi-platform, digital-first news operation.

“At NBC, what we are thinking about is increasing the emphasis on mobile.

It’s the very foundation of my digital strategy,” she explains.

The news site tailored for mobile users is now clearly labelled and easy to use. It includes short, 30-second “need to know” video items and “debunker” features that set out to challenge the received wisdom on topical stories – and which double as vehicles for pre-roll adverts.

To British eyes it is a US cousin of the no-nonsense ITV.com/news, revamped under Turness in 2012 to much acclaim.

“The great tragedy of television news is that so much information and experience is discarded in order to deliver the two-minute news package,” she observes.

When she considers the still-unlocked potential of a formidably resourced global news operation of 800 journalists – four times the size of her team at ITV – “it almost blows my mind sometimes. The opportunities and possibilities are only as limited as your imagination.

“Joining NBC News was like being hit in the face with a fire hose, but also it was about being able to take control of it and direct it.

“TV News is perfectly packaged. But news is also messy, an ever-changing beast. It can be much more raw, it can be analysis, [it can also be] musings on how and what [the journalist] decides are the best questions to ask at an interview.

“You can do both, and unlock with it the knowledge and rich experience of correspondents.”

In January Turness was joined at NBC by Julian March, previously Director of Online for ITV and the executive behind the launch of the Sky News app.

“Julian is a TV native and a digital native,” says Turness. He is responsible for “further integration of broadcast TV news and digital operations” through a central news distribution hub.

As Senior Vice President of editorial and innovation, he runs NBCNews.com, the digital business. March also oversees an inhouse test bed that is intended to keep NBC News plugged into social media and advances in news aggregation.

Until 2011 NBC was locked into a joint news venture with Microsoft.

Comcast, the cable giant that bought NBC Universal, ended the tie-up with the software giant.

NBC has the rights to the Winter Olympics, so Turness was in Sochi for the launch, overseeing news coverage for the NBC Network.

Today scored a rare ratings victory over rival ABC’s Good Morning America during the first week of Olympics action.

On the day of our interview Sochi was ousted from the top slot by a grim report from another of her ITV recruits and allies, Bill Neely, on the exodus of starving women and children from Homs in Syria.

In her first week at NBC’s Rockefeller Center HQ last August, Turness hit the ground running.

The flagship programmes, Today, The Nightly News, Dateline and Sunday’s

Television www.rts.org.uk March 2014

Meet the Press were given what she describes as a unified structure: “I immediately established a 9:00am morning conference; I chair it most mornings. The previous one was at 11:45 am and was too late.” This was buttressed with improved weekly planning meetings.

Today had lost its number one position to ABC’s Good Morning America in 2012. She discovered a team that was beaten down by relentless negative press coverage. “They had lost their sense of direction,” she says.

Turness studied audience research going back 15 years, and found that a slow decline had begun in 2000.

“They thought they were unassaila-

JOINING NBC NEWS WAS LIKE BEING HIT IN THE FACE WITH A FIRE HOSE ble, but they were not really,” she observes. “ABC was gaining slightly, year on year. It was the curse of being number one. You lock in the talent, you don’t look behind.

“It had become fluffy and veered towards entertainment. We listened to the viewers, looked at the core proposition and rebuilt the show from scratch.”

Today is now based on hard, relevant news. Her plan involved four principal presenters, Matt Lauer, Savannah Guthrie, Al Roker and Natalie Morales.

The veteran Ann Curry, who had resumed presenting duties in 2011, was retained as chief national and international correspondent.

In September Today introduced new graphics and a new feature of the set, the Orange Room, where Twitter and other social media comments are collated.

The show seems to be heading in the right direction. In the penultimate week of December Today scored an outright win over its rival in the key 25- to 54-year-old demographic.

Turness highlights the scope for enriching NBC’s news coverage by exploiting the assets of parent company Comcast. As the world’s largest media organisation (in terms of its market cap of around $140bn), Comcast’s assets include cable giant CNBC, the MSNBC

news network, a weather channel, and Universal Studios.

Does Turness agree with the analysis of former BBC Director of News Richard Sambrook that rolling news channels have been left “outmoded” by the internet and digital distribution?

Jeff Zucker at CNN, for example, is introducing serious documentaries to fill slow news days.

She says that for commercial news channels, reliant on ads, there has been a flight online, with mobile use overtaking desk-top computers in the US. “Rolling news is increasingly less useful,” she concedes. “But I think there are those big seismic moments when people will turn to TV.” Moreover, a linear television network can adapt schedules, and move to rolling news when truly big stories break.

However, in a time of proliferating choice, appointment-to-view news creates a reference point in the day, from the brand viewers know.

“There has got to be a beacon of credibility. Legacy brands are ever more needed,” argues Turness.

So the trusted anchor of The Nightly News, Brian Williams, has a consultant working quietly alongside him.

“Both the show and Brian need to find their voice in multi-platform,” says Turness. “How do you take this big, venerable brand and convert it and the anchor into a brand?

“We are really a long way down the path, to something more fragmented… so viewers can have a one-to-one experience with the anchor.”

A one-to-one with Turness begs the question of how she is combining a senior news job with living in New York and two daughters, aged four and 18 months.

Her husband, John Toker, a former UK government director of communications, who handled the press for the Leveson inquiry, is a supportive house husband. The couple are based in leafy Westchester County, half an hour by train from Manhattan.

“I love it,” Turness says of her new life, a far cry from London’s Gray’s Inn Road.

Her approach to domestic upheaval would equally apply to her work credo: “Change – the only way to do these things is to get on with it.”

Deborah Turness won the Judges’ Award at the RTS Television Journalism Awards, see page 30.

13

Regulation

Ofcom’s outgoing Chairman, Colette Bowe, bows out with a dramatic flourish, reports Steve Clarke

Bowe’s last blast

A

s Colette Bowe prepares to step down as Chairman of Ofcom, she has highlighted a number of “challenges to business models” emerging for the television and wider media community.

On her radar is the looming battle between broadcasters and mobile operators for scarce spectrum. On top of this come tricky questions about potential restrictions on TV advertising of gambling, pay-day loans and alcohol.

Another interlocking issue is the future funding of the BBC as Charter Renewal takes centre stage.

At an RTS House of Commons dinner the pragmatic, thoughtful Bowe, who leaves the regulator at the end of March following five years in the job, spoke in favour of “contestability”.

This was a surprise in view of the heat surrounding what was called “top slicing” when Andy Duncan ran Channel 4 and had his eye on the BBC’s coffers.

Alongside this, Bowe candidly

14

admitted Ofcom’s very limited role in curbing the darker side of the internet.

She acknowledged the deep unease many have about the web’s dangers, especially for children and teenagers, for those anxious about privacy issues, and for content owners who are often powerless when their IP is stolen.

Among the audience of senior politicians and media’s officer class were: BBC Trust Chairman Lord Patten; Channel 4 CEO David Abraham; Ofcom’s founding Chairman, Lord Currie; and the man literally in the eye of the storm, the head of Environment Agency, Lord Smith, who, more than a decade ago was Tony Blair’s first media minister.

In other words, Bowe knew she was in powerful company and made the most of her unique opportunity to bend some highly influential ears.

“It feels to me that we are at a bit of an inflection point,” she suggested. “There is a lot going on, both on the international front and the domestic front.”

Regulators choose their words carefully. Bowe was no exception,

despite some persistent probing from the event’s chairman, RTS President Sir Peter Bazalgette.

Her first big topic was the tussle over spectrum. The outgoing head of Ofcom warned politicians that they need to pay attention to this technologically formidable subject.

If they don’t, the future of UK digital terrestrial television could be compromised: “I cannot emphasise too strongly that decisions about how this scarce spectrum should be used best for social benefit as well as commercial benefit are some of the trickiest and toughest that people in the industry and the politicians face…

“If we get these issues wrong, they will have very far-reaching consequences for the ability to deliver PSB in the UK,” warned Bowe.

As for the recent report by Digital UK (commissioned from Communications Chambers) that emphasised the broadcasters’ economic contribution (as opposed to the mobile firms’) to Great Britain plc, Bowe expressed some ambivalence.

She praised the report for what she described as its persuasive economic argument, but questioned some of the assumptions it made.

“The analysis of the value of DTT is not in my view correctly analysed, because it does not give full value to the actual value of the low-frequency spectrum.”

She questioned the report’s assumption that present spectrum allocation is optimal: “Do not assume that as spectrum becomes available… that, because of the massive growth in demand for mobile, that this will always socially be the best use for it.”

Ofcom is consulting on how it might be possible to repackage the relevant part of the spectrum so that it meets the needs of both broadcasters and mobile operators.

From the floor Lord Currie stressed that the public sector is a huge user of spectrum, “where there are few incentives for economic use”. He suggested this was an inefficient use of spectrum.

Bowe agreed with her predecessor: �

Television www.rts.org.uk March 2014

All pictures: Paul Hampartsoumian

IT IS VERY, VERY DIFFICULT TO MAKE [CONTESTABILITY] WORK IN PRACTICE, BUT THAT DOES NOT MAKE IT A GOOD REASON NOT TO DO IT

15

� “We’re only just at the beginning in liberalising spectrum that is held by the public sector.

“There are great chunks of the spectrum that are simply sat on by institutions such as the Ministry of Defence…

“There are no incentives for those institutions to be efficient in their use of spectrum – or, indeed, to disgorge it.”

Moving on to the vexed question of whether Ofcom is powerless to regulate a fully connected world, RTS Wales Centre’s Hywel Wiliam, asked whether content regulation would be tenable once fast broadband becomes ubiquitous?

“That’s really the point – is it tenable?” replied Bowe. “We could continue to make the content regulation of linear TV tenable if that was what the public wanted. All of this debate has to be grounded in what is publicly acceptable.”

Bazalgette suggested that traditional TV’s guarantee of being somewhere that provides a safe, regulated environment – in contrast to the Wild West of the web – might be a selling point.

He had hit the nail on the head, said Bowe: “If you knew that certain kinds of channels and delivery mechanisms were going to be subject to certain kinds of controls, you could plonk your kids in front of the telly knowing that what they would see is safe – a kind of walled garden… It’s doable, but is it is what people want?

“Speaking as someone who has been doing this job for a number of years, I am diffident that people like me know what it is that people want.

“Parents, in particular, want ways they can protect their children and try to make their kids safe on the internet – but I am extremely leery of holding out false promises.

“The most I would say is that I think it is possible to make certain kinds of content regulated, if that is what people want.”

Bazalgette rephrased his question – what is Ofcom’s role in regulating the internet in terms of ISP responsibilities, piracy, privacy, bullying, harm and offence, and net neutrality? Bowe’s

16

WE’RE ONLY JUST AT THE BEGINNING IN LIBERALISING SPECTRUM THAT IS HELD BY THE PUBLIC SECTOR answer sounded anathema to Daily Mail leader writers.

“Very little,” said the regulator. “You’ve got to have the art of the possible.

“It is very important that we don’t run away with the idea that something that is essentially not regulatable is regulatable.

“I feel that quite strongly. We would be foolish if we were holding out to people the idea that it’s okay, we can get this covered.”

With the clock running down, it was time to focus on the BBC. Bowe said the issue for the BBC in relation to Ofcom is not “regulating the BBC”.

“We already regulate quite a lot of things that happen at the BBC, which we do in concert with the BBC Trust,” she observed. “It’s not really the issue.”

She then signalled her support for the controversial idea of further top-slicing the BBC licence fee in order to support commercial public service broadcasters.

Bowe said she had “sympathy” for the idea of “contestability”.

“There is a lot to be said for it on competition grounds… and that, of course, has been the great debate over many years.”

She explained that she supported contestability because “on the whole I am on the side of people who think

WE WOULD BE FOOLISH IF WE WERE HOLDING OUT TO PEOPLE THE IDEA THAT IT’S OKAY, WE CAN [REGULATE THE INTERNET]

that what we need in our sector is even more competition, dynamism, and innovation.

“It is very, very difficult to make [contestability] work in practice, but that does not make it a good reason not to do it.”

There had, for instance, recently been an experiment that involved contestable funds, but which didn’t come to anything. Independently Funded News Consortia (IFNCs) were developed around four years ago, but abandoned when the Coalition Government came in.

Bowe acknowledged, however, that further top slicing would “weaken the institutional funding base of the BBC”.

“A massive amount then follows from” supporting contestability. Setting the criteria for top slicing, and making it work (with all the attendant bureaucracy), would be “a complete nightmare”.

And with more households choosing not to own a TV set and watching BBC content online, part of the existing challenge facing the corporation is to enforce licence-fee payment.

Channel 4 CEO David Abraham said that accepting licence-fee money to fund his network’s editorial activities would risk compromising the station’s independence.

He said: “One of Lord Grade’s greatest contributions to Channel 4 was making our revenue model independent.

“There is a very important link between the independence of our revenue and the independence of our editorial activity.”

But he was more positive about taking some of the BBC’s money if it was used to help Channel 4’s growing technological costs as more content moves online.

“The real issue of contestability is less to do with how we pay for programmes than how the industry operates from a technological and competitive standpoint,” explained the Horseferry Road boss.

“The debate about contestability is shifting from one of contesting for funding public-service programming and more towards how public-service programming remains technologically

Dame Colette Bowe, outgoing chair of Ofcom, was the speaker at an RTS dinner held at the Members Dining Room in the House of Commons, February 13. The producer was Sue Robertson.

Television www.rts.org.uk March 2014

All pictures: Paul Hampartsoumian

able to distribute itself in this ever more connected environment.”

Originally, Channel 4 had received an effective subsidy in the form of free spectrum, but today spends in excess of £100m to get programmes to the public.

“There is a big discussion to be had between all the public service broadcasters about how we deliver in this new environment in terms of spectrum and online delivery, which is probably being delivered more and more inefficiently because we all have our own infrastructures.”

Lord Fowler reminded the room that the issue for the BBC was governance, rather than regulation.

Divided leadership at the BBC, with the Trust on one side and the executive on the other, is not a sensible way to run a big corporation, he suggested.

Most people agree with this opinion, claimed Fowler. The problem is that ministers, rather than Parliament, decide how the BBC is governed: “It is something for the BBC to consider, [whether it] would be better off looked after by Parliament under statute, than by a group of ministers under the Royal Charter.

“The Royal Charter is set out as a great defender of the BBC, it is nothing of the sort. It is an open cheque for ministers to make whatever decision they want.”

Lord Patten’s silence was deafening.

Appropriately, the last word of the evening went to Bowe. She recalled how in 1955, when the establishment dismissed the upstart ITV as “commercial television,” one of her predecessors, the first Chairman of the ITA, art historian Lord Clark, was booed in the dining room of the all-male Athenaeum.

“Nothing like that’s ever happened to me,” said Bowe, to applause from an audience of peers, knights and media movers and shakers that even included several women.

17

Shooting an advert for Sony’s 4K TV sets

The future’s bright for TV ads

G

oogle and other internet companies that eat up advertising are laying waste to newspapers and magazines. Will TV be the next medium to feel the heat from the digital giants?

The panellists at a packed RTS early evening event, “The future of advertising – Will television still have a starring role?”, were unanimous that television will retain its pre-eminence as an advertising force with a compelling USP. But times are changing: media owners are focusing on monetising the data revolution ushered in by the digital age, and advertisers and agencies are attempting to get a handle on new viewing habits.

The complex world of airtime trading is evolving, as well, as product placement, personalised ads, advertiser-funded programmes and ads customised for mobile devices emerge alongside traditional spot advertising.

But make no mistake, the time-honoured TV commercial break looks to

18

Online advances are strengthening TV’s appeal to advertisers, learns Steve Clarke TV advertising be as durable as, say, Coronation Street or Channel 4 News.

“In 20 years’ time there will still be 70% of advertising revenue from spot advertising around content,” predicted Channel 4’s director of sales, Jonathan Allan. “It might well be better targeted and delivered through IP, and it may be on demand… but there will still be a powerful advertiser-driven TV proposition in the marketplace that will be amazingly effective.

“It is the only medium that can [create] awareness fast, emotional engagement with a product or brand and

long-term brand equity that lasts for years.

“And it sells stuff. You stick an ad on TV and the sales just go like that [gesturing to indicate an upward trajectory].

“TV’s share of the advertising market has been remarkably resilient over the past 20 years, despite a huge amount of change in terms of fragmentation and moving from linear to VoD.” The Channel 4 ad boss mentioned the success of John Lewis’s Christmas TV campaign and how it boosted the retailer’s sales.

Allan’s view – hardly impartial – might be a shade optimistic. But the two non-broadcasters on the panel agreed that there remains a lot of mileage in TV’s long-standing revenue source.

“TV advertising is still strong because it still works,” said Sue Unerman, chief strategy officer at Mediacom. “TV viewing is still very strong.

The share of viewing in some sections of the audience is still growing.”

Even those elusive viewers aged between 16 and 24 on average watch

Sony

only a minute less than they did a decade ago, she added.

Dominic Redfearn, global media and content director at UK drinks giant Diageo, whose brands include Guinness and Johnnie Walker, agreed that TV’s potency as a commercial partner is undiminished.

He said: “TV is still a hugely important part of what we do… It’s a really cost-effective way to bring reach.”

The traditional commercial break is responsible for the bulk of the £3.5bn annual revenue advertising generates for UK TV networks.

To date, digital has not so much disrupted time-honoured business models as enhanced them.

At Sky, personalised advertising in the shape of AdSmart has finally arrived following a lengthy and expensive gestation process. First mentioned in 2008 by then-CEO James Murdoch, AdSmart has only recently gone live, according to Jeremy Tester, Sky Media’s director of brand strategy and communications.

“Hopefully, when you think about

Television www.rts.org.uk March 2014

Sky, you think about innovation – it’s been in our DNA for 25 years,” suggested Tester.

AdSmart is the latest example of Sky pushing the envelope, he claimed. It provides the ability to target ads – selected by post code and demographic group – to sit on the hard drive of set-top boxes. These are then delivered to the screen during ad breaks.

“We hope it’s a win-win,” said the Sky executive. “It’s great for the viewer to see more relevant advertising and great for the advertiser to land the message where they want to land it.

“And it’s great for us as a media owner being able to provide it.”

Beta testing AdSmart began last July.

Eventually, the plan is to roll it out to third parties, including rivals such as Channel 4.

To date, around 40 campaigns have been completed. Case histories will start to emerge soon, promised Tester.

He said Sky had received “lots of positive stories from advertisers”.

Working alongside Sky IQ (which measures audience data from 500,000

set-top boxes) the satellite broadcaster is able to drill down into audience behaviour.

“In the fullness of time advertisers will be able to glean from that data what their customers are doing and apply their strategies accordingly,” explained Tester.

If all that sounded rather too much like Big Brother (Orwell, not John de Mol) Tester pulled no punches about Sky’s intentions. “Can we bring in more advertising revenue? That’s the entire reason we’re doing it,” he said.

“It will ultimately cost us hundreds of millions of pounds to build AdSmart and keep developing it…

“If our only ambition was to steal a little bit of share from Channel 4 or 5 or ITV, that wouldn’t be ambitious enough. The size of the prize… it runs into billions.”

Sky is targeting advertisers new to TV, including local advertisers. This could be bad news for local radio and newspapers.

“For local advertisers, we talked about post code targeting. There’s a �

19

� huge amount of money being spent in other media that will come to TV,” predicted Tester.

He referenced US research that demonstrates that people who watch relevant advertising switch channels less often.

The CEO of Channel 4, David Abraham, famously described data as “the new oil”. Last month the broadcaster announced that its database of registered viewers has more than 10 million individuals and includes one in two of all UK 16- to 24-year-olds.

This has enabled Channel 4 to introduce new, targeted advertising to videoon-demand, helping to drive growth in digital revenues, according to the broadcaster.

Executives should not think of the future purely in terms of these new elements, cautioned Allan. Instead they need to look at a combination of IP and TV delivery: “People used to ask, ‘Who’s going to win, television or the internet?’ TV is now the internet and will increasingly be the internet… That presents loads of new opportunities for TV to become more multi-dimensional.”

As well as personalisation, which is likely to lead to changes in how airtime is bought and sold, Unerman emphasised some other trends that suggest how TV advertising is changing in an increasingly online world. These are: “super-connected partnerships”; audiences’ demand for greater authenticity as opposed to spin; and the fact that in a second-screen situation, TV can be the point of purchase.

Regarding the first, she said that “super-connected partnerships” enable advertisers to enhance conventional TV campaigns by adding sponsorship and related content deals.

She cited the example of Nikon’s sponsorship of Channel 4’s Hollyoaks.

This, she claimed, led to an immediate growth in Nikon camera sales when they were stocked by Asda.

Unerman’s book, Tell the Truth (co-written with Jonathan Baskin), warned that the age of spin is dying.

Smart shoppers can hit the high street armed with a smart phone and instantly Google key information about buying options.

“Authenticity is a very important way of cutting through to the consumer and to all age groups,” she argued.

The advertising strategist recalled

20

Jonathan Allan

IN 20 YEARS’ TIME THERE WILL STILL BE 70% OF ADVERTISING REVENUE FROM SPOT ADVERTISING AROUND CONTENT how a decade previously there was a gap between advertising and the purchasing decision.

Now, via the second screen, TV becomes a vehicle for e-commerce.

“There is a requirement for real-time data here,” said Unerman. “It begs the whole question of how TV spot time is traded – should there be an element of shared risk?”

Challenges remain. “We continue to do old things in old ways. We have started to look at doing old things in new ways,” she said. “The big question facing us all is: ‘How are we going to do new things in new ways?’”

Providing the advertiser’s perspective on this evolving landscape, Diageo’s Redfearn said that in the present climate, where TV faces competition from social media, the idea of creating

Dominic Redfearn a campaign for only one channel is a non-starter.

“We have been brought up as a TV-dominant brands company,” he said.

“Now we think about a multi-channel strategy, because we know it will drive sales better than a single channel.

“What is the TV part, the digital part, the ECRM part (one-to-one-messages with consumers), the social part…

[These questions inform] the component mix and how [a campaign] works in a given market on a given brand.”

Exploring and understanding the way consumers use search pages is critical, he added: “How can we get our content to flow more easily across that search page when a consumer is at the point of purchase looking for something?”

Redfearn drew attention to the way in which advertisers are now more directly involved in content creation.

“Brands are developing an enormous amount of content,” he said. “You have to feed the various channels we have [in order] to support these brands.

“As a result, we are commissioning and distributing lots of content.”

Diageo works with independent producers such as Shine and North One. “We much prefer to try to tell stories with our brands and work with people who help us to tell a good story better,” said Redfearn.

As for advertiser-funded program-

Jeremy Tester

[ADSMART] WILL ULTIMATELY COST US HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF POUNDS… THE SIZE OF THE PRIZE… RUNS INTO BILLIONS ming, he said it really only delivers when there’s scale: “Doing AFP in one market doesn’t give you a return on the investment. We have to ask ourselves: ‘How many markets will this content be appropriate for?’

“We won’t commission something until we know there will be a return on the investment.”

Asked by chairman Kate Bulkley to predict what the future has in store for TV advertising, Unerman stressed the need for all stakeholders to think creatively about partnerships.

She said: “TV is not one medium anymore. It is used in different ways and it requires different content to come through.”

Allan said that TV would become a far more integrated part of people’s marketing plans, connecting into

Television www.rts.org.uk March 2014

Sue Unerman Google and Facebook. Moreover, “We’ve got YouTube and Netflix coming, as well. There’s a whole new competitive environment we need to deal with. Sky’s business model is changing rapidly to deal with that.”

Tester said the proliferation of VoD and mobile would continue, and again emphasised the importance of data: “You have to have a granular understanding of data,” he insisted. “Who’s watching what and when is hugely informative.

“Give advertisers the capability of serving the audience they’ve identified and understood with the most relevant piece of content.”

Redfearn forecast more AFP and more integrated campaigns across broadcast and online, and drew attention to the importance of data and personalisation.

Despite disruption, one constant would continue, he argued: “What doesn’t change is that through whatever partnership we have, can we make compelling content? That will never change.”

“The future of advertising – Will television still have a starring role?” was an RTS early evening event held at The Hospital Club in London on 4 February.

The producer was Martin Stott, head of corporate and regulatory affairs at Channel 5.

All pictures: Paul Hampartsoumian

The slow rise of British product placement Jeremy Tester: ‘The regulations are onerous. The heralding of product placement was overblown…

‘What I love about product placement is that everyone has proceeded with caution and care.

‘We have customers as well as viewers, so we have to be very careful about what we do with their viewing experience. We don’t want to drive anyone away from Sky… ‘It is always really hard to tell [if new money is going into product placement]… We can’t know what Visa would have done with its marketing budget had it not had the opportunity to place product in [Sky One show] A League of Their Own, but we suspect this isn’t money that maybe would have found its way onto TV had that opportunity not existed.

‘The challenge with product placement is understanding the effectiveness of it.”

Jonathan Allan: ‘Product placement is interesting because the barrier to it is very subconscious…

Product placement is not in your face, it has to be quite subconscious, particularly in the UK with the regulations we’ve got.’

Sue Unerman: ‘It’s got to fit. It is much more prevalent outside of the UK.’ Dominic Redfearn: ‘Alcohol is not allowed to be product placed in the UK at all, but we do alcohol product placement in the US. ‘We will product place in shows such as Homeland and Mad Men, but it has to be sympathetic.

‘If the genre is from a certain decade we will have the bottles from that decade in our archive.

The production team are delighted with that kind of product placement rather than some kind of forced alternative.’

21

Cash 4 concepts

T

he Bank of Dave TV series, devoted to the rise of the unorthodox Burnley Savings and Loans company that lends money to small companies, was just the sort of smart commissioning you would expect from Channel 4.

Now the channel has gone one dramatic step further by setting up its own “Bank of Dave” to take stakes in independent production companies and try to boost the UK’s indie sector.

“I look at Channel 4’s remit – it says stimulate the next wave of creative businesses. Is there a new way we could deliver that remit,” asks “Dave”, the Channel 4 chief executive, David Abraham.

The scheme involves the broadcaster taking stakes of up to 24.9% in independent producers from a fund of around £20m.

Not surprisingly, it is already a hit with many independent producers.

Even though the fund has only just been officially launched, around 100 production companies have been in touch, seeking access to the scarce capital that might take their companies to the next stage.

“We could provide not just an injection of capital, but the context of Channel 4 – in a sense, the endorsement of Channel 4 – when a company is expanding,” explains Abraham.

It is, however, a significant break with the past. Channel 4 has never taken stakes in production companies before; a previous plan that the channel should be able to actually own production companies was blocked more than a decade ago.

The downside of the channel’s way of doing business until now has been that it has benefited only modestly from the intellectual property it helps to create.

Typically it receives 15% of the “back end” of a production it has commissioned, plus fees when Channel 4 represents indies in areas such as overseas programme sales.

“We punch above our weight in ideas and originality, but we do not punch at our weight on retaining the

22

Corporate finance

Channel 4 is buying minority stakes in indies to capture a bigger share of valuable programme ideas, reports Raymond Snoddy value of [those ideas],” Abraham explains.

At the same time, Channel 4 was very conscious of how the nature of the independent production market in the UK was changing.

We have seen the rise of the super-indies and acquisitions by US-based majors such as Warner and Sony, and even by ITV. We have also seen venture capital “umbrella” companies, such as Greenbird, taking stakes in indies in return for handling their business operations.

Meanwhile, Channel 4 has been sitting on cash reserves of more than £200m, earning very little in interest.

“I look at this as a re-interpretation of the remit within the letter and the spirit of the rules that guide Channel 4,” says Abraham.

He says his legal advice is that as long as the stakes stay below 25% (the threshold for maintaining indie status, anyway) such an investment does not involve control.

The obvious problem is how to avoid the possibility – both the reality and the perception – that the companies Channel 4 invests in will receive preferential treatment as a result.

Bernard Clark, the veteran independent producer who chaired Pact’s television branch when the original rules were drawn up, is vehemently against the new Channel 4 fund.

“The whole point of Channel 4 was as a commissioner-broadcaster with no fear or favour –it just took the best

idea, wherever it came from, with what it believed to be the best company that could make it,” says Clark.

He didn’t even have a company when he received his first Channel 4 commission.

Clark fears that production companies with Channel 4 stakes are bound to have greater access, formally or informally, to commissioners through avenues such as invitations to awaydays and parties.

“It’s a retrograde step and the beginning of a very slippery slope. Pact should be saying no, just as a matter of principle. Where is that money coming from? It’s coming from the budgets of next year’s programmes,” says Clark, chairman of TVT, the programme versioning and translation company that also has an associated production group.

In fact, Pact has given the move its blessing and believes that any worries about a distorting effect in the market are already being addressed.

“Access to capital for smallish to medium-sized indies has proved to be a perennial problem for all the creative industries – so if you are looking to do anything significant, you have to finance it, by and large, out of organic growth,” says John McVay, Pact chief executive.

Alex Connock, managing director of Shine North, believes the Channel 4 move is an interesting idea that could increase the diversity of the indie sector.

He would like to see a satellite investment office in Manchester because, while there are dozens of digital start-ups in the North, there are, he believes, still relatively few in television.

“Obviously, there will have to be an incredibly robust Church and State set-up within Channel 4, where the team that operates the investments is credibly separated from the commissioners,” says Connock, who used to run the big indie, Ten Alps.

“Otherwise,” he says, “there could be a perception of favouritism in awarding work.”

Abraham and his chairman, Lord Burns, believe they have created a

WE PUNCH ABOVE OUR WEIGHT IN IDEAS… BUT WE DO NOT PUNCH AT OUR WEIGHT ON RETAINING THE VALUE OF [THOSE IDEAS]

IT’S A RETROGRADE STEP AND THE BEGINNING OF A VERY SLIPPERY SLOPE Television www.rts.org.uk March 2014

governance structure to cope with any concerns.

The growth fund will be run by Laura Francis. She has spent her career on the business development side of television, rather than in commissioning, and she will report to the Channel 4 group finance director, Glyn Isherwood.

An advisory board has been set up chaired by Tessa Ross, Channel 4’s respected controller of film and drama, who has been an executive producer on films backed by Channel 4, such as Slumdog Millionaire and 12 Years a Slave.

“It is an open market, but it is incumbent on us to demonstrate that the way we manage the commissioning process and the way we manage the investment process are separate and open,” Abraham insists.

“Maybe in the past it could have been said that there were cosy relationships, but one of the things our chairman, Terry Burns, is very good at is governance,” the Channel 4 chief executive adds.

Cat Lewis, chief executive of Manchester-based independent producer Nine Lives and vice-chair of Pact, believes it is great to have as many investment options as possible for the independent sector – although it is unlikely she will be applying for any of the Channel 4 money.

“I’m personally not motivated by money and I’m therefore not interested in selling my company. I just love making programmes,” says Lewis.

She believes that once you have an external shareholder, you have to be preparing for “an exit date”.

Abraham insists that, as a minority shareholder, the broadcaster will not be in a position to force a sale to “crystallise” value. And in any case, Channel 4 sees the stakes as long-term investments.

What does “Dave” think the impact of the new growth fund could be over time?

“I hope to be able to look back in five to 10 years,” suggests Abraham, “and say that we are instrumental in accelerating and strengthening the growth of companies that made a real creative difference to the industry.”

23

Dave’s family strikes gold

24

UKTV

F

or most of its 21 years UKTV has been known as the home of TV repeats.

That’s if it’s been known at all, for in recent years it has promoted its channel brands, such as Dave and Gold, rather than its company name.

Not any more. Not only is UKTV commissioning high-profile programmes of its own, such as Yes, Prime Minister and Dynamo: Magician Impossible and Red Dwarf, but it has published its financial figures for the first time – revealing just how powerful a player it has become in the commercial TV marketplace.

In September last year UKTV reported record revenues of £262m and an operating profit of £71m.

In January, viewing figures confirmed that 2013 was its best year yet, boosted by a record Christmas week.

Year-on-year, its 10 channel brands – Watch, Dave, Gold, Alibi, Eden, Yesterday, Drama, Really, Home and Good Food – increased their total audience share by 5%.

UKTV took a record 8.2% share of commercial impacts (known as SOCI – a crucial measure for advertisers), putting it ahead of Channel 5.

Dave’s audience grew by 20%, making it the most-watched non-PSB channel in the country; UKTV also had the most-watched factual and lifestyle channels, Yesterday and Really.

Little wonder that chief executive Darren Childs is smiling.

“This is our third year of audience growth and we’re now at terrestrial levels of viewership, reaching 42 million viewers a month,” he says.

“And we took the largest share of the entertainment audience, ahead of Sky.” (He readily concedes, though, that Sky channels still dominate film and news, where UKTV does not compete).

Multi-channel TV

Torin Douglas watches UKTV come of age as its combined commercial impacts overtake Channel 5 Childs joined as chief executive in 2010 from one of UKTV’s two shareholders, BBC Worldwide, where he was managing director of global TV networks.

Within weeks he needed to find another shareholder. Virgin Media had decided to sell its 50% stake and withdraw from the TV content business, to concentrate on cable and high-speed broadband.

The stake was bought in 2011 by the American media company Scripps Networks Interactive, owner of the Home and Garden Television network – in other words, a leading provider of

lifestyle channels that include The Food Network and The Travel Channel.

“Getting the right partner was my first priority and Scripps is a great shareholder,” says Childs. “It comes from a very tough market in US cable, it’s a very commercial business, and it has really got behind our content growth strategy.

“We asked ourselves, how can we grow our share? And the answer has been new, creative content and brave content, to complement our great stuff from the BBC.” For commercial reasons, BBC Worldwide won’t disclose the income it derives from UKTV, but its chief executive, Tim Davie, says the two businesses have a very strong relationship.

“UKTV remains incredibly valuable to BBC Worldwide for two simple reasons,” he says. “From an audience perspective, it allows people to enjoy programmes for longer.

“And for licence-payers, it enables the re-investment of millions of pounds into new, original content. We are now working even more closely on programme development.”

UKTV has a programme budget of £110m a year, 30% higher than three years ago, and Childs believes that’s been one of the keys to its success.

“I don’t think we’d have had this audience growth if we’d shown only the original BBC series, however good,” he says. “Our ratings spike when there’s fresh, new programming such as Dynamo or Dara Ó Briain: School of Hard Sums.”

UKTV’s early commissions simply involved making more of its BBC content, with special programmes about Blackadder, Fry and Laurie and The Two Ronnies, among others.

Then came Dynamo, Dave Gorman’s and Dara O’Briain’s shows, and Ross Noble’s Freewheeling, a travelogue in

This page: Red Dwarf and opposite, Darren Childs

Television www.rts.org.uk March 2014

DIGITAL SWITCHOVER WAS THE KEY BREAKTHROUGH FOR US UKTV

which the comedian’s route is dictated by his 300,000 Twitter followers. That format has been sold to the US. Childs is unashamed about using performers who already have a strong following: “We’re not big enough to break new talent, but we can take people who are well-known and make more of them.”

UKTV has raised its profile as a maker of programmes, not just a purchaser, through another popular BBC comedy series. “With Yes, Prime Minister, we were looking for well-loved pieces that could be rebooted and brought up to date,” says Childs. “One of our commissioners saw the stage show and approached the writers afterwards to ask if we could do a TV version.

“The Coalition Government gave the show new legs. And Red Dwarf had an audience of 2.7 million for the last series.”

There is newspaper speculation that another series of Red Dwarf is in the pipeline, but Childs won’t confirm this.

Now UKTV is developing its most ambitious series yet – 10 one-hour episodes of Legion, the “passion project” of Tony Jordan, creator of Life on Mars and one of Britain’s most successful TV writers.

“Tony is passionate about story-telling and we’re delighted he wants to work with us – but we won’t make it unless we can get the money. It’s the first time we’ve developed something that requires us to find money on this scale – and you need access to the global TV markets to fund these big pieces.”

Childs says long-form drama is now thriving thanks to Netflix and other innovators.

“Drama is very exciting because it has been liberated from the linear schedule” he says. “You don’t have to commit to being in front of the TV at the same time each week for six weeks. Yes, we �

25

UKTV

Dynamo: Magician Impossible � had VCRs, but now you can catch up in lots of phenomenal ways.”

UKTV’s higher ratings also mean it can now afford a significant programme budget. “It’s a virtuous circle – we can afford better talent, which gives us better ratings, which means we can have a bigger budget, which allows us bigger talent.”

But its success is not just down to new programmes. UKTV has prospered in the new, more competitive digital environment, which brings additional distribution and revenue streams.

“Digital switchover in 2012 was the key breakthrough for us,” he says.

“When switchover happened, Dave was finally in the same number of homes as BBC One and ITV, and we had a level playing field.

“Something similar happened when the US finally got cable everywhere and HBO and Showtime really started getting established. It was then a question of how you got people to watch us.”

Childs says UKTV is agnostic about delivery methods and the source of its revenue streams. “It’s all adding to the viewing and we can now monetise this content in so many ways. We have four free-to-air channels totally funded by advertising – Drama, Dave, Yesterday and Really.

“The other six are a hybrid of sub-

26

IT’S A VIRTUOUS CIRCLE – WE CAN AFFORD BETTER TALENT, WHICH GIVES US BETTER RATINGS, WHICH MEANS WE CAN HAVE A BIGGER BUDGET, WHICH ALLOWS US BIGGER TALENT scription and advertising. So we act like a free-to-air broadcaster and a pay-TV broadcaster – we straddle the two.

“Three years ago, when I arrived, we didn’t have a single video-on-demand (VoD) outlet. Now we’ve got BT, TalkTalk, Sky Go and so on and we’ve got new teams creating apps.”

Childs says UKTV now has no fewer than 26 24-hour channels of content, including VoD, AVoD, apps and broadcast.

“You have to keep innovating. It’s often said that innovation is an organisation’s only true form of com-

petitive advantage,” he argues.

It doesn’t always work, of course.

Blighty, its light factual channel, was closed last July and replaced by Drama – which, unlike most of UKTV’s other channel brands, does what it says on the tin.

“We couldn’t get Blighty to work, so we shut it down. We now innovate fast and get out fast if it’s not working.”

Childs is proud of the fact that UKTV is the first broadcaster to win a Sunday Times “Best Companies To Work For” award.

“We’re bringing a new-media culture to broadcasting,” he says. “We can learn a lot from companies such as Google. The top talent has lots of options and young people want to be fast-tracked – and not sit in stuffy offices. That’s why our new offices are so important to us.”

Looking out of the window across the rooftops of Hammersmith, he points to an imposing new building – the larger, state-of-the-art premises that the company will soon move into.

“Innovation and creativity are going to take centre stage there, not administration,” he promises. “We want our office to be a place where creative people want to come, a west London hub for creativity.

“It’s about talent – keeping the smartest people in TV, not losing them to other businesses.”

March 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

OUR FRIEND IN THE

NORTH

T

here has always been myopia at the heart of broadcasting. It is not that the major networks are unaware of life outside London.

On the contrary, from Coronation Street to Educating Yorkshire, ordinary regional life looms large in the schedules. But when it comes to talent and production leadership, London’s magnetic excellence often casts other parts of the UK as a dreary distraction.

That said, I can’t think of a time when the industry has been as dy­namic and intra-competitive as it is now. Glasgow, Cardiff and Belfast have recently gone head-to-head in a war about creative inward-investment that is refining the map of film and television production.

It’s a rumbling era of change that has its origins in the first wave of devolution, and the emergence of a new political and creative class who care passionately about where they are based.

A fourth series of HBO’s TV fantasy drama, Game of Thrones, is being filmed in Belfast’s Titanic Studios, delivering an economic impact of £6m.

Having already racked up Doctor Who and Torchwood, Cardiff recently announced that Pinewood, the studio behind the James Bond franchise, is to run a world-class studio at the former Energy Centre building in Wentloog, South Wales.

Glasgow has recently doubled as Philadelphia in the Brad Pitt movie World War Z, and a few weeks later Halle Berry arrived as another part of the city was mocked up as 1970s San Francisco for the movie, Cloud Atlas.

The 16-part US drama, Outlanders, is now filming in the former Isola fabrication plant in Cumbernauld as the Pacific Quay Studios prepares for the behemoth of the Commonwealth Games.

Television www.rts.org.uk February 2014

London is not the only magnet for film and TV production.

Stuart Cosgrove witnesses a new dynamism in Belfast, Cardiff and Glasgow

It would be tempting to describe this as a story of post-industrialism, since both the Titanic Quarter and Pacific Quay are built on old docks.

But the Isola studio was a factory formerly owned by the Japanese firm OKI, once a “Silicon Glen” successstory that fabricated computer peripherals.

The pace of change has begun to engulf those things we once thought modern.

As the first wave of devolution kicked in, Scotland formed an elite team dedicated to winning inward investment in the film and events space.

Unable to impact on broadcasting,

which was not devolved, they scoured the world – often five years ahead of schedule – trying to secure major attractions and inward investment for Glasgow.

Consequently, the pressure to ensure that skills and infrastructure stay ahead of demand is great. Everywhere you turn in the small nations there is a strategy document buzzing around, seeking out new ways to extract global value – film funds, seed capital, tax credits, inward-investment grants and key-talent inducements.

The competition is no longer the PSB commissioning market, which remains doggedly centred in London, nor even just local competition between the small nations of the UK, but a global network of rival creative economies in Croatia, Romania and Korea.

A month ago, as a guest of the British Paralympics Association, I had the pleasure of watching the Winter Games squad being unveiled prior to their departure for Sochi.

The ceremony was held in Glasgow City Chambers, where the incredible grandeur of the room is so overwhelming that many guests felt compelled to applaud the surroundings as well as the team.

The room we ate in is often used as a “body-double” for the Kremlin and attracts film-crews from around the world to Glasgow.

What is not clear is whether this recent surge in creative inward investment is purely price-sensitive and the war is destined to be won by cheap labour markets – or whether the gathering pace of reputation and creative infrastructure will win out.

One thing is certain: the perception of a magnetic London towering over the desolate hinterlands is a vision whose time has gone.

Stuart Cosgrove is Director of Creative Diversity, Channel 4.

27

ITV

I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!

Rebooting reality

I

TV’s I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! isn’t one of those trendy new ideas that tickles TV critics and enchants awards juries. It has been on the air for 13 series – and, even when it launched in 2002, was accused of ripping off the alreadysuccessful format, Survivor.

Yet I’m a Celebrity… has, over recent years, been quietly gathering more and more viewers.

In 2013, its nightly, three-week run averaged a consolidated 11.1 million viewers – its highest ratings ever and ITV’s most successful show of the year.

Richard Cowles, Executive Producer of I’m a Celebrity… at ITV Studios, must be doing something right – and he sums it up in one pithy sentence.

“You just don’t take it for granted that people are going to come,” says Cowles. “We put a lot of time and effort into making sure that each series feels like it’s new.

“And that’s harder than you might imagine, because there are limitations to what you can change in the format.

28

Programming

Neil Midgley looks at recipes for refreshing long-running reality TV shows I’ve always been one for not throwing the baby out with the bathwater – you don’t want to change it so radically that you damage it.”

Cowles’s planning for last year’s series – which was not screened until November – began in January, with a debrief about the previous year’s run.

In early March a casting producer

ABSOLUTELY THE NUMBER-ONE MOST IMPORTANT THING [IS CASTING]

started having initial conversations with talent agents about which celebrities might go into the jungle.

In April another producer was brought on board to do a more thorough analysis of the format, backed by audience research.

By May, a creative team of four had been gathered and a logistical team was also starting to form.

“For Bushtucker Trials and challenges, what often comes first is a name,” says Cowles. “As soon as we heard ‘Up To Your Neck in It’ – which Joey Essex played against Matthew Wright, when they were buried in what looked like giant egg timers – we thought, that’s going to work.

“It was the kind of thing that only we can really do – you’re not going to see it anywhere else on television. It took a long time to make that trial work.

“It became apparent that if you used sand, you were going to crush them – so they ended up using millet to create the ‘sand’.”

Even more important than those witchetty-grub-scoffing Bushtucker

Television www.rts.org.uk March 2014

YOU’VE GOT TO HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOUR TO MAKE ENTERTAINMENT SHOWS

Strictly Come Dancing about changing Strictly’s tone – to re-inject the sense of humour so evident in its early days.

That task was crucial, but intangible.

“Ballroom dancing isn’t normal, so I kept reminding myself and the team of that,” says Ross. “To find some humour and entertainment in it.”

Ross had to instil confidence in this new, more light-hearted vision among both new and returning professional dancers, among Strictly’s judges, and even in a national treasure – Sir Bruce Forsyth.

“I adore Brucie, and I learned a huge amount from him,” says Ross. “We have a similar sense of humour. I used to spend hours laughing at his jokes.

You know what? He was really open, and we really formed a good friendship and bond.”

Ross made a number of smaller changes to Strictly, such as introducing the red-carpet launch show at the beginning of each season, and moving the contestants’ “green room” from backstage to upstairs, so it overlooks the main dance floor. “Visually, it needed to be dusted down and refreshed,” says Ross.

BBC

Trials – indeed, for Cowles, “absolutely the number-one most important thing” – is casting.

“You cast on two levels – you’re casting for show one, and then you’re casting for the rest of the series,” he says.

“In the press, we will be judged on the names that are rumoured for weeks in advance. But then you’ve also got to have a group of people that are going to sustain interest.

“The moment we met David Emanuel, for example, we loved him – wow, what a revelation! He didn’t have the highest profile, but we knew that he was going to be amazing.”

Cowles is adamant, though, that the shenanigans in camp are down solely to the celebs – and not to a team of scriptwriters.

“In reality shows such as The Only Way Is Essex, they have a scenario, they kind of know what their plot points are, and they put their characters in it.

We don’t do that,” he explains.

“The joy is that you put a group of people in the jungle, and they react to it – it may go the way you’ve planned, hopefully it goes better, but often in a different direction. There’s never anything scripted.”

With each series, Cowles’s challenge is to improve on I’m a Celebrity… ratings that have steadily been rising, year-onyear, since 2007.

Moira Ross had a different, more vertiginous challenge when she took over as Executive Producer of Strictly Come Dancing in 2010.

The 2009 series of BBC One’s biggest entertainment brand had been critically panned, and had stumbled in the ratings.

“It took me a while to agree to do it – I kept thinking, it’s either going to be one of my best decisions, or career suicide,” admits Ross now.

Her two-series tenure at Strictly turned into a huge success, with the show now resurgent in the ratings, and consistently beating its old ITV enemy, The X Factor.

Ross’s diagnosis of Strictly’s problems meant going back to Saturday-night basics: “You’ve got to have a sense of humour to make entertainment shows.

And not feel like it’s do-or-die, with all the jeopardy that I think has existed on those formats for a long time – people saying, ‘If I don’t do the lift in the paso doble, my life is over.’ Because it’s not really, is it?”

So rather than focusing solely on the nuts and bolts of the show, Ross set

And, like Cowles on I’m a Celebrity…, Ross also put a high priority on casting.

“I worked in casting in drama, years before, so I had a very strong opinion on casting – on what boxes you need to tick, so that there’s always somebody for everybody,” she says.

“Seeing people that you wouldn’t expect – you wouldn’t expect Russell Grant to be shot from a cannon, or Ann Widdecombe to be hoisted down. Who are the characters?

“You can’t just have six soap actors – their character is usually better than their personality, in many ways.”

Another fillip came from Mark Linsey, the BBC’s Head of Entertainment Commissioning, who helped Ross reinvent Strictly in the way that only a network suit can.

“The BBC was driving efficiencies, and we had taken some money out of the budget, which did have an effect on the 2009 series,” says Linsey. “The money we took out, we put back in, and that was focused on casting – but also enabled Moira to visualise the production values she had in mind.”

Many of the shows that Linsey oversees – from Have I Got News for You to QI and Mock the Week – are currently being forced into another, more minor reinvention, courtesy of BBC Director of Television Danny Cohen.

He has decreed that all panel shows should feature at least one female panellist every week, which Linsey describes as a “creative opportunity”.

“It’s us putting out the message, and encouraging female talent in this space,” says Linsey. “I don’t think we’ve always done that before, and I think it’s overdue in many ways – it’s saying to female talent, ‘Look, there will be a guaranteed place for you on these shows’, where I think often in the past they’ve felt there hasn’t been.”

Across at ITV, Cowles is just starting to cast this year’s crop of jungle celebrities – which will no doubt include plenty of women.

But, on his dream I’m a Celebrity… team, Cowles also has a couple of very manly men.

“The one I’ve always wanted to get in there, and I don’t think we ever will, is Eric Cantona. He’s unpredictable, he’s a bit of an enigma – sitting under a tree, talking in that French accent, I don’t know what the rest of camp would make of him,” says Cowles. “I’d like Sir Alex Ferguson, too – but I don’t think that’s ever going to happen, either.”

29

RTS Futures

U

KTV pipped the BBC at the post to take first place at the “RTS Futures: Battle of the Broadcasters” quiz, which was held at the end of February.

Teams from Sky, which came third, Discovery, National Geographic, ITV and MTV – all composed jointly of execs from the broadcasters and RTS Futures members – completed the field. Channel 4, the winner the last time the quiz was held, was a last-minute non-runner.

Stand-up comic Rob Beckett, the host of ITV2’s I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! NOW! and a panellist on shows including BBC Two’s Mock the Week and ITV2’s Celebrity Juice, hosted the evening of TV-based trivia.

Beckett guided the teams through six rounds of questions.

These included a picture round on science fiction, posers on RTS award winners and clips from Channel 4 hit Gogglebox, in which the contestants had to guess which show the armchair critics were discussing.

Readers can test their TV knowledge with the quiz on the right, which features questions from the night.

One Gogglebox clip of a family watching telly brought the biggest laughs of the evening for the following exchange: Dad: “I seriously hope that they are married.”

34

Mum: “Of course they’re not married.”

Dad: “Well they should be.”

Son: “Shut up Dad. Fuck. ‘[Affecting his dad’s voice] They should be married. They can’t have sex out of wedlock.’ You’re literally a 1,000 years old.”

The programme? C4’s Sex Box, of course.

The UKTV and BBC teams deadheated for first place, only being separated following a tie-breaker that asked them to estimate the overnight ratings of ITV game show All Star Family Fortunes (the answer was 4.5 million) from the previous night.

The winning UKTV team was made up of Hilary Rosen, the broadcaster’s entertainment commissioning editor, and Tanya Qureshi and Sharifa Mansour from commissioning development.

The RTS Futures members of the team – Anastasia Fordham, Obe Joshua, Emily Jarvis and Elle Osili – win coffee with BBC Three controller Zai Bennett as their prize.

At the end of the quiz, the RTS Futures members had the opportunity to talk TV with the broadcasters and gain an insight into how the industry works.

“RTS Futures: Battle of the Broadcasters” was held at ITV Studios in London on 24 February. The producers of the event were Tom O‘Brien, Jonny Coller and Carrie Britton.

Do you watch enough TV? n Which programmes are these characters from?

1 The Pontipines 2 Musharaf Asghar 3 Troy Von Scheibner 4 Aleks Shirov 5 Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage n To which shows do these tweets relate?

6 ‘Weird how Katie Hopkins is so against immigration when she’s from another planet (@ tobyontv)’ 7 ‘Goodbye Walt and your sweet, sweet blue. You were the best thing that ever happened to me. Sorry in advance to my future wife and kids. But it was really good (@keegankeen)’ 8 ‘Twenty-five minutes into this show and not one celeb has broken their leg. What the hell do you think I’m watching this for (@tigawilliamsheart)?’ n Who… 9 …Joined the seven strangers moving into the shared house for the new series of Real World on MTV? 10 …Made a guest appearance to collect an award on behalf of David Bowie at the Brit Awards?

Quiz answers 1 the peg-doll family from In the Night Garden; 2 the boy who overcame his stammer in Educating Yorkshire; 3 the street magician in Troy; 4 the new market inspector in EastEnders; 5 the hosts of Mythbusters; 6 The Big British Immigration Row; 7 Breaking Bad; 8 The Jump; 9 their exes; 10 Kate Moss.

Battle of the Broadcasters

Paul Hampartsoumian

Matthew Bell watches brave wannabes and braver TV executives put their knowledge of TV trivia on the line

March 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

The awards ceremony on 19 February at the London Hilton was hosted by Sian Williams. The awards were presented by Richard Sambrook

The RTS Television Journalism Awards 2012/13

All pictures: Richard Kendal

News Coverage – International

Regional Presenter of the Year

Nations and Regions News Programme

Awards Regional Presenter of the Year

Stewart White – BBC Look East BBC One (East) “Mixing authority with a lightness of touch, the winner was in a class of his own.”

Nominees Nina Hossain – ITV News London, ITN for ITV London Alex Lovell – BBC Points West, BBC One (West)

30

National Presenter of the Year

Mark Austin – ITV News at Ten ITN for ITV News “Always on top of his brief, [our winner] is as at home in foreign danger zones as he is in the studio. The report into the death of his colleague, Terry Lloyd, was handled with great skill and sensitivity.”

Nominees Krishnan Guru-Murthy – Channel 4 News, ITN for Channel 4 News Jon Snow – Channel 4 News, ITN for Channel 4 News

National Presenter of the Year

Nations and Regions News Programme

BBC East Midlands Today BBC East Midlands “[This] entry showed real courage in devoting a whole programme to just one subject. It demonstrated an investment in local journalism over many months, and shed new light on the behaviour and motives behind the death of six children in a house fire in Derby.”

Nominees BBC Newsline, BBC Northern Ireland Calendar, ITV Yorkshire

Nations and Regions Current Affairs and News Event

Current Affairs – Home

BBC Scotland Investigates – Sins of Our Fathers BBC Scotland “In an investigative tour de force… The reporter confronted one of the [alleged abusers], living in comfortable retirement in Australia, and detailed how the Catholic Church had covered up the truth repeatedly.”

Nominees Live and Let Die, UTV Insight Dale Cregan Trial, ITV Granada

Host Sian Williams

Current Affairs – Home

Dispatches – The Hunt for Britain’s Sex Gangs True Vision for Channel 4 “The culmination of a remarkable body of work spanning almost two decades.

It required the negotiation of unprecedented behind-the-scenes access [and] great sensitivity towards both victims and investigators.”

Nominees Panorama – Broken by Battle, Genie Pictures for BBC One Panorama – Hillsborough: How They Buried the Truth, BBC Panorama for BBC One

Current Affairs – International

Innovative News

Dispatches – Syria: Across the Lines Quicksilver Media for Channel 4 “The winner combined harrowing frontline reportage with revealing insights into life behind neighbouring communities at war.”

Nominees Walking Wounded: Return To the Frontline, Minnow Films for Channel 4 Panorama – Mission Accomplished?

Secrets of Helmand, BBC Panorama for BBC One

Innovative News

Richard Sambrook

Young Talent of the Year

Television www.rts.org.uk March 2014

Nations and Regions Current Affairs and News Event

All pictures: Richard Kendal

Don’t Panic: The Truth About Population Wingspan for BBC Two “Engaging, compelling and educational.”

Nominees Truthloader, ITN Productions for YouTube #Datababy, ITN for Channel 4 News

News Coverage – International

CNN Coverage of Typhoon Haiyan CNN International “In a very strong field, the winning entry had great packages and lives in enormously challenging circumstances capped by extraordinary images.”

Nominees Conflict in Syria, BBC News for BBC One Syria – Damascus, ITN for ITV News �

31

News Coverage – Home

Woolwich Attack ITN for ITV News “This coverage began with a world exclusive and continued to deliver top-quality TV journalism from many innovative angles.”

Nominees Online Child Abuse, ITN for Channel 5 News Goodbye Margaret Thatcher, ITN for Channel 4

News Coverage – Home

News Channel of the Year

Camera Operator of the Year

Darren Conway (DC) BBC News “[DC] is unerring in his ability to take stunning pictures under the most intense pressure. [He] is the outstanding news cameraman of his generation.”

Nominees Raul Gallego Abellan – APTN Mark Phillips – CNN International

Daily News Programme of the Year

Channel 4 News ITN for Channel 4 News “Strong and authoritative journalism, inspired by clever thinking, never dull and delivered with the impish spirit of the naughtiest student in the classroom.”

Nominees ITV News at Ten, ITN for ITV News Channel 5 News at 5pm, ITN for Channel 5 News

The Independent Award

Specialist Journalist of the Year

Judges’ Award

The Independent Award

Dispatches – Plebs, Lies and Videotape Blakeway Productions for Channel 4 “Powerful, strong and original, this was a meticulously crafted film. By investigating the police version of events that led to the resignation of Cabinet Minister Andrew Mitchell, the winner exposed a major cover-up.”

Nominees The Parable of Gulnaz, Tiger Nest Films for Channel 4 News The Agony of Aleppo, Mettelsiefen Productions for Channel 4 News

Deborah Turness

Camera Operator of the Year

News Channel of the Year

CNN International “The speed of coverage of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines was extremely impressive and the reporting of Nima Elbagir on the Somali border and Nick Paton Walsh in Syria deserve special mention.”

Nominees Sky News BBC News Channel, BBC News for BBC News Channel

32

Current Affairs – International

‘This award goes to a uniquely talented journalist who has shattered more than one glass ceiling and doesn’t take no for an answer.

‘From the very start this woman was set for the top. And that’s where she got to, winning awards and the admiration of her colleagues along the way.

‘It was this success that meant the big news executives across the Atlantic set their sights on her, highlighting not just their respect for her, but also for the high standards set by her news organisation and the British TV news industry.’ n See profile on page 12

Lifetime Achievement Award

Scoop of the Year

Woolwich Attack ITN for ITV News “This year’s winner was not just a single scoop, but an outstanding series of scoops. From the first day, when ITN broadcast the shocking pictures of the murderer of Lee Rigby filmed by a bystander on a mobile phone, the team were ahead of the pack.”

Nominees Dispatches – Plebgate Investigation, Blakeway for Channel 4 News Attack on a Syrian School, BBC News/ Panorama for BBC One

Peter Taylor OBE

‘Our winner’s first job in television was as a researcher on Thames TV’s This Week programme. In 1972, by now a reporter, he was sent to Derry in the wake of Bloody Sunday.

‘It was the start of a long love affair with Ireland, and over the years he won the trust of all sides with his honest, scrupulously fair and deeply insightful programmes.

‘But our winner’s work goes far beyond Northern Ireland. Not content with angering Ian Paisley, he set about upsetting the South Africans.

With Panorama in the 1980s, he was the first reporter to cover the ANC’s operations

in exile, an assignment which saw him sent on his own to film the ANC guerrillas training in the bush.

‘In addition to unpicking some of the key historical events of our time in programmes such as The Brighton Bomb, SAS Embassy Siege and The Age of Terror, since 9/11 he has chronicled and analysed the rise of Islamic terrorism with three series on al-Qaeda, and numerous programmes dealing with the threat in Britain, including Generation Jihad and, most recently, the Panorama on Woolwich.

‘But no summary of his targets would be complete without mentioning the intelligence community, which has provided him with many scoops and in The Spies Who Fooled the World, on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq war, he revealed how the intelligence that our politicians used to justify the invasion was no more than a hoax.’

Specialist Journalist of the Year

Michael Crick – Channel 4 News ITN for Channel 4 News “His reputation over the years as a determined pursuer of a good story has won him many admirers – and a few enemies. But this year with his scoops on the Plebgate story – getting hold of the CCTV footage and then tracking down the eye witness who turned out to be nothing of the kind – has made it a truly outstanding year for this year’s winner.”

Nominees Jeremy Bowen – BBC News Lucy Manning – ITV News, ITN for ITV

Television Journalist of the Year

Television Journalist of the Year

Jeremy Bowen BBC News “Jeremy is among the best-known foreign correspondents on British TV. His entry was a masterclass in TV journalism. Even when injured by shotgun pellets, he continued to report the events around him.”

Nominees Bill Neely – ITV News, ITN for ITV News Mark Stone – Sky News

Scoop of the Year

Daily News Programme of the Year

All pictures: Richard Kendal

Young Talent of the Year

Peter Smith STV News “An interview with the former chief executive of the troubled Rangers Football Club made this an outstanding entry. His dogged refusal to be deflected or deterred marked him out as [the] winner.”

Nominees Catrin Nye – BBC News Tom Rayner – Sky News

Judges’ Award

Deborah Turness

Lifetime Achievement Award Peter Taylor OBE

Television www.rts.org.uk March 2014

33

RTS NEWS

Sizing up Tyneside TV

RTS opens bursaries to students

Television www.rts.org.uk March 2014

Jamie Conway (right) and Chris Jackson sity. Media students will have the opportunity to take on work experience at the channel as part of their course.

Conway was challenged about his business plan, which he admitted was based on ambitious local advertising targets and “modest but realistic programme budgets”.

John Myers, a former executive with Granada Media Group, which sank millions into the Manchester-based Channel M, said: “Of course I wish you the best of luck.

But I have to be sceptical about how this kind of venture can actually make any money.”

Conway replied: “I don’t worry too much about what did and didn’t work in the

Rupert Lee, Northern Film & Media

N

ew plans for local TV in the North East drew more than 200 media professionals to the Live Theatre on Newcastle’s Quayside at the end of January.

Jamie Conway, CEO of Made Television, revealed that he and his team plan to launch a new service for Tyne and Wear this summer.

And this will be followed in 2015 by a separate service for Teesside.

Conway was interviewed

by BBC Inside Out presenter Chris Jackson at “Countdown to Local TV”, an event produced by the RTS in association with Northern Film and Media. He explained that the two North East licences would be exclusively local and generate 30 hours of original content each week.

The schedule will include: n A dedicated local news service, including twicenightly, 30-minute programmes and regular news updates throughout the day; n Current affairs programmes encouraging civic debate; n Local magazine programming focusing on entertainment and culture; n Local sports programming.

Conway said that recruitment for the Tyne and Wear service was underway and he encouraged programme-­ makers to get in touch to talk about opportunities and commissioning ideas.

He explained that there would be a core production team of around 20, but that this figure would be augmented by freelancers during busy production periods.

The Tyne and Wear service will be based in the David Puttnam Media Centre studios at Sunderland Univer-

past. I think the conditions are right for this approach to do well.”

He added that second-screen viewing would be a key part of the offer, with websites and interactive content supporting the local services. Moreover, said Conway, some content would be shared across the local TV network, with each station becoming a “centre of excellence” in producing a particular genre, such as entertainment, cookery or lifestyle formats.

Local TV in the UK is being supported with top-sliced BBC licence-fee cash to cover set-up and infrastructure costs.

Graeme Thompson n The event video is on YouTube.

n The RTS is investing £60,000 a year to support UK students studying full-time accredited degree courses in either Television Production or Broadcast Journalism.

We have 20 bursaries, each worth £3,000, to award to students who have places to study on a course that is accredited either by Creative Skillset or the Broadcast Journalism Training Council.

Bursaries are available to students from households with an income of less than £25,000 a year.

They are to support living expenses and will be paid in three instalments of £1,000 cash a year.

The RTS bursaries are restricted to: n People who are new to higher education; n ‘Home’ full-time undergraduate students starting in autumn 2014 (not from the EU or overseas); n Students who have accepted an offer as their ‘firm choice’ to study full time on one of the listed undergraduate programmes.

Applicants must complete the form on the RTS website and attach a copy of their UCAS personal statement.

Applications must be received by midnight on 31 May 2014.

For more information and application form, please go to: www.rts.org. uk/royal-television-societyundergraduate-bursary

35

RTS NEWS

M

ore than 100 guests attended the RTS West of England Student Television Awards in February at the Watershed in Bristol to celebrate the best young talent in the region.

A packed and buzzing audience of students enjoyed a keynote speech from Harry Marshall, Creative Director at Icon Films, who passed on advice on how to gain entry to the television industry. He also discussed opportunities in Bristol’s thriving creative community.

Marshall presented the first award of the evening to Tan Cheong Kwee from the University of the West of England for his animation, Concert of the Bugs, which the judges described as “a charming animation, deceptively simple”.

The Factual winner was Made of Steel by Jack Maddox,

Sam Oldmeadow, Eddie O’Keeffe and Jamie Davey from the University of Gloucestershire.

The award was presented

by BBC Natural History Unit Series Producer and one of the judges, Alex Griffiths, who said “the programme had a great concept, the narrative was gripping and it had really good contributor selection.

We also loved the idea of using sport as a prism for looking at disability.”

Tim Bolt, Managing Director of Big Bang Post Production, awarded the Fiction prize to Work by Mark Ransom and Joe Farr from Bath Spa University.

The judges praised the “cracking sound effects and odd visual tricks deployed

Ewan Kinloch

Bristol celebrates young talent for dramatic impact”. They added that the film-makers demonstrated “intelligence and resourcefulness”.

Charlie Bingham, a director at Icon Films, highlighted In the Know 24 from Wiltshire College, a charity telethon which 20 first- and second-year students on the BTEC Film and TV film courses successfully webcast for a day in aid of the Wiltshire Air Ambulance.

The RTS Bristol Centre Committee would like to thank Big Bang Post Production for sponsoring the Student Television Awards.

Suzy Lambert

Tan Cheong Kwee

London students get their facts right

36

nominated films could have won.

The winner was Freedom by Abi Njopera Pedler, Maria Morgunova, Robyn Watts-Boothby and Chloe Knowles from the University of Westminster.

The judges described this film about the plight of young people in Ukraine as a brave and serious piece of work, authentic and meaningful.

The University of Westminster also provided the winner of the Entertainment category. Dark Matters by Mark Cobb was praised as an admirable feat of writing and directing.

The winning entry in the Drama category was a warm, good-looking foreign-language film that positively shot along with pizzazz: The Tale of Two and a Half by Alicia Rovira-Parker from Middlesex University.

Terry Marsh Westminster University of

The London Student Television Awards attracted more entries from more universities and colleges across the RTS region than in recent years.

‘The range and quality of many of the entries was inspiring and encouraging,’ said RTS London Chairman Kristin Mason, who introduced the awards ceremony at ITV Studios in January.

Mason emphasised the importance of course tutors taking on the role of the executive producer in preparing students for the “real world, where executive input can come in many layers and guises”. She added that all the nominated works were of broadcast quality.

The Animation category showed a good range of techniques and artwork across the board, and was won by The Light

Freedom Bulb, made by Alicia Jasina from Kingston University. This film had a deceptive simplicity yet used a variety of styles with good comedic timing, playing on the joke, ‘How many people does it take to change a light bulb?’

The Factual category was particularly strong, and in other years any one of the

Promising future for Scotland Masters share their secrets

Awards winners and nominees

S

tudent film-making in Scotland is in rude health – the number of entries for the RTS Scotland Student Television Awards was up 50% on the previous year, with the films praised for their quality and ambition.

At a ceremony held on 30 January at BBC Scotland in Pacific Quay, Glasgow, the Animation award was scooped by Edinburgh College of Art for the third year running, with Poyo and Neko

by Adam Gierasmiuk.

“It was a funny and engaging animation featuring one character trying to get away from another with a mini-

malist style that possessed great structure and pace,” said the judges.

Fist Punch by Ally Lockhart and team from City of Glasgow College took home the Entertainment award. The judges commented: “The sketch show was terrific; it had a remarkable degree of professionalism and knew its audience expertly.”

Pawel Grzyb and team from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design won the Factual award for Untold Story. “The story of his grandfather’s experience in Auschwitz went above and beyond with its documentation,” said the judges. “What

really set this entry apart was the great lengths they went to in the production.”

Hannah by Michael Crumley and team from Royal Conservatoire of Scotland took the Fiction award. “The lead female’s performance conveyed a perfect representation of obsession. It possessed a touch of dark realism, which filled every moment with tension,” said the judges.

RTS Scotland Chairman James Wilson thanked sponsors Mediaspec, and students from City of Glasgow College and their collaborative partners, Urbancroft Films, for recording the event.

Darren Carrigan & Sarah Cooper

Two masterclasses kicked off the awards event. The first featured Michael Hines, who shared his experiences of directing hit BBC comedies Chewin’ the Fat and Still Game.

Discussing directing, he said: ‘We do the best job – we get to tell stories and entertain people.’

In the second, Creative Director Paul Murray, responsible for shows such as Channel 4’s Location, Location, Location and BBC Two’s Antiques Road Trip, talked students through the process of format development, pitching and commissioning.

Both masterclasses were chaired by Paul Tucker of the University of the West of Scotland.

n Republic of Ireland Centre kicked off its 2014 season with an event on Strumpet City author James Plunkett.

Film-maker Ian Graham showed excerpts from his documentary on the Dublinborn novelist, Conscience of a City, to illustrate his presen­ tation, “Remembering James Plunkett”.

The event was timely given that Plunkett’s play, The Risen People, was being revived at

Television www.rts.org.uk March 2014

the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.

Plunkett, who died in 2003, was a producer and director at Telefís Éireann, as well as a short-story writer and novelist. He is best known for his 1969 novel, Strumpet City, which depicts Dublin in the years 1907 to 1914.

Strumpet City became an international bestseller and the television adaptation, starring Peter O’Toole as union leader James Larkin,

attracted massive audiences when it was shown by RTÉ in 1980. Many members in the audience fondly remembered working with Plunkett on the series.

Graham has a formidable CV, having directed four major films on James Joyce and made the definitive film on Irish silent movie director Rex Ingram, as well as I created Dracula, about Bram Stoker.

The late James Plunkett

RTE

Dublin remembers Plunkett

The Centre was delighted to welcome members of the Plunkett family, including his sons Vadim, James and Ross, to the event.

Charles Byrne

37

W

ith such broadcasting luminaries as Michael Grade and Roger Mosey calling for “top slicing” the BBC licence fee – and noting Colette Bowe’s sympathy for the concept – is it time for those of the commentariat who actually support the status quo to step forward?

Or perhaps some more imaginative thinking on the licence fee is now required?

In a stimulating essay offered as part of a new collection, Is the BBC in Crisis?, Peter Bazalgette favours partnerships as a better way of sharing the BBC’s cultural and economic capital.

But as Baz points out, “There are some in the corporation who are still not clear how to spell the word partnership.”

This is in spite of the word being one of Mark Thompson’s favourite mantras during his reign as Director General.

■ What’s in a name? Quite a lot, it seems, if you are the other Kay Burley employed by Sky. During last month’s RTS North West Centre event, “An audience with Kay Burley”, Sky News’s longest-serving female presenter revealed that the other Kay Burley (a Sky call-centre worker based in Scotland) was delighted when she received her monthly pay statement only to find…

Yes, you guessed it: Sky had mixed up the salary payments.

While the call-centre worker thought she’d won the lottery, the news anchor was somewhat puzzled, but did see the funny side of the mistake.

Off Message wonders if there is another Jeremy Darroch employed

38

OFF MESSAGE by the satellite broadcaster. If so, the payroll people need to stay on their toes.

■ The recent RTS Television Journalism Awards was not a vintage night for BBC news and current affairs.

Channel 4 and ITV News outgunned the corporation for most of the big awards.

This is something James Harding needs to address. He will expect some improvement next year.

But the Beeb can take pride in the success of its brilliant Middle East specialist, Jeremy Bowen, a more than worthy winner of Television Journalist of the Year.

Accepting his prize, the energetic Bowen revealed he’d taken a break from a family skiing holiday to attend the ceremony.

In view of his work rate, the trip must have been his first break in a long time.

■ Staying with the Journalism Awards, it was heartening to hear in what remains a macho trade such kind words for Mick Deane, the seasoned Sky News cameraman shot dead in Egypt last August.

“If there had been a category for great blokes, then Mick Deane would have won it every year,” opined Mark Austin, the News at Ten front man deservedly voted National Presenter of the Year.

■ Discovery executives are declining to comment on reports of a joint bid with BSkyB for Channel 5.

If this dynamic duo ends up exchanging contracts with Richard Desmond, it would mean a much closer relationship than they enjoy already, with Sky selling Discovery’s airtime in the UK. Ultimately, of course, Discovery is controlled by John Malone, whose relationship with Rupert Murdoch has

had its ups and downs. But business comes first when there is mutual self-interest.

Neither Sky nor Discovery needs reminding that the UK pay-TV market is more or less mature.

And if the deal goes ahead, imagine what a joint Sky-Discovery (which now controls Eurosport) bid for the Premier League would look like.

Over to you, BT. PS: Discovery is not above getting into bed with potential rivals. Its long-term partnership with BBC ended last year, but Discovery recently set up an ad sales house with Viacom in the Netherlands.

■ We rightly hear a lot about the lack of opportunities for women on both sides of the camera in TV today.

What, though, of the past when career advancement for women working in telly was even worse?

A new study at Newcastle University, spanning 1933 to 1989, aims to document women’s contribution to the British TV and film industries.

It is being led by Dr Melanie Bell.

She is keen to hear from any women who have stories to tell from their own working lives. She can be contacted at melanie.bell@ncl.ac.uk.

■ And, finally, back to the licence fee. Tony Hall’s plan to extend it to those homes who only watch via the iPlayer is a courageous move.

But if the idea gains traction, how would it be enforced?

Magistrates already spend far too much time dealing with the non-payment of the traditional television licence fee.

And given the BBC’s recent track record in developing high-tech systems such as the disastrous Digital Media Initiative, getting inhouse geeks to monitor who is watching Strictly or Doctor Who online might involve an element of risk.

March 2014 www.rts.org.uk Television

RTS PATRONS RTS Principal Patrons

BBC

RTS International Patrons

Discovery Corporate Services Ltd Liberty Global RTL Group Turner Broadcasting System Inc

Viacom International Media Networks Walt Disney Company

RTS Major Patrons

Accenture Channel 5 Deloitte Enders Analysis

FremantleMedia IMG Studios ITN

Jonathan Shalit/ ROAR Global KPMG McKinsey and Co

S4C STV Group UKTV YouView

RTS Patrons

Autocue Channel Television Digital Television Group Granada Television Ikegami Electronics UK

ITV Anglia ITV London ITV Meridian ITV Tyne Tees ITV West

ITV Yorkshire PricewaterhouseCoopers Quantel Raidio Teilifis Eireann

University College, Falmouth UTV Television Vinten Broadcast

Patron HRH The Prince of Wales

Chair of RTS Trustees John Hardie

CENTRES COUNCIL

AWARDS COMMITTEE CHAIRS

President Sir Peter Bazalgette

Honorary Secretary David Lowen

Vice-Presidents Dawn Airey Sir David Attenborough OM

Honorary Treasurer Mike Green

Who’s who at the RTS

CH CVO CBE FRS

Baroness Floella Benjamin OBE Dame Colette Bowe OBE John Cresswell Mike Darcey Greg Dyke Lorraine Heggessey Ashley Highfield Rt Hon Dame Tessa Jowell MP David Lynn Sir Trevor McDonald OBE Ken MacQuarrie Trevor Phillips OBE Stewart Purvis CBE John Smith Sir Howard Stringer Mark Thompson

BSkyB

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

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

EXECUTIVES

Chief Executive Theresa Wise Deputy Chief Executive Claire Price

Channel 4

Andy Batten-Foster Mike Best Charles Byrne Isabel Clarke Alex Connock Gordon Cooper Tim Hartley Kristin Mason Graeme Thompson Penny Westlake (acting chair) James Wilson Michael Wilson

SPECIALIST GROUP CHAIRS

Diversity Marcus Ryder

ITV

Awards & Fellowship Policy David Lowen

Craft & Design Awards Nigel Pickard Television Journalism Awards Richard Sambrook Programme Awards David Liddiment Student Television Awards Patrick Younge

Early Evening Events Dan Brooke IBC Conference Liaison Terry Marsh History & Archives Don McLean RTS Futures Camilla Lewis RTS Legends Paul Jackson

Television www.rts.org.uk March 2014

39

26 March 6:45pm Sun, sex and suspicious formats

With: Jack Bootle and Linda Green RDF BBC

Venue: Hallam Conference Centre, 44 Hallam St, London W1W 6JJ Booking: Callum Stott l 020 7822 2822 l callum@rts.org.uk www.rts.org.uk