Investors
PACT Rights Lab Conference
14/06/2007
Thank you very much to Pact for inviting me to give today’s keynote speech – it’s a great pleasure to be here and to see so many familiar – dare I say friendly – faces.
Thirty years ago, when I became Director of Programmes at LWT, the world was a very different place. Coronation Street was the number one show, a British formula one driver was taking the world by storm and a brand new arts strand called The South Bank Show was about to hit the screens…..
Not everything’s changed that much but the most radical change is the relationship between broadcasters and programme makers. Back in those heady days when a Blackberry was just a humble fruit and a telephone was blissfully immobile, a producer was lucky if they could beg a meeting with a senior commissioner in between the golf course and a four hour lunch at Langan’s before being dismissed with a “why are you bothering me – just go and make it, here’s the money”. Nowadays, the more likely scenario is one of our overworked commissioners doggedly trying to track down a Morrison, Bazalgette or Heggessey between international award ceremonies or meetings with their venture capitalists.
But in those heady days when the Communications Act was still a decade away, competition from the independent sector was virtually non-existent. Then along came Channel 4 and with it the birth of a vibrant independent production community. Now of course, the UK has an independent programme making industry to rival any in the world.
In recent years, the number of shows commissioned by ITV from the independent sector has risen steadily and in 2006 an unprecedented 50% of ITV’s original commissions came from independent producers.
Which means that John Whiston – and Dawn Airey when she arrives in October – have a much tougher fight on their hands than I, or any of their predecessors ever had. And that, of course, is exactly the way it should be.
I have been pretty upfront since I arrived just five months ago about my vision for ITV and especially ITV1.
What I want for ITV1 is for it to be leading the field, not
following its competitors, to stop relying on tried and tested
formulas and come up with the next generation of world-beating
formats. I want ITV to be original, not lazy, brave not boring,
creative and not complacent.
And, so I suspect, do you.
Simon Shaps and his new commissioning team are tackling this challenge head on and are already making significant headway. Their job is to make sure that the best programmes, the best ideas and the best talent come to ITV.
This morning, I want to extend the same challenge to you and talk briefly about:
- how you can help us put ITV back on the map
- what we can do in turn for you and your businesses
- and how we can tackle the challenges facing our industry together.
I’ll start if I may with what we need from you.
What do we want from you?
Priority number one is for ITV1 to regain its ground in 9 o’clock
drama. Laura Mackie and her team are raising our ambitions in this
area so if you think that we’re only interested in detective dramas
or psychological thrillers, think again. Mobile, Fallen Angel,
Kingdom, the Jane Austen season and Talk to Me have done well for
us - but we need more: particularly more returnable series. We want
the next Life on Mars, the next Spooks and, yes, we’re still in the
market for the next Morse, the next Foyle’s War or the next Doc
Martin. Not copies you understand. I am hopeful of an end to ITV’s
copycat phase – Simon Shaps is leading the way.
In entertainment we’re looking for world-beating formats that can match The X Factor, I’m A Celebrity, Take Away and Britain’s Got Talent. Our aim is to give viewers that quality of entertainment every week of the year.
And true to his word on his return to the network, Paul Jackson is re-establishing comedy as a cornerstone of the ITV1 schedule. ITV comedy under Paul is no longer an oxymoron, as Benidorm, Harry Hill and Al Murray are beginning to prove.
In factual the Network is looking for ideas that uphold ITV’s tradition of credible, popular journalism – think Jeff Randall on pensions or recent documentary I Smack and I’m Proud/The Truth about Size Zero.
But we also need to think about the opportunities outside of ITV1. Almost a decade after ITV moved into multichannel television, our digital channels have broken through. ITV2, which was voted Channel of the Year at last week’s Broadcast Digital Awards, has reached a point in its development where the next phase of growth will come about through stand out original commissions, ambitious projects like Tiger Aspect’s upcoming drama series Belle de Jour. ITV4 is starting to build a big enough audience to justify its own original programming. We are increasingly looking at using our digital networks as nursery slopes for breaking new talent and new ideas. A new opportunity for all producers. I’m amazed we haven’t done it before.
I want you to see ITV as a serious multi-media player that can exploit content across all key platforms.
ITV.com starts rolling out this month and I believe we have
developed a site that is more comprehensive than any other
commercial broadcaster service, anywhere in the world.
ITV.com is a new platform in its own right, with its own
commissioning muscle that will show exclusive made-for-broadband
content, starting with ‘Web Lives’, a collaboration with Roger
Graef. The plan is to introduce more original commissions as the
site develops and I know that the ITV.com team are already working
closely with Simon’s team to develop ideas that can be applied
onscreen and online.
What’s in it for you?
So that’s what we want. But what’s in it for you? Why bring your
ideas to us?
Once upon a time, that wasn’t such a big ask. ITV and the BBC were
the only game in town when it came to getting those big ticket
commissions. Now, as well as plenty of established commercial
broadcasters, we are facing competition from a host of flashy new
kids on the block, from the hundreds of new digital channels to
Joost and Google.
So what’s good old ITV got to offer to compete with these racy
newcomers?
Well for a start, it’s worth reminding ourselves that we’re still
the biggest shop window in town and will give your programmes and
brands the best launch pad you can get. ITV is the only commercial
broadcaster regularly to pull in audiences of up to ten million
viewers. We can get the sort of exposure for your shows that
smaller channels and internet start ups can only dream of. We can
make your programmes more famous -- and more valuable.
And we’re still a big spender. Last year ITV invested £240m on independent commissions and if the trend continues in the direction of the last few years, next year that number could be higher – although I’m sure Dawn might have something to say about that!
We are committed to making ITV1 a more exciting and creative place for you to bring your best ideas first, that is the key. This has already meant saying goodbye to shows that have had their day to make way for new ideas. Decommissioning a show is never an easy decision but essential if we want to allow space in the schedule for risk and innovation we so badly need.
Early next year will see the launch of an ambitious and unprecedented project from Kudos that will run across ITV1 and and ITV.com. Moving Wallpaper, is a comedy drama series based in the fictional production offices of a television soap, Echo Beach. Echo Beach meanwhile will be screened in its own right as a teen-appeal soap.
Each show works independently of the other – but watching both gives the viewer an enhanced experience. In addition, viewers will be able to tune in to specially commissioned extensions on ITV.com.
Projects like these are risky investments in risky times. But that is an important part of our commitment to our audiences and key to the creative health of the channel. We are open for new business, we are open for those “mad ideas”. I say ‘we’, I mean of course Simon and his talented team.
Facing the challenges together
So that’s the good news. But…ITV is truly facing unprecedented
challenges. A weak advertising market, fragmenting audiences and
the constraints of CRR are an increasing threat to ITV’s ability to
invest in original programming at present levels.
It’s the quality of our programming that will make or break our channels’ business. We can’t afford NOT to fund those new programmes – so, as advertising revenues shrink, we need to find new ways of revenue generation – from VoD to international format rights, from DVD sales to mobile clip rights.
I know what you’re thinking – we know you’ve got to make up the numbers but please don’t do it at our expense. ITV used to be the best deal in town. Now the chips are down and they are getting tough and we don’t get the deals we used to – and they’re getting their grubby hands on 15% of our back end.
Well, hands up – yes we’re commercial – and these days we
absolutely have to be.
But let’s look at it from our end of the argument. The real
financial pressures on ITV mean that we’re really in this together,
broadcaster and production community.
In this respect the UK has finally caught up with the US. For years studios and producers have been working collaboratively to exploit programme brands on and off air, to sweat shared assets. We, meanwhile, have been saying thanks very much, we’ll return the beta tape to you in five years. Once we were through with the contractual red tape for a couple of UK transmissions that really was the end of the story. Now, with real and valuable interest on both sides of the deal, and a genuine multi-channel, multi-platform offering from ITV, a whole new world of possibilities to exploit “our” content opens up.
There may be a parallel here with another much loved UK mass
brand, Marks & Spencer.
Stuart Rose recounts that when he arrived to attempt the
turnaround, he sat down with his suppliers, shared his problems
with them and came to a consensus as to how the suppliers could
give a little back to help him restore the business to good health.
Some pain to achieve real gain. It has certainly worked for
M&S.
That time has come at ITV. We cannot afford year-on-year “broadcasting inflation” when flat advertising at best, and CRR at worst, is eroding our top line. We HAVE to make the money go further. We are mutually dependent. Neither the independent sector nor ITV Productions can expect to remain immune to the pressures of the new broadcasting environment.
But if we’re serious about being partners we need to put our money where our mouth is. So I am delighted to be able to confirm today ITV’s proposals to introduce funding for the development of programme ideas. We have already sent an initial proposal to PACT and are hopeful that from this autumn ITV will be up and running with an annual development funding budget, broken down by genre area and managed by ITV’s genre directors.
This is evidence of the partnership at work. You get to reduce your up-front risk, we get to be more closely involved in the all-important development process. You get the same deal as you do from the BBC or Channel 4, we get a greater choice of projects brought to ITV.
In recent months ITV has also agreed deals with Equity and The
Writers’ Guild that offer the benefit of clarity and certainty not
just to us but to the production community as a whole.
We can also forge powerful alliances in lobbying for regulatory
change – food advertising around children’s programming is a good
example where we could have worked more closely to get a better
result for all of us. HD capacity on Freeview is another, and is
something I hope the production community will get behind.
We only need look to North America to observe the incredible
drive towards HDTV. Each of the major US networks is already
delivering HD content terrestrially, Discovery and HBO are ramping
up their HD production significantly and the US movie studios are
doing the same.
As producers and distributors you need to be able to compete on a
global export stage with state of the art programming fit for
international distribution and that means HD. Without a viable
market for HD in the UK, your ability to develop programming will
be seriously hampered and there’s a real risk that the UK –
historically the envy of the world in television – will start to
fall behind.
Conclusion
So to sum up, we are committed to bringing the very best
programmes, ideas and talent to ITV. And we can’t do that without
you. We need to earn our position as being the first place that you
bring your best ideas, not the last.
The world has changed for all of us and commercially it’s
tougher than it’s ever been. We all need to work harder than ever
to make our businesses pay. Maintaining ITV’s level of programme
investment – a goal we can all sign up to – but we need your help
to achieve it.
Thank you for listening.