TellyCast: The content industry podcast

Jimmy Mulville & Peter Fincham on the State of UK TV, YouTube’s Rise and the Future of Comedy

Justin Crosby Season 9 Episode 234

On this week’s TellyCast, Justin Crosby is joined by two of the UK’s most respected TV leaders – Jimmy Mulville, co-founder of Hat Trick Productions, and Peter Fincham, co-founder of Expectation and former controller of BBC One and director of television at ITV. 

They discuss the health of the UK TV industry, the impact of YouTube, the future of comedy, and the challenges facing independent producers today. Jimmy and Peter also reflect on their own experiences as producers and commissioners, the Channel 4 in-house production shake-up, and what it takes to build a successful indie in today’s digital-first landscape.

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Hi, I am Justin Crosby and welcome to another TellyCast. On this week's show, we have two of the UK's best known TV execs who've teamed up on another TV podcast show, the insiders. Jimmy Melville is co-founder managing director of Hatrick Productions, one of the UK's most successful and influential independent production companies With a career spanning decades, Jimmy has been behind some of the most iconic British comedy and entertainment shows, including, have I got news for you Father Ted Outnumbered, and whose line is it anyway?

And lots of others. He's also been a vocal advocate for the indie production sector and the importance of creative freedom. And joining him is Peter Finchem, one of the most respected figures in British tv. Having served as controller of BBC one, director of television at ITV. During his time at both broadcasters, he commissioned some of the UK's biggest hits, including the one show, the Apprentice, Downton Abbey, and Broad Church.

Today he's co-founder of the production company Expectation, where he continues to develop creative programming across genres, delivering big hits, such as Clarkson's Farm. Before his exec roles, Peter was managing director of Talkback Productions, where he helped shape groundbreaking comedy shows like the day-to-day.

And I'm Alan Partridge.

Welcome to Show guys. How are you doing? 

Hi. Good. Yeah, good. 

Welcome. Welcome to Telecast. How's it going with your own podcast, by the way? Let's, let's start there. Well, you, you know, 

the thing is, it is what it says it is. It's called insiders. We don't actually call it the insiders because there can be other insiders out there.

And, and really, you know, we talk about television, we talk about stuff that's going on in television. We're not, we're not reviewing programs or anything like that. And I suppose when we started we thought, well, will there be enough to talk about every week? But the truth is, there's always something to talk about.

There's always some announcement out there or some development, or some person is moved from this job to that job. So, you know, it's, it's quite, from our point of view, all we do is talk. We have a, we have a, a producer called Owen, and he has envelopes and he just gives us subjects and we talk about them.

And then when we run out, he gives us another envelope. Then he edits it together. 

Right. 

But we have found that, you know, in the TV industries, there's a lot of people who are listening to it and seem to like it. 

Good, good. Well, you're in the right place to talk about TV and content as a, as a whole. So let's start with the UK TV industry then.

A lot of people think it's in a bit of a pickle. Jimmy, what do you think? 

Well, I think that's, it's, it's cyclical, isn't it? I mean, you, you know, we've been here before. I think that I, I used to get called up every two or three years specifically about comedy, and the journalist would say, you know, comedy's in a terrible state.

What do you think? And actually, you know, when you think about it, TV is still pretty dominant as a de as a content deliverer. I mean, YouTube, I mean, I've No on your, on your. Show here that you talk about all kinds of content. Yeah, and digital certainly is becoming more and more, YouTube apparently is the most watched channel on on screens, so Right.

You can watch YouTube on your television screen now. People are watching YouTube a lot. So I think that it's just changing. It's not, I mean. In terms of drama, I think, yes. I think there's been a contraction in drama commissioning, and I think that the big streamers have kind of pulled their horns in a bit.

And that bubble, that was a bubble though. The drama bubble was gonna burst. That was a COVID bubble, wasn't it, really? Well, it was COVID. There was a, there was a writer strike. Yeah. And I think the economy took a downturn. I, it, it's, it's never just one thing, is it? And, but, you know, shows are still being made.

I don't think it's the end of uk. I don't think it's the end of the UK TV business. I think it's changing. I think there are challenges and I think that smart people are running UK broadcasters. They'll, they'll have to work it out somehow. 

Yeah. And what do you think, Peter, having run, you know, two big channels and having all that experience on the network side, when you look at the industry now from a producer's perspective, you know, how, how do you see it?

Because there's, there's a lot of people who are really suffering, I think in the industry right now, especially a lot of freelancers, but production companies, you know, nobody's gonna gonna admit the fact that the suffering, because a lot of people are. 

Yeah, I, I do think it's been on a bit of a downturn.

Times are tougher, as you say. Nobody really wants to admit it, but if you are a, if you're an independent producer, I would say this, one of the, one of the requisites qualities for the job is to remain optimistic and to kind of roll with the punches and keep going. You shouldn't have become an independent producer if you thought it was gonna be easy.

It never, it never is easy. And I don't know, it also depends a bit. Do you see, you know, the glass is half empty or, or half full. There's still a lot of television being made. It changes slightly. One genre rises, another one falls. But I, I, I'm very against the idea of the Golden Age was some time ago, like, you know, apra, deluge, the enders, and I, we've got a very good friend R called Rory, and I remember he said to me once, the thing is Peter.

When things are going really badly, what you need to remember is they might go even worse and then this will seem like the good old days. Yeah, and I kind of feel that a bit about television. There's still a lot of television being commissioned and made. It might be economically a bit more challenged than it was four or five years ago, but still there's, you know, the BBC channels, ITV, sky, channel four, five, et cetera, et cetera, and all those streamers regularly commissioning things and putting them out.

So I don't think you should get, you know, cyclically. We might not be in the best I. Bit of the cycle. Yeah. But I don't think once you get too gloomy about it. 

Well, I, I, I suppose, you know, one of the things that always fascinates me is that I, I think it was a period pre COVID where you, you used to see almost every week used to read of a new, a commissioner who's left and set up his own indie that used, used to be like every, every week lemmings.

They 

were, 

they were like lemmings. Yeah, absolutely. Right over the cliff. Well, that's, well, you know, you could say that because actually. You know, some of the, you talk about, you know, what, what it needs to be produced, what you need as a skillset. Obviously you need creativity, you need need to be optimistic, but I think you also need to be an entrepreneur as well.

You need to have a proper business brain, and a lot of people can of, you know, in the creative industry, perhaps that's maybe not their forte, and now is probably the time that you'd really need that skillset set. Yeah. 

You also need the requisite amount of psychological damage as a child in the first place is a kind of bl bloody mindedness of a, I was listening to a podcast once by a guy called Adam Grant, who's a, this sounds posh, he's an organizational psychologist, but he says, my job is to make work suck less, is to find out how people work.

And he, he lectures at a place called Wharton. And he, he talks about this thing, you know, that, that when you're dealing with creative people, he's, he talks about Pixar and how Pixar was created and the team after Toy Story is brought in to create a new project and they weren't getting it right. And the producer of that project got everybody into the cinema room and said, look, Steve Jobs and John Lester don't believe we're gonna do this.

And the psychologist said, it's a very interesting technique to use with creative people, is you activate that part of them, which is very powerful. And when it's dormant, you need to activate it by saying people don't believe in you, so you activate the part that wants to prove people wrong. 

Hmm. 

And I think a lot of people I know in, in our neck of the woods are driven by that kind of thing of, I'll, I'll, I'll show them, uh, let me just, yeah.

Get off my ass and show them. And, and I think that spirit of, and like you're talking about entrepreneurial spirit is often, it's often quite risk. Taking, it's not risk averse. No. It's risk taking. Yep. And when the BBC set up B BBC studios, my question to James Parnell, the architect of shutting down BBC three real genius, he, I said, who's gonna run BBC Studios?

And he said, well, we haven't got that far yet. I said, no, you start off with that person. And then, and they, they don't really have that person at BBC Studios. They've got, they've got managers who manage interesting labels like. Peter's in business. Business. You did? That's right. Yeah. So they get people in who are entrepreneurial to do that heavy lifting for them.

Mm-hmm. And that's the difficulty with big corporations and is, they don't seem to have, they can have mavericks, but they don't have entrepreneurs. Yeah. 

Go back to your question. The, what's the state of the TB industry and what's the state of the independent production sector are Two slightly different questions.

Yep. After all the TV industry existed, before Independence existed at all Yes. And made lots of great programs and, and, you know, to huge audiences. And the tv, the, the independent sector was bizarrely a creation of the Thatcher government in the eighties. That's right. Channel four. Yeah. Came 25% channel forum and then the 25% quota to, to stop, you know, producer.

So producer broadcasters having a monopoly. Monopolistic sort of position in the market and it's been a great success. There's been a lot of consolidation in it. A lot of independent companies are owned by a very small number of super indies now. Like all three media, Fremantle, ITV studios, BBC studios and so on, Banerjee.

So there aren't that many independent, independent companies. Now we, we run two of them. But I think, I think the state of the industry, you should fundamentally look at it through the eyes of the viewers. Are people seeing good television programs? Are they still seeing innovative creative television programs?

And I don't think things are in that bad a shape, but I fully accept that for indies. It's tougher than it may have been a few years ago. Yeah. Maybe. Maybe it's overexpanded, maybe too many people, as Jimmy was saying, did, and, or as you were saying, maybe too many people thought it's safe thing to do to leave my salary job working for such and such a big Yeah, yeah.

Organization. It was never a safe thing to do. 

No, 

it was always a risky thing to do. I mean, 

dunno how many there 

were at, its at that, at its peak. I mean, but you know, you're, you are probably talking about 1500 or something like that. An enormous number. 

Right? Well, there was a, there was a period of consolidation where people were making, people had set up companies in the nineties, in our case, in the eighties and, and had sold those companies and made some money and it must have looked very appealing, thinking, well, I can do that.

I can make a couple of shows and sell out for, you know, yeah. For loads of money. But isn't it, isn't that easy? No, because actually, you know, what can happen to a company is they can do one show. I. It can be their kind of, it can be the thing that underpins their profitability. Yeah. Then the show comes off the air.

Yeah. We once sold half of Hatrick to an investment bank in 2002, which is a big mistake. Not their fault. Just two different cultures. And my first meeting had to inform them that three of our shows are coming off the air in the next 12 months. These guys went white and said, is there anything we can do to kind of mitigate these?

Yeah. Kind of very, it's very kind of, oh my god. It's quite, yeah. Investment banks don't like creativity. And I said, the only thing I can think of is, is, is fitting the seats in the boardroom with the safety belts. 'cause I can't work. This is the kind of business that we're in. Yeah. Is that you? As Peter said, you have to roll with the punches.

Yeah. I always say to younger people coming into business, if you get a show turned down or you get a show cancel, spend 20 minutes feeling sorry for yourself and then think of something else to do. Yeah. Just get on with the next thing. Yeah. 'cause they'll always need new ideas. Yeah. Podcasters will always need new ideas.

And your best. Insurance really is to have a good team with you. You are creating good ideas that people wanna buy. 

Yeah. Well, I'm gonna play devil's advocate here a little bit. You, you two extremely successful. You've had amazing careers in the industry and you've, you've, and, and there's a lot of, lot of particularly unscripted businesses, I would say, who are really in that sort of, you know, specialized in that middle band of programming.

Mm. Which has really been sort of gone, gone. Right. But particularly over the last two years or so. Yep. It's, it's pretty difficult for them to. Reboot their businesses because essentially that business isn't there anymore. Yeah. So I know, I mean, you must know, you know, lots of people between you that that's happened to in the last, you know, 

I mean, I agree with you.

You said about your, the freelancers. My brother, for example, was serious producer on Pointless and then moved on to another job, and then that, that series didn't get into the pointless reordering pattern. 

Yeah. 

And he struggled to find work in that genre, and we stood down three people who work in the comedy entertainment department.

First time I've ever made anybody redundant was right last year, three fantastic producers that. Pitching into an area that didn't or didn't exist in the same way as, as it had existed. So 

yeah, 

on personal levels, I think it has been very, very tough. Yeah. But when industries change, people do become unemployed.

New jobs occur. Of the three people that we let go, they're all back in various forms. Yeah. One is, one is producing podcasts, one is working in a digital studio. The other one has moved north to work in a regional company where he is from. Yeah. So they're smart people. They reinvent themselves. 

Yes. 

So again, 

it's about that resilience.

Well, I think that's, yeah, that's certainly down to the individual. I think perhaps those businesses, again, you know, that business model doesn't necessarily work anymore when we're talking about sort of a, a mid-size unscripted, or do you, do you disagree? 

I it may be. The odds may be longer against you making a success of it.

Yeah. But somewhere out there, there will be some incredibly brilliant person who's got an idea that we don't even know what it is around this table that will sort of sweep the world like, I don't know Big Brother did 25 years ago. It's millionaire. Or millionaire quiz was dead, you know, and then suddenly 

that comes on 

and everybody wants it.

So I, I, I, I could see where you're saying we've, we've had some success and a luck in our careers and so on, so we don't wanna sit here sort of saying, oh, well it's all right for us, but who cares? You know, who cares about us. In a way, what I'm saying is, 'cause you know, I talk to people who think you're starting companies and so on.

I'm always very reluctant to advise them not to because they might be the person who has that hit and then does make a huge success of it. And the company becomes, you know, the next studio Lamber or whatever I'd, that's still entirely possible. Yeah. And the odds might be a bit longer. It may be that the genre mix on television has changed.

Definitely. That's true. I mean, we talk about it being an age of drama. It's an awful lot of drama companies out, out, out there. Yeah. You might think twice before starting a drama company, unless you are very sure what your sort of USP is. Mm-hmm. But I just think, just to go back to, you know, saying at the beginning.

In order to embark upon the risky thing of, of leaving a salary job and starting an independent company, you, you need to have a certain belief in yourself and resilience. Yeah. Those two things will get you through. Yeah. If you've got good ideas as well and you've got, you, you've got whatever that, that right kind of mindset or personality type is Yeah.

It, it's not gonna shut down. Yeah. It may change shrink mutate, but there's still room out there for independent producers. 

Yeah. Well, let's, let's talk about that change then. Jimmy, you talked about YouTube and Absolutely, it's, it's, you know, become possibly one of the biggest talking points within TV over the last 12 months or so, is success on televisions, you know, in America and around the world is, you know, is growing and, and commissioning is easing off.

We're seeing less commissioning in across a number of different broadcasters. How do you view the rise of YouTube then in terms of. I mean it d does it affect you, you know, in terms of your long established and really successful businesses? I mean, I, I know you've yourself have, you've invested in, in strong wash studios.

Yeah. Which is, which is, and and it'd be good to understand, you know, your, your, your approach on that. But, but first of all, you know, how does that affect hat trick, you know, the, the, the growth of YouTube and how, how do you view it? 

Well, you know, we, we don't make shows specifically for YouTube because YouTube don't pay you any money.

So we need people to, to fund production activity. They, they commissioned 

for a bit, didn't they? Yeah. Then they got, and they 

stopped. They realized they didn't matter. We made gun for them. And because they realized it was a, you know, they, they didn't need to 'cause people were putting their con We, we do have content.

We have a, a Hatrick YouTube channel, which is, of course, it's got, it's got reversion stuff from our old catalog, and that does make us a profits every. Yeah, quite a healthy profit. And I think that as the broadcasters kind of tiptoe outta genres like comedy very slowly, I mean, most of the big terrestrial broadcasters now do much less comedy than they used to.

Yeah. Including the B, B, C. So I'm thinking there will be opportunities for producers to maybe with investors or with brands to set up comedy, digital channels. Because if you think of the triangle, there's always people down here wanna watch comedy. Always People down here wanna produce comedy. The problem is who wants to pay for it?

Well, that seems to be changing. But if you think that Channel four every year get numerous companies wanting to sponsor their comedy, only one of them gets them. There are numerous companies who think comedy is quite a sexy thing to be involved with, to speak to our young 

audience. And you wouldn't fund yourself.

You wouldn't, you wouldn't actually, you know, say, okay, we're gonna launch our own original comedy channel. 

We, we could do that. We could do that. It, it will be taking a bet. I mean, and like I said, we're not risk averse. And I think that we we're kind of looking at those various options because clearly what I'm interested in as well, like Peter's saying is where's the next idea coming from?

And very often it comes from a very peculiar source. So, you know, father Ted came to us, it was basically a documentary, it was a mockumentary, right? Comedy mockumentary, which my partner at the time, Jeffrey Perkinson, he's a brilliant producer, and he said to me, read it. He said, this is a series, I'm gonna get them in to talk about a series.

But he was sent in out of the blue, you know, came from nowhere. Well, those ideas coming from nowhere now. It's more and more difficult to find them in terms of linear stuff because the BBC comedians would go to the Edinburg Festival, the good ones would get picked up by a broadcaster and yeah, development deal doesn't happen so much anymore.

Yeah. So they're going on, they've all got their own YouTube channels, but many of them want, want to cross that bridge into a wider audience or into a more linear space. Yeah. I think that companies like ours may be able to provide that kind of environment where they can do their stuff with us, with our input, with our access to broadcasters, and that's quite a kind of one-on-one equals three deal.

Yeah, I think that's, I think that's gonna happen over the next few years. I know that one, one of our colleagues, John Thoday, for example, runs his own task master. Vimeo Fast Channel in America and makes a lot of money out of it. Yeah. It can go via broadcaster. He goes straight to the audience. Yeah. 

Yeah.

And, and obviously you are finding it, it works from a distribution perspective for catalog as well, and that's Yeah. And you've got a, I mean, you must have enormous catalog, 300 years old. 

Yeah. How, how, how much that we, we started in the, in the reign of Henry vii with his gesture actually, who Yeah. He's still telling the same jokes.

Yeah. 

So 

you've seen our 

shows. So, I mean, do, when you look at, when you look at production companies out there and, and who are, you know, who are struggling, you know, YouTube's been around for 20 years now. Do you think the TV industry as a whole has been too slow to react to what's been happening in the digital space?

I mean, in the same way, you know, a lot of people have been, me included, you know, have talked about, last year has been the time when, you know, the, the year that TV had it, its print media moment, you know, it's like newspapers essentially. They saw it coming, but they weren't quick enough to react. And as you said, big corporations.

They're not that reactive. Right. Maybe, 

maybe. I, I remember the year that YouTube swept into our lives. It was about, it was about 20 years ago, and I think I was at BBC at the time. I never really thought, oh my God, this is the end of days every, nothing's ever gonna be the same again. One reason they thought that was because the assumption was that why YouTube worked was that people have very short attention spans and just wanted to watch a 32nd clip of a cat slipping on a banana skin or something in it.

Very funny. Far very funny. Yeah, very funny. Can knock it if you persuade the cat to do it. Color cat in on the income. But that was actually with hindsight, the beginning of the box set era, when, when it proved to be the exact opposite, that we had longer attention spans than we thought we had. Hmm. That if we wanted to watch a six part series, we'd rather it was an eight part series or a 10 part series.

Yeah. So I, I dunno why I'm saying there except. Don't, don't always believe what you think is inevitable around the corner. Yeah. And you, you, you know, later than that, the streamers came along and there were plenty, plenty of people saying, this is it, this is the end of the bbc, this is the end of, of the other PSBs.

But, but it's not the end of them. They're still there and they're still making some really, really good programs. I don't know, when I was running ITV. Uh, from 2008 to about 2016, I think, you know, we would typically on a, on a weekday night get five or 6 million viewers. Now, now that you won't, you'll get 2 million viewers, you're lucky to get 2 million viewers.

But on the other hand, there was no catch up to speak of on ITVX and now there is, so I guess I'm, I'm only saying, but there's a lot more, lot, 

lot more advertising income in that, in those states. Yeah, 

but that's a, that's a problem for ITV. I'm, I'm trying to look at it from the point of view of the viewers fundamentally, is there still stuff up, out there, out there that you, you wanna watch and that has an impact and is good quality?

And, and I think there is. It's for the people who work in the industry. Like us, but actually people who are doing much more important jobs than us, they've gotta make those difficult calculations about how, how much you invest in the, in, in the streaming side rather than the linear side. Yeah. You know, those are very, very difficult kind of calculations to make, get them wrong.

And you could go into kind of decline. Yeah. Get them right. And you can emerge triumphant at the other end of it. But, but what, what we do isn't fundamentally that Yeah. We are, we're in the program making side. Yeah. And so what are we trying to assess? Is there an appetite out there for good, clever ideas, brilliant ideas with great talent?

And I would argue yes, there still is, but I'm not saying it gets easier. Yeah. But I don't think, man, we haven't shut up shot yet. 

And I think, I think his an, I think Peter's answer is it speaks to the. One of the theses of our podcast is that we don't, you said one of the feces of our podcast Fe and I thought this is not a phrase you've used before.

It's my diction. I, you it is that we don't try and predict the future. 'cause we've often gone to these conferences like the Edinburgh Festival, where you'll get people on stage, pontificating, remember once going to a TV festival in year 2000, and some bloke from Canada with a ponytail said, well, if you work in television, now's the time to get out because we're gonna be at home creating our own content.

Yeah, I, I remember 

that. It's gonna, you followed was the best 25 years television ahead. And then of course, you know, CBS in America and ITV here, you know, you're gonna be in, oh, you're gonna be in terrible trouble with CBS. The advent of the digital age because Netflix suddenly became a, a place where you didn't just send your videos back.

They created a digital space where they started. Well, in the early days of Netflix, it was like going through the DVD section in Poundland. Yeah. There's lots of repeats. Where were they getting the repeats from, from companies like C-B-S-C-B-S made billions of dollars in, in, in sales to places like Netflix.

So, you know, TV is very resilient and it's always reinventing itself and it's very hard to predict what's gonna happen. Hmm. So that's why we don't bother, because I think that you know that that kind of, well, in five years time, who knows what's gonna happen in five years time. 

I wrote that during the time I was at ITV.

We, I mean this is, I'm sure for commercial reasons, ITV would work out how many minutes a day we spend watching audio visual content, if you wanna call it that tv. Yeah. It's good job, you know? Yeah. And how many days we, we, we spend reading newspapers and even then it was like 12 minutes a day reading newspapers, five hours watching telly.

Now, it may have changed, of course, it depends a bit on your definition of telly, but if you tell, that's why I use the phrase audio visual content on the screen. So it might be on a laptop, might be on a, an iPad, or on or on your phone. Increasingly, you, you know, you're on an airplane or a train and you just see people watching high quality production.

You, you know, full fat kind of production value stuff on phones. If it works for them, that's absolutely fine. But they're doing that rather than reading newspapers or other, other kind of forms of media. So in that sense, I do think our appetite for programs is pretty resilient. Yeah. Even while the industry goes through painful readjustments to a different model 

in a different world.

Yeah. Just thinking about your time at those broadcasters 

Yes. 

What did you learn? What was the biggest lesson that you learned that you took into a product co-founding a production business? And what, what do you think is the, is the single biggest lesson that's helped you? 

That's a really good question.

I, I think it, it would, if only everybody who was a producer could for a while become a commissioner and vice versa. It would teach them so much in both directions. I could do with the rest. Okay. You'd be very good at it, Jim. You'd be very good at it. But because so, so to put it in extreme, if you are a producer.

You're sitting there thinking, why can't I get this idea of mine commissioned? Why do those idiots who are the commissioners not want to commission it? Almost as soon as you become a commissioner, you think, where are the good ideas? Where are the ones that are gonna really, you, you know, make a difference?

Make me look good. 

Right. They may look good. Exactly. You don't sit there as producers think you do on a pile, let's say, of 12 scripts, all of which are brilliant, saying, which two of these shall I choose for my next season? You sit there thinking, how do I fill those slots in the schedule and, and it's just weird.

It's just like two different ends of the telescope, so. I guess coming out the other end after a decade as a commissioner, it's the obvious really, you think to, to a degree. You can see it through commissioner's eyes, and I think that you, you, you know, you, you may be sitting there with what you think is a great idea.

Might be non-scripted. Might be scripted, but does it meet that commissioner's needs? Is it what they're looking for, what they think they're looking for? Does it fit in their schedule, their demographic, or whatever. That's a really useful thing to, to learn a bit about. So, so from my point of view. I mean, I've basically been an independent producer.

Then I've sort of crossed the floor of the house and then crossed it back again. Yeah, I'm, I was, I'm glad I've done both moves. But the reality is a lot of people won't get the opportunity to do that. There's no question, which is the easier move. The easier move is to being a producer, to being a commissioner.

It's harder to go from being a commissioner back to being a successful producers. Not so many people have done that. Partly because you as a commissioner, you, you know. Ideas come at you and you choose them. You choose that when you don't choose that one, but you go back to being a producer, you've gotta come up with something and you've gotta sell it.

The person selling it in a pitch is doing a harder job than the person who might sit there, as it were, with their arms folded. 

Yeah. 

You, you, you know the famous Alan Partridge Scene Monkey Tennis? Yes. I'm the only person who watches that scene and feels for Alan Partridge. I think Tony Harris, the head of programs, is a bit of a cunt.

Yeah, well, I'd say that on your podcast course he can, he's, because he does literally sit there going, no, no, no. If he was better at his job, he would, he would say, I'm not that sure about that. But, you know, what else have you got? As it were? I always used to say to commissioners, if you, if somebody comes in to pitch you in an idea and you turn it down.

You want 'em to go away thinking, I will bring you my next idea. Mm-hmm. 'cause it might be a brilliant idea if they go away thinking I'm never gonna darken it. Or if they go away having stuck a piece of cheese in your face. You have, you have failed in the meeting. Yeah. So I honestly, I think everybody should watch that scene when they're talking about, because also some of our D Partridge's ideas are perfectly good ideas.

I've watched, well, youth Hustling with, with Chris Eubank got made in the end, didn't it? I th Was it Youth Hu? I think it was Cooking in Prisons. That's one in 

Inner City Sumo, I think. Inner City Sumo. A regional detective called Swallow Set in Norridge. That's right. And Tony, he says no. He said no. He says there are a lot of regional detectives and Alan Procher says yes because audiences like them.

Yeah. And I think Alan, you've won that exchange. You are right. And so what, what would be if it was written by, let's say, Jed Chure, who Jimmy works with a regional detective called Swallow Set in Norridge, BBC, but the hand off for it is, is that what, nothing wrong with the idea at all. 

Is that okay with the idea 

for 

the Chelsea detective?

Not exactly. A partridge created by, based on an idea by Alan Partridge, A day to put that in the credits. 

What's the programmatic at the moment? Yeah, no, no. Lemons thing that people are all saying. They're all saying it's Alan Partridge meets David Brent, you know, Noles Kiwi Adventure. Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 

yeah, yeah.

Well, we could, well, no, Edmonds has been the subject of lots of lampooning over the years by, by lots of people, but surely not. But let's, yeah, let's, let's, let's move swiftly on Okay. To, to talk about public service broadcasters. Mm-hmm. And which is something I know you guys talk a lot about. Yep. On your show, channel four obviously recently announced their new in-house production plans.

Yeah, that was, that was gonna be my get into the bin bit, 

was it? Yeah. Oh, well, 

okay. They can throw 

that into the bin as far as I'm concerned. Well, okay. Well, we'll do a pre bin then. Okay. That's the pre bin. So what do you think opportunity or threat to the indie sector? 

It's a true indies. Well, as Peter's been both a con, a commissioner and a, and a producer.

I'll, I'll let him answer then I'll, I'll steam in then. You correct me. It could be 

threat. 

It's a bit of a surprise because we thought they were going to announce something quite modest, but, but the way they describe it sounds if they want to get the crown jewels of the Channel four schedule made in-house and, and so yeah, of course that could be a threat to the indie sector.

The Indy sector was, you know, channel four was a midwife to the whole indie sector. But there's something very odd about the timing of this announcement because Channel four are currently looking for a new chair and a new chief executive, and they haven't got either of those people yet. Yeah. So it seems a very strange moment to nail your flag to that mast and say, this is what we're gonna do.

Because until those new people arrive, well, they might reverse it or they might. Extended or, or, or whatever. So it's, I think it surprised people. I did talk to somebody at Channel four at a very senior level about this because this talk of them increasing the. Increasing the quota from indies to 35%, which you think, I thought you'd got all your programs from indies, but 60 bucks percent.

Well, now what they said is yes, yes, yes. But that's qualifying indies, which would include hating, would include expectation, but it wouldn't include anything owned by all three media. Right. I don't think I'm gonna need to get this right. All three mantle. Definitely not BBC studios or ITB studios. 'cause the qualification means to be a qualifying indie, you cannot be associated at some other level.

Yeah. With a broadcaster. Right. Okay. And actually, is that the case with all three meter anymore since they were bought by Red Bird? I don't even know. I feel I ought to know. So, so the, the quota thing is not quite what it appears, but the statement of intent and ambition is more, it, it sort of is a little bit.

Oh really? That does look like it's a threat to the nd sec. 

I also think there's a problem about the creative output is that who are they gonna attract in there and how can they incentivize them? I had this argument with Danny Cohen when they were setting up BBC studios. I said, you can't reward people.

I can reward people. The BBC would not allow you to reward people. I always say, you know, I say to, we joke when you get a young priest saying, please become a millionaire. You know, please. Remove the ceiling, be as successful as you want here. B BBC can't do that and de channel four can otherwise, newspapers are saying exec channel four executive making over a million pounds or whatever it is.

It's, they are constricted by the fact they are a corporation. They are a public service. Well, I think Mahan was about on about one and a half No, talking about, I'm talking about getting creative people in. Oh, so generate, to generate your IP 

to lead this studio. 

Yeah. No, I'm talking about people who walk into your business.

Like for example, many years ago we had a young man called David Young, who then went off to become the youngest controller of entertainment BBC. He created the weakest link, which made the BB, CA hundred million in international sales. So someone like that. You, you, they, they're gonna find it very hard to entice those people in.

I think that, that it's all well and good saying we're gonna produce more of our own content, but will it be any good or will it be as good as the content they're getting from outside? 

Well, they could buy, they're gonna buy the Indies outright, aren't they? They're now in the growth. They're certainly talking about doing who?

Yeah. 

Yeah. They're certainly talking about doing, but you could argue that if the first part of this conversation is right, that it's getting tougher and tougher to start an indie, it might be more possible to get the person that you would once have got. Mm-hmm. And if they start kind of doing a bit of a rollup of indies with.

Buying a stake in them with a, you know, the option to increase it to a hundred percent at a later date in a very typical way. You, you know, they might do it by acquisition. I think this is one of the things you've seen in the world of Super Indies. There are two ways of growing a very large Indian, I, I used to run the UK arm of Fremantle, you know, it's called talkback at that time.

Yeah. 

There are two ways of doing it. One is organic growth, which is coming up with great ideas, and the other is acquisitions. One is much harder than the other. 

Yeah, 

obviously. 

Yeah. 

So where you see that this had been the case at Fremantle, they'd been on a bit of a shopping spree before they bought Torque Back.

My company where they bought letters under Greg Dyer, who was the head of Fremantle, I think it's called Pearson TV at the time, because they wanted to establish a presence in the market and they didn't have the patience to try to do it on their own accord. So they just went on this sort of acquisition spree.

Now, channel four could go on an acquisition spree, not any money. Well, I can say the couple of things that constrained that. One is that they have, they got enough money, and the other is are there enough targets to buy? Because in a consolidated world. Of these super Indies, are there enough properly independent producers who can make a difference to them?

I think there probably are, aren't there? I mean, there seem to be, like I said, going back to my earlier point, there's there's, there's no shortage of indies and there seems to be a slowing up of acquisitions by a lot of these Yes. Media groups over the last two, three years. We haven't seen this. You know, those, 

honestly, that's cyclical because I remember I sold tort back in 2000, June, 2000, so it's 25 years ago this month 

actually.

Yeah. 

And I can remember six months later, people much wiser than me who knew how television worked, saying, ho ho, you got your timing right. 'cause everything's gone into decline since then. There'll never be another deal like that. Well, with, there was just hogwash, you know, there were so many deals around the corner that were.

As big or bigger than that, but it seemed that way When you're, when you're on the sort of downward path of the cyclical thing, you think you, you, you know, it's like the property market or whatever you think. Nobody will ever buy my flat, and then it goes into the upward path and you go to queue people outside the door.

So I, I, I don't see it in such absolute terms that I think you're implying. I think, I don't think this is, this is a bit of a downward slope, but. But there, you could easily construct an argument to say things will come bouncing back and you know, the fittest will survive. And then the, the industry goes, you only need one large organization to say, we want to buy into this.

And then that triggers a whole new wave event. Yeah. It's interesting Bird being an example. 

Yeah. Yeah. And we're seeing a lot of money from Middle East coming in now. Well, red Bird is money from Middle East. Yeah, exactly. 

Yeah. No, believe me, five years ago, 10 years ago or when Jimmy and I were doing deals for Hatrick and talk back to funny, the idea of Middle Eastern money.

Yeah. Might have turned up and bought a production company. Would've seen Absolutely extraordinary. 

Yeah. Yeah. There was a brief time when Russian money was starting to creep in, but that, that, that, that was tel quite quickly, wasn't it? A few years ago. So Alex Mahan is now, has left as we know, or is that what you pronounced?

Are you convinced that, are you pronounced? No, I'm not convinced. I hear everybody has speak to. Pronounces it in a different way. Either it's man or mayhan or How about, how would you pronounce it? Uh, you would probably know 'cause you're getting lots of shows. No, but, well 

you, 

you were calling her 

Mahan for a long time.

Uh, she used to work for me, but I've, we run Christian name, first name terms, so I don't know. I dunno. I never said, how do you pronounce it? Well, you just call her Susan. So anyway, just worry about her. She's left. Who's gonna replace her? Left or is she leaving? She, she's about to leave 

in September. She's about to leave?

Yes. Yeah. How, who gonna replace that? Would you judge her? Oh, well, two, two questions. How would you judge her tenure and, and what, what skills does the person who her replacement need and who would, you know, who would be the ideal person to take that role? 

I think she's done a pretty good job. I think she had a really difficult job.

I think, you know, she navigated the channel through. COVID and you know, the, obviously the advertising downturn, you know, I think that that, 

sorry government, the risk of privatizing and that was an awful 

period where literally these carpet baggers were threatening to flog them off to their mates. And I remember once we were asked to put on a special event.

BAFTA for the, for dairy girls to bring over some mps, mainly Tori mps and some Northern Irish mps to watch the final episode of Dairy Girls. And afterwards we had this kind of drinks thing. We were told to be nice to the mps to make sure that they could see how creative Channel four was and the MP for Cal the Valley, I forget his name now, he's said like to Toad Hole.

He's an irritating little. And he came up and was very bumptious to Lisa, very patronizing about Northern Ireland. He said, oh, it's very good what you're doing in Northern Ireland now. Belfort has really come good since the, since the Good Friday agreement about the time you started paying all that money.

We've been investing in you for the last 25 years. And we kind of laughed in that way. You laugh at someone's not being very funny, but you're trying to be polite. Yep. And then he picked up on this and said, oh, I don't think that joke down joke went down very well. He said to me, not to Lisa, and then said, I better check my bag for bombs tonight.

And I met Lisa last week and we were talking about it and I said, it's one of those occasions where I just wish I'd thumped him in the mouth. But the truth is that she said you were more sensitive about it than I was. I'm quite used to that kind of comment. So I listen, I think that she's done going back to Alex Mayo and I think she's done a pretty good job.

But Peter will tell you more about it 'cause he used to work with her. 

Well no, but that's a good, while ago now, I mean, channel four's still there, saw off privatization, I think probably twice during that time. Hasn't gone bankrupt. Still making interesting programs. It's got big challenges, but, but you, you know.

I'd say that's that, that that's a good legacy. To turn to the second part of it, what qualities are you looking for in somebody new? I think it's a kind of fundamental split when you are the people who need to appoint this person. Do you go for somebody who's got a long experience in television and therefore you feel you, you know, they know the game?

Or do you try to spring a rabbit out of a hat by going for somebody in an adjacent industry who doesn't know? Anything about television at all, but is brilliant. Could be either, could be either. My instinct's probably a bit more the form than the latter, because it's a hell of a risk if you appoint somebody who's, or somebody from abroad who's been in Silicon Valley or, or whatever and Yeah.

Has got impressive sounding credentials, you know, working for Meta or, or, or Google or something that, that could work. But it's a bigger 

risk. Yeah, it's a bigger risk. Yeah. And it's, it's a, it's a, it's a role with certain, you know, maybe one and a half hands. Tied behind your back, isn't it, in many ways when it comes to public service broadcast Well, you to as well as, as well as we're now talking about it being a commercially driven Well, it's, but it's always been, 

it's quasi 

commercial 

business.

Commercial. Yeah. It, it's never needed. It's never. At a share price or been judged on the profits that it makes. Yeah. But it needs to keep its head above water and, and, you know, doesn't receive the, the, the politician who tried to privatize it a few years ago. Nadine Doris. Was it Nadine? Doris, was it her?

Who, it's one of them. Yeah. Didn't she say, was it, wouldn't she say something about public subsidy for Channel four and Yeah. She got it in Please. She got me wrong. There wasn't any public subsidy. There never has been any public subsidy for channel four, which is sort of, kind of fairly breathtakingly ignorant thing to have said.

Yeah. 

So channel four, there was one chief executive for Channel four who sort of campaigned to get a public subsidy, but, but that was never gonna happen. It didn't succeed. And actually I think it was rather damaging to the channel 'cause it managed to give the impression that it was on its knees. Yeah.

And you know, that's not the way to lead an organization. I, I would say I. The next chief executive has a very challenging job to keep navigating Channel four's place in, in a very competitive world. Yeah. But, but I don't think it ever looked like an easy job. No. It's always been a tough job for people.

Yeah.

Now more than ever, I think, you know, when it comes to advertising has, has, has shifted Yes. To social, which is obviously why they're now you making the moves to become a digital first broadcaster. They are, yeah. And, and, and actually a number of their key roles in their, in 4.0 are, are also vacant at the moment.

There's at least five really s senior roles at Channel 4.0 and the, you know, the main channel, including the chairman and the CEO that need to be filled. So there's, there's quite a lot of change about to happen there. So it'll be really interesting to see how that. How that develops. We don't even know what the 

timescales on this, because Dawn Air is the interim chair, but it seems to be generally thought that she won't become the full-time or long-term chair.

It's in the gift of Michael Gray, I believe is the head of off comm. Yeah. They've got history together. So you've gotta get a chair. You can't possibly appoint the chief executive before you Yeah. Appoint the chair. This could play out over the next six. Yeah. Nine months I would've thought. Yeah. 'cause you go, you know, these are difficult things.

You, you, you've got, you sometimes you've gotta spring people outta jobs that they're already in. I mean, very often you have Yeah. That can take months and months and months. So, so you, you know, I don't think we're track on this for quite a 

long time. I think David Ater is a good pick. 

I think you are a good pick.

Jim, you're available. I'm too young. Come on. Are the hat to we need a new job? 

No, no, I 

don't. I don't have a hat. So how about, so another industry organization, which is soon to have a new leader, is packed. 

Ah, John 

McVey as thank God. What do you mean with be, I thought gonna say porn nub. 

John McVay seems to have been the head of PACT for a very long time.

Long, no, this 

been, he's like, like he was a Gary. Well, he, when he first arrived, he was young. John McVay. Yes. 

Has there been another head of Pact since, well, it wasn't called 

PAC before. It's called ipa and, and Denise and my partner who set up Patrick with me, Denise o Donahue. Who was brilliant. Who was brilliant.

She was the very first chief executive, if you like, of the Independent Program Producers Association. Right. So she helped channel four to set up, uh, and held up to set up his relationships with independent producers and the agreements so that when we set up Patrick, she knew all the agreements backwards, which in the end was, you know, to Channel Four's detriment because she knew where all the bodies were buried.

Yeah. It was helpful. So there was ipa and that morphed into Pact. And Pact, as you know, its remit is to protect the interests of independent producers, which on occasion it does. 

Are you, are you guys members? You both members? 

Oh yeah. Well, you ban me members. Yeah. If you've got an independent company. Yeah.

But I, I, I'm not an active, I'm not a kind of person who goes to the PAC annual general meeting or whatever and, and, and I feel. 

No, 

I don't know the, the very notion of being an independent producer, kind of slightly lone wolf, not wanting to sit within a system antisocial bit, sit slightly at odds with the idea of a trade association like pac.

That doesn't mean PAC haven't done an, and if you're gonna ask us, has John McVay done a good job over the last 25 years? I'd, I wouldn't really be able to tell you because I don't know enough about pact. I mean, the independent sector is still there. We still are able to retain our rights. Those are things that Pact is presumably, you know, very dear to Pacts heart.

So it sounds like they've done a good job, but I don't 

know. I kind of think they are. They're, listen, they're on the side of the angels. We get that. We, we do have somebody, senior Hatrick, our commercial director, Paul Cohen, who is, has served in various offices on Packed and, and so is able to bring his, the conscience of the business to pac.

But it's a bit like the United Nations, I think. If I'm honest, it's advisory. I think it's, I think it's very difficult for it to be to, you know, if some, if one big, if a big, a big media organization wants to do something, it's very hard for PAC to change its mind and the PAC members can hump and rum. But in the end, we need to make programs and, you know, I think the, the commercial imperatives of our industry override those issues that you're talking about.

For example, when COVID happened, I mean, PACT did set up an emergency fund, which a lot of us contributed to, which was, which was great. So 

yeah, 

in those senses they can, they can step in and be helpful in terms of pastoral care and things like that. I dunno how much they've affected the legislative or the commercial imperatives of the industry the last 25 years.

But I think, you know, he's done a good job. Yeah. I'm not gonna sit here and complain about John McRay. 

No. Okay, good, good. We all like John. Okay, so next question. Coming back to comedy. We're talking about perhaps YouTube being a rich playground for comedy and lots of opportunity. We see lots of comedians running their own YouTube channels and, and, and, and taking the opportunity to launch their own businesses digitally.

When we look at some of the shows that you guys have been involved with, have I got news for you? Outnumbered Ali g Show, the state of comedy. Now, you know, those shows surely wouldn't get made today. Is that, is that fair to say or not? Why not? Well, I'm just wondering that, you know, I think that. First of all, there's much less comedy being commissioned.

Mm-hmm. And you know, I think that that, obviously the panel show seems to have a little drawn out Yeah. As a 

genre. It's going through a lean time. 

Yeah. Yeah. Panel shows have never been fashionable. Even when they were commissioning, nobody ever thought they were very fashionable. But comedies, I don't know.

I So Jimmy can speak for Hatrick exploitation. We've had Als not Normal this year, which is a hu you know, multi award winning, huge original comedy, had the change on channel four with Bridget Chris. He's a brilliant comedy. Oh, if my wife's favorite program, I'm very, very, Karen loves it. Do you know, you do realize this about a woman who leaves the husband?

Yeah, I knows because he's a completely unbearable, that's, that's why Karen likes it. I think she's, 

she's seeing it more 

as a, as as a house through manual. Manual. Yeah. We've just announced 2026 of John Morton, which is a kind of follow up for the third in the trilogy of 2012 W one A and now 2026. So. God, I feel like a long playing record here saying, of course comedy is challenge, it's increase each other.

Isn't the same quantity of comedy that the once was on television, but at the same time there's still brilliant stuff out there and it finds its way through and, and. In the days when there was a very, very large quantity of it. Not all, that much of it was absolutely brilliant. A lot of it was, yes, a lot of it, it was, a lot of it was sitcoms that aren't fondly remembered 'cause they weren't 

that 

good.

Yeah. So, you know, you kindly enough mentioned things like the day to day and braai and LEG there's, and in, in that era of the nineties, which did feel like a pretty good time for comedy. Yeah. There's plenty of other stuff you're not mentioning. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. Because it was just sort of rum you, you, you sort of humdrum stuff if you like.

Yeah. 

So I, I think, I think we feel very passionately about comedy and will be a very alert to any dangers that it's literally gonna die out on British television. But again, I don't think it's quite as bad as that. 

Yeah. I have a feeling that, that, you know, as the drama world becomes more and more challenging in terms of the terrestrials funding it.

And certainly unilaterally, they, it's virtually impossible for 'em to do that. But as you know, if unless drama costs come down through, you know, will AI make editing cheaper or pre-production cheaper or whatever, you know, maybe. But the truth is that one way they could win is to start producing more comedies or half or shorter form.

You know, when you talk about comedy and comedy drama is that, you know, the Bear is in the Emmy, Emmy, Emmy's categories. As a comedy, I would, I would posit the case. It's not that funny sometimes, but it's compelling. It's very, very good storytelling. So I'll be in an era where the broadcasters might, you know, when the streamers are zigging, they zag and they produce more half hour content, which will suit me down to the ground.

I think that half hour shows, you know, whenever one of my kids in their twenties now say, do you wanna watch this on Netflix? I'll say, how long was it? Oh, it's half hour. I'm in. I like that kind of length. It's 

also, Jim, we talked about this on our podcast. One of the great things about the streaming world is it can be 37 minutes Exactly.

For two minutes. Why are we locked into this kind of, and, and we, I've floated this on our podcast. Yeah. If I were now running BBC one or, or ITV or one of the linear channels, I think one of them should take the brave steps to start varying program lengths rather than forcing them all into half hour.

Yeah. Hour. They don't, ironically, they don't do it all every night of the week. It's not the case on Saturday. No programs very odd times, but on sometimes on Sunday varied up. Monday to Friday everything has to start at seven o'clock or seven 30 or eight or eight 30. That rules out. Irregular length programs.

Since we now know BBC cliche of the moment, it's all about the iPlayer on the iPlayer matter in the least what length they are. Yeah. So when will the BBC say a 

drama can last 48 minutes. This is the classic thing about corporation being slow to catch on even with itself is you've got the iPlayer. That is a fantastic thing.

I think it's a great thing to navigate. They've got it, they're getting it rise and as Peter said, it can be any lengthy life and they have all that data and, and very few people watch things as it goes out now anyway. Very few people watch it in that kind of old fashioned way where the controller would.

Decide what the smorgasbord programs you are watching. Is that what, and the b BBC doesn't even sell advertising, so it doesn't need break. It it, it's in a great spot to say, to hell with the half hour, one hour, let's just commission programs at, at the length that they should be. 

It's interesting what you say about drama and we're seeing a real growth of vertical drama, short form, vertical drama coming from Asia.

Mm-hmm. Starting to really a one minute drive percolate. Yeah. Percolate through almost in a Italian novella style, really starting to percolate through in America now. And lots of also u small UK indie stunning to, to, to build that. I mean, do, do you think there's, do you think there's a, there's a future for, for short form vertical storytelling?

'cause again, we're talking about younger audiences who are not sitting in front of TV screens watching. We we're talking about, you know, digital native Yeah, 

we were pitching an idea a while ago by a very experienced writer. He said, I see this as 10 minute sections. And I read them and they were.

Brilliant. They're very compelling, but I couldn't sell it 'cause the old school thinking is, oh, 10 minutes. I don't think we do 10 minutes. Mm. I I had a project which was, I'd say is a comedy drama, very, very funny, but quite tragic in parts. Send us to, to the BBC Comedy Department. They said it was a bit, bit, bit too dramatic for us.

Send it to the drama department who came back six months later and said, oh, we, we don't do half hours. Which seems to me like a crazy reason for turning anything down. Yeah. 

But of course, it's only in television you get this distinction between the two departments. You turn up in Hollywood with a film script.

They don't say, are you going to go to the drama department or the comedy department? Because it's a continuum between, you know, there's very funny films. There's very dramatic films, and all points in between television decades ago decided that the drama people sat over in that corner. If, if you like, the comedy people sat over in the, in that call and within reason, never the twain shall meet.

Yeah. And, and. I don't, I think we now live in a different world. And again, just as it would be bold for a scheduler to say, yeah, bring me a 42 minute program. It'll be bold for a broadcaster to eliminate the distinction between comedy and drama commissioning. And, 

but I haven't seen it happen. Well, in, in, in hatching.

And you've got the scripted department and the non-scripted department. And the scripted department is on the lookout for any good stories, whether they're comedy drama or comedy drama. And the company we set up with, Jeb Mecurio, HTM, ironically, we're doing a half hour in America. About a, a eccentric lawyer starring Henry Winkler, which is a comedy Jeb Urs company, is doing a comedy.

Why? Because it's a really good story. 

Yeah. 

And it's very, very well written, so why wouldn't you do it? The idea that you have these rules, which just seem to come from a different time. Mm-hmm. I think that to your point, that digital's changing all that. 

Yeah. 

And I think the, the next generation of commissioners coming through, I think will, I think they'll get on the bus with it.

I think, you know, all these things change at different times. And as Peter said about, you know, you, we, we discount a whole genre. Then suddenly some bright spark comes up with a brilliant iteration of it. Like, I remember going out for lunch with David Lidman the week he was about to launch. He wants to be a Millionaire, and he said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna schedule it every night of the week.

I thought, you're a mad man mind. I, I'm the one who thought this strictly was the terrible idea. So I, I know nothing about those things. But he said, no. He said, this guy who's produced it, he's been to see me now for the last seven years. He's been developing it with me for seven years. He keeps noodling away at it.

Now he's got it rise and I'm gonna give it the big launch. I'm gonna be bold about it. It was a family quiz show, and yet it also was a brilliant drama. Yeah. It was also a reality show. It was many, many things. And then for the next two years, every network across the world just wanted its own. Who wants to be in it?

Created a whole new, 

but that's the point I was making earlier, that somewhere out there, somebody's gonna Exactly. Create the next thing like that and then we'll all want, you know? Exactly. 

Yeah. So, last question before we go into our story of the week here over the week and get in the bin section. If you were to launch, put yourselves in the, a position of you being, you know, maybe being a, a young commissioner today, 30 years old, let's say.

Yeah. You are now leaving to set up your own indie. Mm-hmm. What does that look like?

Wow. It's a good question. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm about to ask that question to a bunch of young people working at Hatrick. I think it's a really good question. What would they do? Because I think there are clues for people of, I know you're implying that we're not young anymore, Justin, it's fine. Is that, you know, is that where, where are the next up?

How would you set up a media business now? 

Yeah. Because I mean, you, you've, you, you've got amazing track record and returning series and great catalogs, but if you were to wipe that slate clean and just say, right, you're selling a new company now. Mm-hmm. How would you know? What would it look like? What, what, what would you make?

How would you make it, Peter? What would you do? 

Well, I think it depend what your skillset was. You, you know, there's no point in saying, I want to do this thing, but there's no reason why anybody commissioning anything should have any confidence that I'm capable of doing. Yeah. But if you were a brilliant young maker of comedy or a brilliant young maker of anything, documentaries, dramas you, you know, live sport or whatever, then, then you know, you've got a chance of that working.

And, and that's good as well because it's good that that new kind of talent and new faces are coming into television with forward looking approach to, to, you know, you might, you wanna be challenging something. You wanna be saying, we're gonna do it differently to the people who've been doing it for a long time.

Yeah. It may be that it is a bit more digitally led and less. You know, geared towards the, the traditional commissioning system. Yeah. But, but ultimately it's down to the individual, their abilities, talent, track record. And if, if they tickle those boxes, they will succeed. 

Well, or, and also the only thing we can talk about is our own experience.

Back in the day when we both set up, we both were involved in these companies that were you, I mean, Peter's company was originally set up by two onscreen. Stars Mel Smith and Griffey Jones Jones, 

yeah. 

Who, you know, wanted to, to set up a company and as we know, often talent led companies crash and burn quite quickly.

'cause there isn't the, so then they get Peter who then can start to build that company and build it beyond the, so you, you take what you've got, you know, it's really true. If the old Forrest Gump thing, if you get lemons, you make lemonade. And so he uses the platform of, of Mellon Griff, and then he builds it way beyond the last Smith or Smith and Jones into, you know.

The day-to-day braai at the Allen Partridge shows Ali G. Big Train. He, you know, it becomes, yeah. And we did drama in factual as 

well. Yeah. You know, because we kind of, well went multi genre, but I, which is, which 

is also a clever thing to do. I think that's what we, we, we did, we did lots of different genres because I think just making half our comedies is high risk and it takes a long time.

Mm. And often they don't work. And so I think you need other, like we did lots of entertainment shows in the nineties. We did. We had David Young and Rich Dossman working for us in development, and we were creating b BBC one Saturday evening shows, like whatever he wants from Confessions. 

Yeah. Which 

lasted five or six years.

Yeah. Which, you know. They're like military operations. These shows, they're very difficult to get right. So I'm major respect for those genres and I learned a lot by playing in different areas. And I realized that a good producer like Dan Patterson can produce, whose line is it anyway? He can produce a talk show with Clive Anderson and a sitcom with Jim Broadbent.

I think the problem is often young people coming in get siloed. 

Yeah. And 

you go down that route and you never meet other genres. And I actually, I quite like the idea of being slightly generalists because a good producer is a good producer. 

Yeah. Yeah. Well, a lot of people get the opportunity to do that within the BBC or other public service broadcasters.

That's another benefit that we haven't talked about. It's obviously the experience that you can, you can gain through the big corporations, but 

Yeah. But people get siloed in big corporations even more. Yeah. Okay. You know, so I talkback started out comedy and then I kind of led it into drama and factual because nobody would stop me.

There's nobody stop me at all. You know, just come up with the ideas of get the right person on board. And some of the comedies 

end and some of the comedies end up as drama weren. 

Very funny. Yeah. Quickly rebrand it. Do you see what I mean? Whereas within a, within a, uh, big organizers get very political.

You mentioned at the beginning of the intro you mentioned the one show. So the one show. In the relative brief time I was at the BBC. The one show is probably the one idea I had that became something that changed the BBC one schedule. Lots of people are against it 'cause it was treading on the toes of people who made certain program at seven o'clock on a Tuesday, right?

We'd have to make way for the one show, 

right? 

Big organizations get political. I think we are both by our Nature Indies small organization people where it's about the talent, the programs quite, you need to be quite fleet afoot. As I say. You need to be able to, you know, deal with the days when it all seems to be going wrong.

When you take three rejections in a row or whatever and believe, no, we will get a new commission and it will, you know, it's as much that it's as much a mindset and a personality type I think. I mean, it doesn't mean you all have to be the same personality type, but that's why some people do succeed at independent producers and some struggle a little bit more, I would say.

I'm gonna ask you get one quick question before we go to the next section, because I, I kind of, I thought it was very interesting to see Mr. Bats versus post office win BAFTA and mm-hmm. That's but one number special bafta. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Special bafta. And, and I think, you know, it's done an enormous, you know, power of good mm-hmm.

And really, you know, got the country behind it and you could say change government, government policy and, and, and had all sorts of effects. Mm-hmm. So that obviously shows the real benefit of. Public service broadcaster funded drama. And then obviously, you know, we haven't talked about streamers, we haven't talked about Netflix so much and, and, and some of the other streamers that have come and changed the whole landscape of, of drama in the uk.

But one of the biggest stories of last year or uh, of last year or so was baby reindeer. Mm-hmm. And the court case that's going on now around baby reindeer mm-hmm. Where there it was billed as a true story. Yes. And obviously, one of the key protagonists is saying that that is not a true story. Mm-hmm. Do you think I'm, I'm, I'm juxtaposing those against each other because the amount of research and work that went into making sure that Mr.

Bates versus post office could have the very highest standard that was passed by compliance of this is a true story. 'cause you can't, they 

didn't, they didn't bill it as a true story, did they? Yeah, they did. I thought it was based on a true story. Oh, see the word based. And we do lots of, we've done lots of factual drums, I think is a true story.

No, that's baby reindeer. Yes. That's baby reindeer. Yeah, baby re stuck out wrong. That's what, this is a true story. That's what saying, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think what Jimmy was saying is, Mr. Bates not office is based, based on a true story because they didn't make any grand grandiose claims. See, this 

is a true story.

I remember saying to to my wife, we watching it, I said to Karen, that's very unusual. I stopped it. I went back. I went, wow, that's unusual is a claim. They've got problems because we've done those kinda stories before. We did the Stephen Lawrence story. We've done other factual stories and they're a minefield because you're dealing with people who are still alive.

Yes. And merely by writing a script about a real event is fictionalizing it. I think that if two people are having a conversation in real life and you point a camera at them, it changes the nature of that real conversation. It's being observed. So I think that that was a mistake and it was rather grandiose of whether it was the company or the Yeah.

Whose mistake was it? Because Netflix must have compliance people and lawyers. Yeah. Because that's an open goal. Yeah. So I think it's a bit of a mystery. It seems to me that for, to have that to got onto air without somebody holding up a flag and saying, hang on, can we stand up everything in this is a surprise.

Yes. There is a, there are a million different formula formulas, what is the word Form formula? Classical, yeah. Formula. Yeah. There are, there are a million different, it's plural formula along the lines of, this was based on of true story. We made some bits up. Yeah. Yes. That some of the characters may have been changed.

It's changed for dramatic purposes. There's a million of those. Yeah. And no one cares ever gets to air saying. Plainly and boldly. This is a true theory. Yeah. They, 

they were asking for trouble. Well, I, I saw the stage play, which was very good, and Richard Gadd was excellent in it. And, and of course it, it becomes more, it has more impact because it happened to him.

So he's personally witnessing what happened to him now, the stage version dramatizes real events in a way, which, which then says, well, maybe they didn't all happen in that sequence. Mm-hmm. Therefore, it, it doesn't happen that way. Similarly with the TV show is that it was so well told and so dramatic. The ending of the show calls back a moment where he's in the bar and as a transaction where he's on the other, he's on the other side now he is not a barman, but he has a similar transaction with the barman as he had with his supposed stalker.

Yeah. 

That was written. 

Yeah. 

That wasn't lived. That was a very good piece of writing. And writing isn't real. It's a similar acronym of what is going on. And the better the writing, the more it will immerse you. Like Mr. Bates versus the post office. They didn't all say that in sequence. Mm. The stuff in the courtroom probably is some transcripts.

You're on safe ground there. 

Yeah. 

But you know, a, a married couple running a so PO sub post Masters thing in Yorkshire, we can't, we, we don't know what was actually said. Yeah. But a good writer will write what they think was said and the research will tell you that's probably what was said. Mm-hmm. So I think by just saying based on a true story, I think you're being, in a way, you're being more honest.

Yeah. Saying this is a true story. I think you are being rather. Grandiose and you're setting yourself up for what they can now got, which is like a hundred million dollar lawsuit by them. It's 

still ongoing. Yeah. So it's, 

so, you know, I It did, it's very interesting. It's a very good question, Justin. 'cause it did, it held me up when I, I stopped the recording and thought, hang on a minute.

I've never seen that before. Yeah. I can't remember ever seeing this is a true story, 

but, and my my point I suppose is that, you know, duty of care. Does a company like Netflix have those same safeguards that PSBs do in the uk? Well, I bet they do now. And should they, well, that's it. And should they be making that sort of, that sort of thing?

They're 

slightly different, but they're slightly different safeguards, aren't they? Because. With A PSB, you have got the, the PSB remit and you know, channel four has got a very specific remit, but the BBC's been at it for decades and decades, and it's got a public, you know, they, they, they, they know what they need to be very careful 

about.

They've got the manual, right? They wrote the manual. There's 

a, yeah, exactly what it was. I'm trying to think of the, the, the phrase, there's a, there's a sort of body of wisdom that's come down through. 

Yeah. 

So obviously Netflix is newer to the game, but it does, on the face of it, seem like a sort of very strange thing that on air it wouldn't have been difficult to have altered those words very slightly and it wouldn't.

In my opinion in even remotely. Oh, your enjoyment of the show. No, because you would've just thought, well, he course there's some things also, you wouldn't have noticed it, you wouldn't have noticed. You notice it when they make a statement. What you, you think it was drawing attention to the boldness of it?

Yeah. But you would've thought somebody at some senior level would've said, this could bite us in the ankle. 

And it seems to have done so. I think it's impossible to tell a true story on television. I think that you can do a documentary, but even a documentary, a documentary is full of decisions. Yes. You can edit a documentary in a way that actually Yeah.

Tilts it one way or the other. So I just think one has to be very careful where we're trying to peddle the sell the public on something that isn't actually true, rather than treating 'em like adults saying, yeah, this is a, a really, really good drummer. This, this did happen to this guy, and we're gonna tell the story in the best way we can.

And you'll go along with that. 

Yeah. Now it's time for Story of the Week where my guests get to highlight the industry stories that have caught their eye in the past seven days. Peter, what's your story of the week? 

Wouldn't you? Why don't you ask Jimmy first? Right. So I think, I think, I think the very good news I've been abroad, by the way.

Sorry, Peter's been on holiday to Anos Nuts. Yeah, he's so, he has that much sleep. Anyway, he's, I think that the, the, the good news last, the end of last week, which is kind of the story of this week really, is that the BBC decided to appoint Kate Phillips as his chief creative officer or content officer.

Yep. Whatever it's called, CCO to succeed Charlotte Moore and not any sheer continuity. Pick, which means that she has all our relationships in place. She's gonna hit the ground. She's already actually standing in for Charlotte anyway. She's kind of acting as the CCO, so she knows what to do. But she's also an incredibly good executive and I think that she knows how the BBC works and she's sensible about how crazy the BBC can be sometimes.

So you can have an honest conversation with her about how crazy they're being and she'll go, I think we can sort this out. So I think that that's the good, that's the big, I think that's the big story for our industry is that who's gonna run the BBC creatively And it's Kate and she will take it into the charter renewal negotiations alongside Tim Davies.

So good luck to them both really. Okay. 

Alright, 

Peter. 

Well, I think what that speaks to is the fact that the wheel keeps turning and so, you know, somebody leaves, somebody comes in, we talked earlier about Alex Mayhan. Mm-hmm. Now Charlotte, possibly, man, Charlotte Moore's gone, Kate Phillips coming in. And that happens on screen as well as off screen.

And I, I read it. Piece about a great sports broadcaster called Steve Ryder. Do you remember? Yes. Steve Ryder, Steve and Steve Ryder, I think is finally hanging up his microphone or whatever you hang up, and it, it resonated with me because as he going into drag, he, he, I'll be honest, when, when I was at ITV, we sort of brought things with Steve End then, and he had quite, he had a bit of a go at me about it.

He fired him. I, I don't wanna say it, I don't wanna put it that way. Okay. But he's now had a go at Gary Lineker who took over his job on the b bbc. Ah. And as I read this, I thought, what, what'd he say? This is he, he said, I think people mainly agreed that Gary, that was about the golf, that Gary was the wrong person to present the golf, but he was, he was also having Gary, Gary for his tweets and for everything.

And, and I, I guess in a way, this saddened me, which I obviously doesn't make it sound like a good news story, that that cycle goes on and it will always go on that there will be people emerging onto television and then they'll have that great thing, the audience likes them. They'll be brilliant at what they do as Steve was, and they'll have long careers.

But there is also the other end of those careers, and they will. If you like, very often not quite. See that? That's simply the logic. 

Yeah. What don't want to go willingly. They, 

they want, we see a lot in radio too. It's like a game of musical chairs in which they just don't want the music to stop. 

Yeah. 

When they're not sitting on a chair.

Well, well, well, like you say that, but strange musical chairs works well if the b, BC, the, the, the, the joke was that BBC musical chairs, when the music stops, they put an extra chair in. 

Yes, yes. 

And, but where's gonna, where, what's Gary Leer gonna do? By the way, we, we've not discussed this yet. 

Well, he is, he's, he's not short of a pen too, because he is got a very successful podcast.

He runs the, the Empire, well, him and Tony Pasta. He, he is in Star Wars terms, the 

evil empire of Well, you, you're not gonna podcast, you're not going to get him not covering the World Cup next year. Yeah. So, I mean that's, well 

what I was gonna say is wherever he pops up, 

interesting thing this interesting, I was, IV I'll say this, if you are somebody on the tele, there's a lot of pressure that comes with it.

And so we've both worked with many of, you know, the. Bloke who's on the telly feels a lot of pressure, but the bloke who used to be on the telly is worse. And you know, I can think of people not quite like Gary, but let, let's say Piers Morgan. Yeah. Who is huge on social media. Well, he's huge anyway. And he's huge.

He's huge on social media. He's got huge following out there, but he's not really on tele anymore. No. And you, we've talked about, but, but he's more popular than ever. Well, this is, this is a very interesting point, isn't it? Mm-hmm. We've on YouTube, passionally Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And internationally million, and he's got millions, got millions of followers on.

I remember him explaining to me about 15 years ago, he was really early into social media and he says, I want to have more followers on Twitter. It was what was called then than anybody else doing the same thing that I'm doing. He may would largely have achieved that, but do you become, this is, I'm, I'm circling back to Gary Lineker.

Do you become a slightly less visible figure in public life if you are not on tele, as we understand it? 

I would argue you might be, you might, well it depends, maybe regionally, maybe in one territory. But now, you know, he, PI Morgan can, has the benefit of being big in America, of course during his time over there.

So he has actually got the US market, the biggest, biggest audio visual market in the world that he's appealing to, as well as could he walk down Main Street in 

Wisconsin 

and be, would he be mobbed by people? I think he might get a few things chucked at him, but I think, I think he would be certainly recognized and that that could be what Gary Lieus planner.

I mean, why not? Why, yeah, why wouldn't he? Why wouldn't he set up YouTube channel Goal Hanger YouTube chat? Quite possibly. Quite 

possibly. But the thing about being on Match of the Day, for example, is you are literally in people's living rooms on a Saturday night. 'cause sport is the one thing you watch, you wanna watch live.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. 

So there's an agreement that'll be several million people will be. Watching it as it goes out. So there's a community already there. I think the way people watch now is we, what's, what, what's the word we're using now? They're atomized. So people have their own indi individual journeys into their own media based on the algorithms that are being fed to them.

Yep. So we're all living in our own. We may intersect, but these big, you know, communal. Gatherings, like I'd say match the day and other things like strictly. Maybe that's where he'll pitch up. Maybe you'll go on, maybe Gary will go on to strictly, it'd be he can move around the floor. They must hundred. Well it's must He can move around the floor.

It's, you still got it. Interesting. Sports rights is another thing. We could, we should, we haven't got time now to talk about No, it's fascinating 

thinking Your former No, no, no. Well drift. Alright, so what? That's it. Jimmy's got the hero of the week. What's the hero of the week? Who's the hero of the week?

Noel Monds. Same from me. 

Noel Edmonds. Really? I tell you why he is. Well, we go back to the beginning of our conversation. He has got drive and resilience and he, he's never stops thinking He's a Jack in the box. He just keeps coming outta the box. And I actually worked with him on a show called Cheap, cheap, cheap, on Channel four, which was kind of groundbreaking, but silly crap crap, isn't it?

What? Wasn't it? Clap crap. Crap. We're being really honest here. It was but it was, it was a bold move. And sometimes they work. Yeah, sometimes they don't. But he was describing the bold, say, I enjoy working with him. And he was brilliant on the floor. It was as live and he's got a producer's mind. So he was working on the floor, what was happening and he was kind of controlling the events.

He's gone to New Zealand 'cause he, he said that he thought that Europe was gonna be burnt up and blown up. And he's now in New Zealand and he's popped up with this documentary, which been known fairly. He, he offered 

it to us. He didn't offer it to us. Rather he had, he'd made his own pilot with, you know, his own resources and then he offered it to a couple of production companies and I think he offered it to us because we make's farm.

But he went with the other one, which is a guy called Michael Kelpy. And I remember, this is about a year ago now, obviously, 'cause it's all been made in the meantime. I remember being slightly regretful that it hadn't come to us because I thought, although it's slightly odd. If people are watching and it has got an audience, it's got an audience, it's got a kind of, he has a, he has an abiding brilliance as a television broadcaster, which is quite a separate thing from his beliefs in the world.

'cause he's got some quite woo woo ideas. 

Well he was, he was trying to famously buy the BBCI think at one point, didn't he? Well, Jimmy's tried to buy bits of the b BBC I tried to buy bit for, doesn't you, 

that doesn't make you a nutter. No, 

I, I started off as a nutter and he, anyway, I think 

he's a good hero.

He prosecuted for, uh, murdering Clive Anderson. Of course. That's in bra. I, yeah, that's right. 

He never done it before was the line. That's our hero of the week. Yeah. Let's do the 

other one. Alright. Noel Edwin's hero, maybe 

He's an anti-hero, but 

he's a hero. 

Yes. Okay. And finally, who or what are you telling to get in the bin?

Like I said before, I was gonna throw the whole notion of channel four having its own production house in bin. Right. I think it goes against the spirit of Channel four. I don't think it's gonna work for 'em that well. It's a nightmare running an running a production company. They should just concentrate on commissioning, 

right?

Yes, 

I agree with Jimmy again. Yeah, 

I agree. 

We we're one bin, house production business is gone in the bin. Good. Okay. Alright, Peter, Jimmy, thank you so much. Pleasure for putting me on telecast this week. Nice to see you. Good luck with, uh, the Insiders Podcast. And it's not, not a z 

you're adding a, you're adding a definitive Oh, am I?

Insiders? Insiders, insiders. 

Insiders. You can find that. I'm sure. I podcast platform. Thank you guys. Cheers. All the best cheer. 

Thank you. All right, thanks. Thanks.

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