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Gary Franses Executive Producer of C4 Cricket
In Notes By The Editor, perhaps the most influential section of its annual cricket bible, Wisden opined of 1999 with typical head- masterly caution: “Their [BBC] increasingly half hearted cover- age was not much missed and Channel Four brought a wel- come sense of adventure to the proceedings, though overall, I thought, the newcomers were a touch over-praised.”
For the majority of the nation who cared less than little about the va-et-vient of flannelled fool- ery the fate of live terrestrial tele- vised cricket probably registered way below even a cast change in Neighbours, writes Quentin Falk.
To the devoted minority, from pink gin-swilling retired colonels to aspiring home-grown Test stars, the change of channels from public service to commercial spelled out something positively seismic.
Now, more than three years and two BAFTA awards on from this small screen revolution, C4 can pride itself that its inspired coverage of the ‘Summer Game’ has begun to fog all memories of those long Beeb years.
Yet, despite the expert com- mentary, astute analysis and a dazzling array of high-tech inno- vations boasting catchy names like Snickometer, The Red Zone and, most sensational of all, Hawk-Eye, Wisden for one still seems immune to these bold new kids on the block.
In its latest edition, the Editor merely noted, admonishingly: “C4’s viewing figures for cricket have dropped each year since they began to televise the game in 1999. They put a brave face on this, comparing reductions to audiences for other sports. But however the numbers are inter- preted, they mean fewer people have been watching cricket on TV and falling figures are anathe-
ma to any broadcaster depend- ent on advertising income.”
To be fair though, elsewhere in the same annual, Simon Hughes, ex-cricketer and now better known portentously as The Analyst in C4’s coverage is granted gen- erous space to spell out the ramifi- cations of, and challenges pro- voked by, the new technology.
But, by way of introduction, Hughes recalls how TV pictures once looked... “so primitive: sin- gle-end coverage so that every other over was viewed from behind the wicket-keeper; four cameras at most; grainy, jerky replays and stationary shots of scoreboards to update the match situation.”
That would all start to change, eventually beyond recognition, once companies like TWI and Sky became involved at the turn of the nineties. Heading up the trail- blazing team which made its debut during the 1990 England tour of the West Indies was Gary Franses, now executive producer of C4 Cricket.
Franses, who had been in tele- vision since 1977 with, first, Thames and then, shades of things to come, C4, working for three years on the popular American football shows in the mid-eighties, was given the job of organising the Windies coverage despite never having supervised cricket before.
“You have to remember that the BBC were at the time the only people who’d really done cricket in England. The freelance market had no one experienced in it. I think we got hold of the one technician available, a mid- wicket cameraman who’d just left the Beeb.
“We took 40 people out there with ten tons of gear, flying round the islands living day to day. I have to say it turned out pretty
well. I remember that Tim Rice wrote a piece in The Times say- ing, ‘I’ve seen the future... and it’s satellite TV.’ We were all learn- ing on the job, as it were.”
Pandora was out of the box and Franses then helped crank up cricket from India before leaving TWI to work for another company who had the rights to the 1996 World Cup on the sub-continent: “I wanted to direct the final and the only way was to take on the whole job of organising it,” he smiled.
Franses admits that it never really crossed his mind that terres- trial rights for cricket in the UK would go anywhere else than the BBC, “although I did feel that they’d got into a bit of a rut.”
“We were doing things on vari- ous tours, like getting an extra camera in places where you did- n’t have any of the usual luxuries. Sky, who were the paymasters, expected it: they didn’t just want a medium-pace trundle.”
He certainly didn’t think that C4 would want to be part of the equation when, in the autumn of 1998, the ECB announced that the rights had gone to the network.
“There were two companies capable of doing the job for C4: TWI and Sunset + Vine (part of The Television Corporation), who I now worked for. TWI were absolutely the hot favourites and had, in fact, helped C4 get the job in the first place. At Sunset + Vine, we had two months to come up with a ‘pitch’. In fact, I’ve still got the video. We saw the cricket board on December 12 and the decision was finally made on Christmas Eve.
“For me, this was a big win. Having done all that cricket abroad, this was now the plum job. I’d originally left TWI under a bit of a cloud because I was going to a rival company to do the World Cup so this was a win on a person-
al level too.”
Unlike those pio-
neer days nearly 10 years earlier, there was now, explained Franses, “a huge freelance market of very good techni- cians – from cam- eramen down to slo-mo operators – who’d done cricket. So whoever got the job had a real chance to make it something it had never been before on British television.”
As far as those ratings are con- cerned? “They’re probably less than the BBC,” Franses
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