Page 6 - 16_Bafta ACADEMY_Samantha Morton_ok

first person
4
great expectations
Kevin Lygo, Channel 5’s Director of Programmes and a new entry in the latest Media Guardian 100, outlines his challenge at Britain’s youngest network.
Identifying the expectations of various stakeholders has become almost half the task of running a modern TV station. The other half is, of course, its implementation.
I have an image of C5’s vari- ous stakeholders – The Viewer, The Advertisers, The Staff, the Shareholders and the Television Industry all sitting down in their respective ‘TV dens’, arms folded, a faint sneer crawling across their weary faces, as they assess what’s on offer at Channel 5 tonight.
But what are they expecting? What do they want? How is what they want connected to what they’re expecting, and how is what’s expected linked to what they want?
The challenge at C5 is to raise expectations, to make people actively choose to watch us. The viewer should be thinking “Right, what’s on 5 tonight I like them”, the advertiser should actively want his product shown along- side the station’s output, the shareholders should eagerly await the euros pouring in from increased commercial impacts and 99% of the TV industry should mumble ‘Damn, why didn’t I think of that?’ – the other 1% basking in the glory that they did.
There is a simple way of satisfy- ing all these different desires – you make some ‘good’ programmes. (If this article were in any other publication I might have to write another thousand words defining what ‘good’ means – but BAFTA members really should know what it means by now).
But how you approach a pro- gramme is increasingly inter- twined with how you approach the Channel itself. I have learnt very quickly that nobody puts on post-modern spectacles to watch C5.
A couple of years ago, the amusingly entitled A Thong for Europe (a programme about male stripping) could have appeared on C4 and be treated as a harmless bit of ironic enter- tainment, but on C5 it came across as confirming one’s preju- diced view of a Channel with too much tacky programming.
Similarly Eurotrash – a pro- gramme I commissioned over at C4 is fine on that Channel – but I doubt whether it would have the same acclaim and level of acceptability if it sat on C5.
But times are changing. I’m no longer looked at as though I have something nasty on my shoe when I tell people I work for C5 – rather I get a wry smile and a knowing nod of the head as if to say ‘Oh yes – smart move. I think they’re really going places’.
People are beginning to change their expectations of the Channel. Hywel Williams recently wrote in The Guardian. “The Channel 5 of 2002 has reclaimed television as an adventure in ideas, (it) has demonstrated that television need not stoop to conquer.”
High praise for our arts pro- gramming in prime-time and our straight-talking approach to History and Archaeology. Arts in
prime-time is now actively sought out on C5 and there’s even some concern that it might be moved back into the shadows of the schedule. We’re seen to be the guardian of the nation’s culture!
As expectations change so can the programmes. Signing Chris Evans and Chris Moyles to make a smart, fun to watch Zoo show five nights a week may not have been possible a year ago, but Evans and Moyles have acquired great expectations of the Channel now and want to be part of it, want to be at the heart of the new feel to the place.
The best producers and pro- duction companies are also adapting their programme ideas to suit the emerging expectations from the Channel. Smart, reward- ing current affairs programming are being commissioned because top current affairs producers think for the first time, that we might be interested in them. It soon becomes a virtuous circle that benefits the viewers, production companies and the Channel alike.
There is however, one big problem facing all five terrestrial channels – the homogenisation of their content. Flick through the Radio Times and examine what’s on 1, 2, 3, 4 and the truth is that about 75% of what you see is interchangeable. Quizzes, repeats, daytime chat, films, soaps, Carol Vorderman, make- over shows, gardening shows, life- swapping shows.
Who’d have believed that Richard & Judy, once such icons