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SETTINGTHEAGENDA
SETTINGTHEAGENDA
When Beatrice Ballard produced the 1994 British Academy Awards show for the BBC,
she could hardly have imagined that just a few years on she’d become a pillar of BAFTA herself. The recently-elected Chair of the TV committee talks to Quentin Falk
Two things about that Awards’ evening at the London Palladium especially stick in Bea Ballard’s mind. The first was the decision to have a red carpet outside the the- atre – “we felt that would give it some razzmatazz, not just for people in the indus- try but the public too. We had to try and give the awards the same sense of occasion as the Oscars.”
The second was a sneaking sympathy for John Travolta. “He and Samuel L. Jackson had both been nominated as Best Supporting Actor for Pulp Fiction. Travolta thought he’d won and personally flew his plane all the way over from the US to be at the ceremony. Sam couldn’t be there because he was filming. So when Jackson won, Travolta had to go up on stage and pick up the award on his behalf. I really felt for the man.”
A longer-lasting effect of her much- praised production were the contacts she made at the time with the various BAFTA hierarchy: “I worked very closely with the chairs of the various committees and also the Academy chairman. After all, here was the BBC coming in and covering BAFTA’s own event and I didn’t just want to impose what I thought it should be; it was important to try and reflect that they wanted it to be, too. Also, to be frank, I wanted to take advantage of the prestige of some of the key people there in organising the best kind of coverage.”
It must have been a mutual admiration society because it wasn’t too long before she was persuaded to stand for Council, eventu- ally getting elected, serving two years and then became chair of the Events Committee. A fruitful year followed – highlighted by her introduction of the My Channel and Independent View strands – before she recently took over the reins of the higher- profile TV committee.
“I was,” she said, talking in her office at BBC Television Centre where the fourth sea-
son of the evergreen Parkinson, which she executive produces, has just taken flight, “very flattered and honoured to be elected.
“Events was a big challenge but this is much bigger, much more at the cutting edge. Now, one’s much more the conduit for mem- bers and broadcasters, deciding on BAFTA policy. I firmly believe that BAFTA should not just move with the times but that it should also try to set the agenda.”
The daughter of visionary writer J.G. Ballard, she claims she wanted to be in tele- vision ever since she was nine: “I didn’t know in which area; there was no burning desire to work on any particular programme. It was just that I was really into TV, as I grew up in a household where it wasn’t consid- ered a sin to watch it a lot.”
After university, then a post-graduate course in journalism, there was a scholar- ship to the New Statesman followed by a job on the Radio Times before her youthful holy grail finally beckoned at the BBC in the shape of John Craven’s Newsround, where she became an assistant producer.
Her subsequent rise-and-rise through the ranks of light entertainment was first sparked by an advert in the Guardian seek- ing staff for a new Clive James show at London Weekend. After The Late Clive James, which set a new kind of satirical stan- dard for the talk show format, she and he moved across to the BBC where they came up with Saturday Night Clive as well as his Postcards from ... documentaries. Since 1998, Ballard’s been at the helm of the restored Parkinson show.
Juggling her already busy life as a TV producer – “I’ve got to the point now where I might consider a move into management”
– and mother of two young children, she does- n’t seem remotely fazed by the additional work- load posed by her new responsibility at BAFTA.
Indeed she relishes the opportunity to, as she describes it, “push BAFTA into the fore- front of opinion-making.”
That also means the bread-and-butter stuff too, like the plan to publish an Academy rule book: “I’m very keen to make sure that the award categories reflect the changes that are currently taking place in television - for example the huge increase in the number of science programmes being commissioned and made.
“With this in mind, we have been re- assessing the award categories to make sure that they are as up to date as possible. The TV Committee has also been discussing the various points put forward by members for ways in which the categories could be changed. I will be writing to the main broad- casters to also canvass their views on the award categories.”
Then there’s matter of boosting the TV Crafts Awards: “Now that they have been established as a separate ceremony, we are very keen to build them up this year as much as possible. Partly this means looking at outside venues that are big enough to accommodate an expanded and higher pro- file ceremony.”
But it’s the bigger picture of BAFTA that particularly exercises Ballard. “We’ve got to be thinking more widely about what we do, and not in just an insular way. That could mean, for example, actively trying to help our community of programme-makers with clear direction from, say, Jana Bennett, at the Learning Channel in the US, about what key commissioners are looking for. That could do a real service.
“With the coming switch off for analogue and the arrival of digital, there’s a revolution coming, and many people still don’t have any idea of what’s it’s going to mean. At BAFTA we need to ask those questions in order to be ahead of the game. If we can stimulate debate here, then BAFTA will be the place to be.” ■
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Photo: Beatrice Ballard, Chair of the BAFTA TV committee
Academy Profile