Trump’s fury at the Grammys, the BBC’s latest funding conundrum & Channel 4’s Big Gamble

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0:00

Foreign. All about the world of television with me, Jimmy Melville and me, Peter Fincham. This is the podcast for people who love TV and want to know what's going on behind the scenes.

0:30

So before we get to tv, I just wanted to say. Yeah. At the weekend. Terrible weather at the weekend. I don't remember.

0:51

Yeah.

0:58

Do you know what I did? I read your book.

0:58

I read my book.

1:00

I read it from beginning to end.

1:01

Well, it's a short book.

1:02

Oh, yeah. But it's, it's a great. I really, really enjoyed it.

1:04

Did you?

1:07

Yeah.

1:08

And you. And you.

1:08

I'm here to plug your book to our listeners by Jimmy Melville's book. It's about Everton. It's not just about Everton.

1:09

Is.

1:16

It's about you. Yeah, it's about, you know, your life. We touch on your career in television, some of your ups and downs. It's really. I thought it was really, really good fun.

1:16

That's very kind of you, Peter. And of course you're in it.

1:25

I do get a mention, I do. To mention for inviting you.

1:27

Was it you and when you were running the BBC?

1:31

I was running BBC One. And this is maybe a sign of changing times. Basically when I was running BBC1, let's say we had the rights to the World Cup. Yeah, you did. You just said, yeah, I think I'll go to this game. That game. This game. This game. And they, you know, somebody or other from the sports department just gave you tickets. They were the very best seats.

1:33

I know you.

1:53

A plane, stayed in a nice hotel. It was in Germany, wasn't it?

1:54

It was in Germany. It was behind enemy lines.

1:57

Behind enemy lines. I can't remember who. Who are we playing?

2:00

We were playing.

2:03

I think it was Wayne Rooney got sent. Sent off.

2:04

No, it was the. In that, in that tournament that he got sent off against. Against Portugal. But no, it was against. Oh, my God. It was the opening game and I forget now and. But they, I know they put up a very stalwart fight. I think we won one nil or something against a, a minor team. But we were with Addison Creswell, who.

2:07

Was a great manager and agent, Jack.

2:24

D. It was a lovely bloke, many.

2:26

People, a lovely man who we must.

2:28

The latest great Addison Cr. And he was very frightened because he was very paranoid about the press buttonholing him because the previous night Jonathan Ross had interviewed David Cameron on the Jonathan.

2:30

Ross show and he'd asked him if he fancied Mrs. Statue.

2:41

He'd asked him if he'd masturbated.

2:43

Well, yes, I was using the word fancied for a. For a family. What, for the.

2:45

For the Disney audience?

2:50

Yeah.

2:51

Which of course was a joke.

2:51

Yes.

2:53

But then the Daily Mail, although Mail on Sunday, went nuts about it and Addison kept saying to me, jimmy, I don't want it to kick off. It's.

2:53

When we get there, in Addison's world, it was always about to kick off.

3:01

It's always about to.

3:03

Something was about to kick off.

3:04

It's all going to kick off. And actually, so it allowed me to say at 3pm When Wayne Rooney got the ball on the center spot, I said, no, Addison, now it's going to kick off.

3:05

What I was struck reading about your. This is maybe a little bit of a stretch.

3:13

Go on.

3:18

Reading about your loyalty over many, many years to Everton, is this sort of similarity between being a football fan and being an independent producer.

3:18

Yeah.

3:27

Because you, you know, you. You got to stick with it through the good times and the bad times.

3:27

Character forming.

3:33

Yeah, it's character forming. It requires a certain kind of irrepressibility. You need to be like a jack in the box. You know, you have three. Three ideas turned down on the same day.

3:33

Yes.

3:43

Rewrite your business plan for next year and yet you've got to come in smiling the next morning and saying, let's go and pitch something to Channel four or something, or to Amazon or. Or whoever. And it's weirdly a little bit similar character trait you have to being a fan of a football team, particularly when they don't win all the time.

3:44

It's like, what else are you going to do? I mean, Winston Church, I think it's always relied upon for a quote about this. He said the definition of success was someone who lurches from disappointment to disappointment with equal enthusiasm.

4:03

Yeah, exactly.

4:15

I think that could be on our gravestone, Peter.

4:16

And being an Everton fan.

4:19

Oh, yes.

4:20

Been funny enough because there's something we're going to talk about later is BBC and Director Generals and there's some story out there that Mark Thompson might come back for a second. Second run it. And I thought no, this is exactly the same as football. Manages to come back to the club a second time.

4:21

It's always perilous.

4:36

Jose Mourinho did it, didn't he? And who was the one at Everton?

4:37

Howard Kendall.

4:40

Howard Kendall was it?

4:41

Three times he came back three times. With diminishing returns each time he came back.

4:42

Yeah. Yes.

4:46

He couldn't recapture the magic. The lightning in the bottle.

4:48

Yeah.

4:51

That we're all after.

4:52

Okay, so, okay, let's now go to television. Donald Trump.

4:53

Hooray. What's he doing?

4:57

Watching the Grammys is the first. Or has somebody said to him, have you seen what they've said about you on the Grammys, Mr. President? This seems bizarre.

4:58

I would think his team keep him well away from any adverse comments. You know, a bit like an agent keeping the star away from bad reviews. But no, I think he sits at home and watches TV all day.

5:06

That's stretching. So he's. I mean, it's not as if the music featured on the Grammys is likely to. But he likes ymca, doesn't he? And Village People and all that kind of stuff. He's not gonna like Olivia D. So what.

5:16

What happened this year at the Grammys then?

5:27

Trevor Noah was a very funny man, was the host. And so he makes a gag about. I'm gonna read it. I'm gonna be. Because I don't want to be sued. I'm gonna read it.

5:29

Sell it, Peter. Sell it to us.

5:36

Song of the year. That is a Grammy that every artist wants. Almost as much as Trump wants Greenland, which makes sense because Epstein's island is gone. He needs a new one to hang out with Bill Clinton.

5:38

And that got a laugh.

5:50

It's not a great joke, is it?

5:51

Tumbleweed, mate. Tumbleweed.

5:52

But I think more fun a bit longer, I warn you. Is Trump's response on Truth Social. Remember, this is the President of the United States. He must have a few things on his plate. Yeah, you would think he, you know, got a lot of things to pay attention to.

5:54

Yes.

6:08

So this is what he says. The Grammy Awards are the worst. Virtually unwatchable. CBS is lucky not to have this garbage litter their airwaves any longer. The host, Trevor Noah, whoever he may be, is almost as bad as Jimmy Kimmel. At the low ratings Academy Awards. Noah said incorrectly about me that Donald Trump and Bill Clinton spent time on Epine Island. Wrong. I can't speak for Bill, but I've never been to Epstein island nor anywhere close, and until tonight's false and defamatory statement, have never been accused of Being there, not even by the fake news media. Noah, a total loser. Better get his facts straight and get them straight fast. It looks like I'll be sending my lawyers to sue this poor, pathetic, talentless dope of an MC and suing him for plenty of dollars.

6:08

Wow, he's classy. He's a class.

6:52

When I read that I thought, I've never really thought about this. He presumably doesn't type himself. He's not like you and I with our phone, with our thumbs, you know, he's presumably just typically spouts off and some poor minion has to take down the dictation or record it and then turn it into a post on Truth Social.

6:57

But do you think anyone kind of advises him not to do this or.

7:16

He just is given up is the.

7:19

Definition of a loose.

7:22

And they may have given up. And, and also I, I read a thing about this recently that the sheer number of his posts, it's like 6,000 since he became president for the second time. Means that in a way none of the matter in the least because you know, within a few hours he'll be banging on about something else altogether. So the, the Grammys were on CBS and Paramount.

7:23

Yeah.

7:43

Actually for the last time they're going because. Exactly. Disney have grabbed the rights and I haven't done a study of it lately. But, but ratings for award ceremonies have been in long term decline and, and in many ways the point of them is not the ratings, it's the hullabaloo around them.

7:43

Yeah.

8:03

The noise around them. So who has contributed to the hunnabaloo around them more than anybody else? In a way, Donald Trump's attack on them is exactly what the Grammys want.

8:03

Yeah.

8:15

Because unless, unless they have to shell out 20 million to shut him up because it's giving them publicity. And we're reading about it here. We are, we're talking about it now.

8:16

No, he is, he is basically turned the news into his own reality show.

8:24

Yeah.

8:28

So he basically, it's, I mean when we do have a gut news in America, which we're doing it currently, fortunately there are other lunatics in America you can talk about. But he, for the first half of the show, basically, it's all about Trump. And then we go off and spiral off into other stories for a bit of light relief.

8:28

There's something in bold in our notes, Jim.

8:43

This is in case we get sued. To be clear, Trump says he had no knowledge of Epstein's crimes. There are no suggestions he ever visited Epstein's private island. And he's not been accused of any crime but by Epstein's victims. The U.S. justice Department has said allegations about him are unfounded and false. And of course, the US Justice Department are totally reliable.

8:46

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10:07

Spelled b a B-B-E-L.com acast rules and restrictions may apply. There was a BBC board meeting in Salford. They lived the life, don't they?

10:20

I've been to Salford. I went to, by the way.

10:33

Sulfur's a fine place.

10:36

Media City, when it was in the northwest, when. I know where it is, Jim. When it was a car park on a very rainy day, it was basically a load of puddles. And because it was raining so hard, we, the BBC leadership team, stayed in our bus. Nobody wanted to get out. And then I think it was Peter Salmon said, this is where Media City's gonna be.

10:37

Oh, you were leaning from the back.

10:59

He was in. And a great discussion developed about people who were gonna move from their lovely houses in Chiswick to Manchester or Salford as part of this great migration. And Peter Salmon referred to them as the chosen ones.

11:01

Yeah.

11:14

He didn't go, I know, I know. Unless they were in Salford.

11:17

Yes. And there's been a. And Samir Shah, who's the chairman, led a vibrant meeting. Well, they all stayed awake, but there's been a leak, there's been some leaking and there's some ideas coming out to. Well, clearly the thing they're wrestling with is how are we going to fund the BBC going forward? They're going to renew their charter. What will the government Want them to fund in a different way. So they come up with various ideas. And one of the ideas, not strictly TV but will affect the TV license, is a radio levy. What is the radio levy?

11:21

It's a balmy idea because it's not as if we're all short of radio to listen to. So the idea that we'd suddenly subscribe to radio in large numbers, maybe in small numbers. But have they modeled this? Have they worked out what percentage say of the current audience for Radio 4, which is probably the key network, you know, the most prominent network that is also most unique to the BBC because the music based networks, Radio 1, Radio 2, in its own way, Radio 3, all have commercial rivals that do quite similar things to them. But Radio 4, let's just stick with Radio 4 at the moment. Radio 4, you know, even in these kind of, you know, highly competitive times, has a unique reach much loved. You know, you'd call it one of the treasures of the BBC. But if you wake up one day and say, from now on you've got to pay for it, you've got to, you've got a subscription to Radio 4, that reach is going to go so dramatically down.

11:55

Do you think?

12:52

Yeah, I do, yeah.

12:52

Would you not pay?

12:53

I might pay. I mean, depending how much it is. We all pay a lot of subscriptions, you know. Yeah, the whole subscription thing, there's a sort of subscription saturation, you know, you could argue out there already, you, you know, there are no. I, I bet you have subscriptions. Well, let me ask you to all the main streamers to Amazon, Apple, Disney, Netflix. Yeah, but a lot of time I meet people who, who say, well, yeah, but I've got Netflix and I can, I can't, I'm not having, I'm not going to pay for Amazon as well. I'm not going to pay for Apple as well, let's say. So you'd be adding another one for. I don't know whether you'd be adding it for all BBC radio services or specifically for a network like Radio 4, but I think it's quite a big ask of people to pay for something that's been free to them for, you know, their whole lifetimes.

12:55

Except I suppose if you are going to do this, and they talked before about, you know, selling TV programs off in bundles, which I think is a mad idea. The idea that you would bundle up, yes, Faction Entertainment and documentaries and that, that's your bundle because then it becomes, that becomes more expensive and just very complicated to manage. But this, I mean, splitting Radio And TV seems to be at least a kind of. I can see the, I can see the thinking behind it.

13:48

It seems to me that it's very easy to say the license fields are necronistic. It's easy if you're a politician to say it must end like Boris Johnson's government did. But it is extremely difficult to work out how you replace it. And so I don't envy the BBC board at their meeting in Salford trying to work on these ideas. I mean one other one that's been mentioned is means testing of some sort.

14:16

Yes. So wealthier households pay more limey.

14:43

That's a can of worms. Yeah, I mean that is a can of worms. Obviously you can see some kind of logic to it, but rather like, you know, notoriously when the Thatcher government replaced the, was it the council tax in those days with the poll tax, that was inching down that road with disastrous results.

14:46

And also then they've come up with the idea of reducing costs. Well, I think BBC obviously, partly, very original idea. That is the go to, isn't it? Is it? If you want to increase your profits, you reduce your costs.

15:08

I would say that if one of BBC has various Achilles heels and one is the same number of people work for. It was like 30 years ago and any commercial organization wouldn't operate like that, wouldn't operate like that. So yeah, in that sense reducing costs would be a good thing. Yes, but it's painful. It's painful. And you look at successive director generals of the BBC and you could argue that's the nettle they haven't grasped. I think I'm right in saying that in like 1990, about 21, 22, 000 people work for the BBC and it's almost the same number today. But I would say as a, you know, as we both are friends and supporters of the BBC, we want the BBC to succeed and, and to, you know, to continue to exist. I think it's a bit worrying that it is more broadly accepted probably than ever that the license fee is an anachronism and can't go on forever. And yet bluntly, the best they can come up with is a radio levy which, I mean, we can debate whether or not people would pay it, but it's, it's nibbling.

15:18

It's nibbling. It's what they call salami slicing.

16:23

Yeah. And means testing.

16:26

Yeah.

16:27

Oh come on, that's never going to happen. And, or reducing their cost. There's another one which is, well, allowing BBC studios to take on more debt, to expand. But these Feel like they're around the edges.

16:28

Well, it's interesting, part of it is.

16:42

Still the license fee and I haven't yet seen anybody suggest something that would raise that sort of amount of money to get the big.

16:43

Well, interesting. I had breakfast this morning with my old friend John Thoder. You know, we were, we, we formed, yeah, we formed our friendship when we were trying to buy the BB. Buy BBC3.

16:52

Well, that could have raised him a bob or two well for a pound, didn't you?

17:04

John is a, you know, he's a very, he's a macro thinker and he, he was saying we're talking about BBC Studios and you know, the truth is if you set up a production company, there are two outcomes in the end. Either it fails and you close it down or it succeeds and you sell it to a bigger company.

17:07

What about just trundles on making good programs?

17:24

Well, it can do that. Which is what obviously you know, you and I are forced to do.

17:26

But, but oh yeah, what a pain that is. Just, just have to make programs we love and really believe in.

17:31

No, but I'm saying is that. But. And I said this, I remember saying this to Danny Cohen when he invited a bunch of independent producers in to talk about the idea that BBC may set up an independent production company. And their raison d' etre was, well, we need to release the creativity of our in house development teams so they can supply programming across the world across different platforms. That's fine.

17:36

What does that mean really? What, what was, what was the creativity at that point? Sort of under lock and key. They've only hidden it away. We want to open the doors and say creativity burst. Fourth.

18:00

But to be fair to them, there's that if you're a BBC producer and you pitched an idea to BBC Fact Dent or BBC Drama.

18:10

Yes.

18:17

You didn't.

18:17

No, no, I get that.

18:18

And they said no, that's a real. As you and I know that on occasions, Peter, we've been turned down by 15 different organizations and then someone along the line has said yes and we've kept quiet about the 15, about the 15 passes we've had and we say this is great, you know, this is fantastic. We found a home for our great program. But John was saying, and I think I could see Warner Brothers is about to sell to either Paramount or to Netflix for probably 10 times what it's really worth. Right. Why don't the BBC sell BBC Studios and make billions and billions of pounds which then underpins its activities for the next five to 10 years until next charter renewal, when they could actually compete with Netflix, especially in the drama space, they'd have the wherewithal to say, no, we'll do this program, we'll, we'll do this drama and we'll do it on our own and we'll be the anchor network. It would surely it would be a good thing to do.

18:19

It's an interesting thought. I think it's a flawed argument because obviously the windfall from selling it is a one off. Then you're left as a broadcaster where you're in the position that ITV might find themselves in.

19:14

Well, exactly. Why are they doing it then?

19:26

You're a broadcaster. So I mean, obviously currents can flow in different directions. You're going the opposite direction of, let's say, Channel 4, who have now started their in house production arm, have they not?

19:28

I think this month, running it this month. Sarah Dillistone.

19:42

Sarah Dilly. She's known to people.

19:47

Oh, really?

19:49

Yes, yes.

19:50

People in the know call her Dilly.

19:52

Yeah, I believe so, yeah.

19:53

Sarah, who's starting this month, will start to develop in house production capabilities as part of Channel 4's Fast Forward strategy to diversify and grow revenues to remain a strong and successful business and reinvest back into the creative community. Well, maybe, I think setting up the production company in this current climate is a mad idea, especially when you've got no Money and Channel 4 have got no money.

19:54

But if they sell them to themselves, if they sell to themselves, which would be the easiest thing for them to do, then what they will be doing is, is kind of making life a bit tougher for independence.

20:26

Well, I have on good authority that there was a dinner not so long ago which Jonathan Allen, the acting CEO of Channel 4, was heard to say.

20:37

Well, were you at this dinner?

20:51

No.

20:52

Were you invited?

20:52

But I know. No, but I know somebody invited either. I know somebody who was.

20:53

Okay, no names mentioned.

20:57

No names mentioned. And they said to me that. He said out loud, he said, well, we're going to set up our own production company. It's going to be bad news for Independence.

20:58

Wow. Was. Was this person who was there an independent producer?

21:08

I'm not saying what he was or what she was in any capacity.

21:12

Yeah, but, but there were independent producers present at this dinner.

21:15

There weren't many. Yeah, and I think there were any. I think, I think the bold thing to say and I think that when he found out, he, he tried to row back. But that's the thinking within Channel four now completely against its original remit, which was to only commission from the independent production center, Channel 4 stimulated the independent production sector, which is probably the most successful part of our industry. And here it is now saying, you know what, we don't give a fuck about the independent production center. We're going to set up our own production company. Well, good luck with that. Because the other thing is, if you're commissioning from your own company, where does the quality control come in?

21:19

Well, obviously that's a big and complicated issue and, and I'm very familiar with it from both the BBC and itv.

22:01

Well, maybe, maybe the chairman you can.

22:08

Juggle your way through and you know, I mean, I'm quite, I'm quite struck by what he said, if this is true, that he said it because, you know, at ITV the rhetoric was always to say the door is open to independence. We want the best ideas from the best sources. That's all we're interested in. Behind closed doors, not surprisingly, there was a degree of your arm being twisted up your back by, by the kind of top management saying, yeah, but wouldn't it be good if you just commission more from ITV studios? And a sort of bit of a fudge in the middle was how things went on with. It was, it was part of, I think it was part of my, you know, annual targets or incentives or something to increase the percentage of in house production year by year. So we went from 62 one year, wanted to go to 64 the next year. And you kind of thought, oh, this goes with the territory, I can deal with this, it's not the end of the world. Nobody's actually going to overrule me and say, you've got to commission this idea just because it's in house. But you certainly wouldn't got out in public and say this is bad news.

22:10

But also itv, with all due respect, is a commercial organization that was set up like that.

23:18

Yeah, yeah. And it hasn't got in its reading with any particular. No, no, no. It's reason for commissioning independent production are two one, there's 25, quote it was forced to. Yeah, yeah. But two, self interest. Yeah. Because if you, you know, during my time there, the biggest shows like the X Factor and Britain's Got Talent, Downton Abbey, that Downton Abbey, they were independent production. So it's very easy to look at top management and say, are you really saying you want to cancel those shows so that you can get something a little bit similar from in house? So self interest said you want to be out in the marketplace getting the best ideas, getting the best ideas. And you can combine that with A kind of mission to increase the commissioning from in house. And, you know, it's a slight fudge, but life's off full of slight fudges, isn't it? It kind of worked. It was kind of all right. But we would never in. In public or in any kind of forum with. With independent producers. Anyway. They say what we're doing is bad for independent producers.

23:24

Yeah.

24:21

But never, ever have said that. So I'm surprised with this.

24:21

I think that Jeremy Isaacs, who was the very first CEO of Channel 4, will be spinning in his grave. I mean, he is dead, isn't he?

24:24

I don't know.

24:33

I haven't put him in the ground too soon, have I? Anyway, I think he wouldn't approve of it. If he's above ground, he would not approve of this because his mission, I guess, was to create an innovative, groundbreaking channel, opening doors to new voices and basically stimulating a whole new industry, which is the independent production sector. And here's Channel four. Now, I suppose you could argue that.

24:35

Was then, this is now.

25:00

Yeah, I get it. But it's flailing around now. This feels like it's a Hail Mary pass. I think that. I don't think it's going to work, to be honest with you. I don't want to be, you know, death at the feast, but it'll be very hard to set up a production company now, even though you're backed by a broadcaster. But the broadcaster.

25:02

But let me. Okay, so let me rehearse the argument. Kind of played devil's advocate a bit here in the opposite direction. If I were Channel four, I think what I'd say was, yes, yes, yes, of course. That's what the remit said. That's what Jeremy Isaac felt the mission was. There were only three or four channels then there was BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4. That was the entire menu of channels that viewers in the uk, you know, were able to choose between. Now, if you're an independent producer, you. You have indeed got all the streamers. You've also got Sky UK TV5, as well as all those channels. So we need to respond to the world as it is now, not as the world as it was then. And if we are depending upon getting the best ideas out of independent producers, bearing in mind that money is tight, we can't pay for a show, you know, I'm. I'm just. We've just had a show announced that we're making for Disney and very exciting show, it would be perfectly fair to say. We didn't even take it to The Terrestrials, we went to streamers and, and you know, Disney going to be very exciting partners, you know, showed great interest in it. So if you're. The argument in the opposite direction is your channel, you've got to do something about that. So by starting in house production you're, I'm sure they're not going to say to the in house unit, you can't sell anywhere else because otherwise they become the equivalent of BBC studios in the old. But, but you're going to have a closer relationship with the commissioning body. You can try to, you can focus your best attention on addressing Channel 4's needs in a way that they may feel that independent producers don't do anymore. Channel 4, you know, may be rather low on the list of broadcasters that we take ideas. That's interesting partly because I've got money.

25:19

So your, what your argument is that they're basically thinking, well in order to survive creatively, we need to think of our own ideas. I'm not sure that's the case.

27:11

Well, no, I'm, I'm, I'm sort of, I'm, I'm imagining the argument at their end and saying, well, we don't live.

27:20

In a world arguments or justification.

27:27

Justification. You know, we don't, we, we don't live in a kind of pure world if you like. We live in a mixed economy, slightly compromised world of. And have always have done because the BBC have made programs and you know, we are passionate kind of advocates of champions of the independent production sector inevitably because that's what we've done, you know, for, for so many years. But I can see a way that you could look at in a slightly different way that if you sit there passively while many, many more people compete for the best ideas, it's like, it's like this basic idea that, that I'm sure I've said this before on this podcast. We think of broadcasters as buyers and us as sellers, but they're also sellers because they've got to sell their network to us. They've got to say we are the place for you to bring.

27:29

This is not a very good way of selling Channel four to the independence.

28:23

No, I think it isn't. I agree.

28:26

So I think, you know, the price.

28:27

You pay is that the danger is.

28:29

We'Ll turn away from Channel 4 further.

28:31

Down the list and we think the more successful their in house production arm gets, the more we'll think, hey, we've just had the best idea since the traitors. Here's the list of people we'll Take it to, you know, number one, Netflix or whatever. Number two, blah blah, blah, blah, blah. And the danger is Channel Fours getting lower and lower on that list. Yeah, I think that is true.

28:32

I think that's, that's the danger of this is that they end up by also favoring ideas that may be, you know, in the, in the cut and thrust of the marketplace wouldn't surpass the quality threshold. That's one danger is that you give special favors to in house production. But the other one is, as you say, it's that the outside world, the independent sector thinks what is the point of going? Because in fact their setup is very old fashioned. ITV studios and ITV have a slight separation. BBC by the way, BBC Studios and BBC I think have a very, I think there is a separation there. I think the BBC broadcast is very fair handed when it comes to commissioning programs. And I think that, you know, in the old days they had this 25, then they had the walk. Remember the window of creative.

28:53

Not walk wok, which is indeed a pan that you cook food in.

29:42

Well, I'm sure you're, you're constantly stood over your walk, aren't you?

29:46

I think we used it as a sky.

29:50

You're bent over your walk.

29:52

And it's the, it's wocc.

29:54

The window of creative competition. At the BBC. It was basically a commissioning policy that allowed programs to be competed for outside BBC's in house production unit. So it was opening up BBC in house. And how it worked was the in house guarantee was 25% for in house, guaranteed 25% for independent. And the window was the 50%. In between those two extremes was basically anyone could pitch into that.

29:57

It's all come back to me now.

30:28

And we gobbled up and the independent production sector gobbled up most of that 50%. Why? Because BBC broadcast wanted the best programs. And when I arrived, programs were coming from the independent sector, not from in house.

30:30

And when I wrote the BBC they said take no notice of it anyway, commission whatever you like.

30:43

Yeah.

30:47

So it wasn't even a binding the walk, but it was a presentation.

30:47

And chatgpt here, I've just, I've just consulted it enabled companies like Hatrick, Endermell and Tiger Aspect to grow.

30:52

What about Torbeck?

30:58

Well, it's not mentioned here, Peter. I'm very sorry to say that it hasn't made the cut.

31:00

People keep telling me ChatGPT is full of errors.

31:04

It's terribly inconsistent.

31:06

Yeah, but what can I. I would suggest one of the reasons BBC is very good at that is they're not really a commercial organization. So go back to this thing of in House production. BBC. So we made a program for three or four years for Channel 4 that we, you know, very proud of a daytime show called Steph's Pack Lunch, the wonderful Steph McGovern. And then after three or four years, Channel 4 canceled it because they said we need to spend the money elsewhere, can't afford it or whatever. We were very upset because it was made in. In Leeds, which is a very important thing for channel Forbes, their flagship leads commission. And yet they still canceled it and. And haven't replaced it with anything similar. Had that bay. So I'm only. This is conjecture. Had that been an in house production under this new thing by Sarah Dilliston, would they be more reluctant to cancel it? Of course, ITV have never canceled. Let's just use one of their daytime shows as an example, Loose Women. Still going. Loose Women is a pretty old fashioned concept if you think about it. You would not under any circumstances launch a show called Loose Women today. But even though.

31:08

Because mainly even though it's not what.

32:16

It was and so on and so forth. Right. It continues and continues. It's an in house production.

32:21

Yeah.

32:26

So I can think back to when I was the director of television. Technically I could have canceled this. Women.

32:26

Yeah.

32:32

Or indeed this morning, a little bit of furor. Yeah. Furori. I call it a furor. You can call it furorial. Hell of a fuss. Yeah, let's call it that. So the once things are made in house.

32:32

Yeah.

32:47

There is of course a subtly different attitude to recommissioning them.

32:48

Well, let's see how it goes with Channel 4. I mean, it's starting this month.

32:52

Yeah.

32:55

The starting gun has been fired. Or is it a shot of suicide from within the bowels of Channel 4, which we don't know.

32:56

I mean, actually funny because. Ian Cat, you make a very good point. That's a kind of interesting point because who exactly owns this? Because it's not really, in a sense, it's initiative of the outgoing CEO Alex Mayon, because it was announced in her time, but it's actually starting when she's gone and when I think Jonathan Allen's still acting CEO, but the new CEO, Priya Dogra hasn't yet arrived.

33:05

She's coming in April.

33:34

Is she coming in April? So you could say of this it's something that nobody's quite got their fingerprints on. And that will worry me as well. That will worry as well. If it struggled or didn't do that quite well. Who's going to say I owned this? You know, Priya Dogra could say, I don't know why we did it at all in the first place.

33:34

Well, the only continuity candidate there is Ian Katz.

33:54

Sure, sure.

33:57

So they can blame him.

33:57

Yeah, yeah. But to be fair to Ian, I always felt having in house and independent production was having a cake and eating it was best of both worlds.

33:58

Yeah.

34:05

So, you know, if I were Ian, I would say, yeah, bring it on. I just want more suppliers.

34:06

If I were in, I'd commission like crazy up until April. And I know I only say that because I've got a show in with them that needs commissioning.

34:10

We talk about Channel four often.

34:19

Yeah, we love Channel four. So stimulated, the whole thing.

34:21

Anything other than that. Maybe we should try to get a guest from Channel 4 on our podcast with. Maybe Ian Katz will come on.

34:25

Or maybe the chairman can give us some tips on doing up houses or.

34:32

A discount at Travis Perkins. Yeah, and I'm buying a bit of two by two. Yeah, like 20 off. Exactly.

34:37

I think it couldn't come till next Tuesday, though.

34:44

I think it would be. Let's ask Ian. Let's ask Ian if he'll come on.

34:46

I think it would be great to get Ian cats on.

34:50

Yeah, okay. We can agree that on that. We'll come back, dear listeners, next week and say whether he's. We'll say whether that request has been successful or whether he's told us to piss off.

34:53

He's a very good bloke.

35:03

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35:05

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35:11

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35:17

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35:20

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35:27

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