The first RTS Futures event of the year brought together a panel of experts – quizzed by BBC Radio 5 Live broadcaster Richard Bacon – to look at what TV promises in the next 12 months.

ITV director of research and insight Dan Cook argued that the health of the UK economy had a significant effect on the shows audiences wanted to watch. SHome and hearthT telly and Sold and nostalgicT formats such as the revival after a gap of more than a decade ofSurprise, Surprise, he said, were well suited to today’s harsh financial climate.

Successful shows, he added, had a Ssense of joy and fun at their core, not one of cynical exploitationT. These included Britain’s Got Talent, Strictly Come Dancing, Celebrity Juiceand The Only Way Is Essex. SOf all the reality programmes, it’s the one that is most genuinely affectionate towards [its subjects]. They’re not ridiculed in the way they are in similar programmes, which are doing less well.T

Call the Midwife and Downton Abbey, he added, offer Sescapism into the past, away from the travails of today. Paul O’Grady: For the Love of Dogs and The Great British Bake Off are doing brilliantly because they’re playing into a sense of domesticity.T

Guardian TV and radio editor Vicky Frost agreed with Cook’s analysis: SFrom Call the Midwife, Last Tango in Halifax, and Mr Selfridge to The Great British Bake Off, there’s a lot of programming that comes with its own warm glow at the moment.T

Frost, though, had Shad about enough of this syrupy programmingT. But strong ratings, she added, Ssuggest it’s perfectly pitched for audiences at the momentT.

Turning to the under-performing ITV show, The X Factor, which lost ground to BBC1’s rejuvenated Strictly Come Dancing last year, Frost said: SSome think that Britain has fallen out of love with this brash, instant-fame show, that audiences have become too canny and cynical to embrace that format again. 

But she thought juggling the judges could do the trick: SIf Strictly has shown anything, it’s that even a format regarded as long in the tooth can be revived with some clever casting.T

The RTS Futures event was held at Channel 4 HQ in Horseferry Road, London on 16 January and produced by Ife Okwudili.

Report by Matthew Bell

Pictures by Paul Hampartsoumian