Secretary of State Lucy Frazer addresses future of TV
Broadcasters, production companies and streamers must ensure “this industry is synonymous with talent, opportunity and inclusivity, and not the scandals of #MeToo”.
Broadcasters, production companies and streamers must ensure “this industry is synonymous with talent, opportunity and inclusivity, and not the scandals of #MeToo”.
Introducing the first session of the Convention, Cambridge Chair and Channel 4 CEO, Alex Mahon, posed a stark question: “Is there simply too much content?”
And then a follow-up – “And with content as king, hasn’t distribution now become King Kong?” – before offering some typically honest answers.
“We’ve been in a frantic race for eyeballs, advertising dollars and subscription cash, and that race, like some kind of gigantic global grand prix, has been driven by hubristic spending on video creation.
The six-part series centres around best friends Eddie (West) and Maggie (Coughlan). Their relationship has endured a decade of highs and lows, but now, the real world is calling. Both need to consider their careers, while Maggie has to contend with the unwelcome return of bipolar disorder.
Russia’s Lost Sons (working title), an hour-long programme, was filmed over a year by filmmakers for ROMB, an independent Russian media outlet.
Women looking for their sons, brothers and husbands join forces as they contend with mostly unresponsive government offices. They are left searching morgues and trawling social media for news, in desperate hopes of finding those they have lost.
Each series sees twelve amateur bakers attempt to out-bake their opponents and impress judges Prue Leith and Paul Hollywood, with encouragement (/harassment) from the presenters, now comedian Noel Fielding and queen of daytime Alison Hammond.
With one of the highest average audiences of any programme in the UK (in 2016, nine of the top ten most-watched programmes of the year were episodes of the show), Bake Off has become a Great British institution.
"Five months ago the Channel 4 team set out to determine what the new ‘video day’ for consumers is really made of, with an original research project. I will talk a little about what we did and what we found and then some experts will join me on stage to help interpret our research.
To make sure we were properly prepared for this RTS discussion, we set ourselves some harder questions than just ‘what is the video day?’:
Convention Chair and CEO of @Channel4, @mahonalex, kicked off the convention with @RonanHarris, Angela Jain, @LeaKaram and Pedro Pina. Using cutting edge research, they dove into the content habits of the UK public.
The agenda-setting programme, titled Too Much to Watch, will see James Corden OBE give his first industry interview since returning to the UK, and Bryan Lourd, Co-Chairman of Creative Artists Agency in conversation with multi-Academy Award® winner Emma Thompson.
The benefit concert to raise money for the victims of famine in Ethiopia drew an estimated 1.5 billion television viewers worldwide.
Music promoter Harvey Goldsmith – who orchestrated Live Aid’s Wembley concert and, two decades later, the Live 8 benefit concerts – talked about his career with lawyer and broadcaster Andrew Eborn for an RTS London online event in July.
It’s no easy task to think of a programme that’s done more for cutting-edge British drama than Top Boy. Having made its debut on Channel 4 in 2011 and running for two series before Netflix revived it for a further three, the gritty drama follows the drug gangs of London’s fictional Summerhouse estate in Hackney with exemplary authenticity.