Channel 4

Jay Hunt: Five years at 4

Jay Hunt

Hello and thank you all for coming. If you are slightly bewildered at finding yourself at the British Museum on a Tuesday evening, I know how you feel. I’m a reluctant interviewee and an even more reluctant speechmaker. Tonight though I have no one to blame but myself.  I chose to be here. I chose to be here because I wanted to speak for the first time about something that has mattered as much to me as anything I’ve put on the air at 4. I’m not going to bore you to death on terms of trade reform or the importance of Channel 4’s unique model.

State of play: the latest deals in sports rights TV deals

Barbara Slater, the Director of BBC Sport, likes to bang the drum for digital. Even so, last year she found the time to blog on the corporation’s website just six times.

Four of those six posts apologetically explained why the BBC had been forced to cede flagship rights and was likely to make further cuts in the future.

The posts unpicked why the BBC, after six decades, had to surrender Open golf and also give up on a, perhaps vainglorious, bid to roll back the years by making the Beeb the exclusive home of Formula 1.

Subtitles, sass and sex: why foreign programming is booming

Subtitles, sass and sex are the latest must-haves for broadcasters who are serious about satisfying their audiences. British viewers’ expanding appetite for foreign-language shows has taken in the mafia in Gomorrah on Sky Atlantic, the chilly Icelandic landscape of Trapped on BBC Four and the visceral drugs drama Prófugos on Channel 4’s new online service, Walter Presents.

Your catch up TV must-sees

House of cards, kevin Spacey,

1. Cooked

 

 

This slow-starting series is both beautifully shot and engagingly presented.

The show centres around the ways food is prepared around the world and the role that food, and eating, impact us on a social, cultural and personal level. Each of the four episodes is named after one of the classical elements (earth, air, fire and water) and examines how these four elements form the basis of every meal that we eat.

Final preparations underway for RTS Programme Awards 2016

Ant and Dec are nominated for the Entertainment Performance award and will battle it out against The Last Leg's Adam Hills and A League Of Their Own's Jack Whitehall. The Last Leg also receives a nomination for Entertainment programme where it will complete against Release the Hounds and The Graham Norton Show. 

Top TV ideas are everywhere

RTS Introduction to Development, RTS dev, ITV, ITV Studios, Danny Cohen, BBC, BBC One, The Met, Channel 4, Gogglebox, Twenty Twenty, Popkorn, Seven8 Media, Shine TV,

Ideas for great TV are everywhere. The concept for Channel 4’s Gogglebox is believed to have come from a runner.

A researcher is said to have thought of the idea that became ITV’s Saturday Night Takeaway.   

At an RTS Futures event, Introduction to TV Development, a panel of top development executives gave tips on how to develop and pitch ideas.