The new streaming service offers content from ITV, the BBC, Channel 4 and Channel 5.
BritBox, created by ITV and the BBC, marks the UK’s entry into the paid streaming market alongside international giants such as Netflix and Amazon.
Priced at £5.99 per month, BritBox will offer the biggest collection of British boxsets such as Broadchurch, Doctor Who, Gavin and Stacey, Wolf Hall and Downton Abbey.
The highlights from our panel discussion on how the entertainment values of editorial TV content, talent and other editorial assets are being used to create more advertising and funding opportunities across the UK TV industry.
The panel included Channel 5's Commissioning Editor for Factual Entertainment, Greg Barnett, Joint Managing Director at Rumpus Media, Emily Hudd, Wavemaker's Head of Integrated Delivery, Saj Nazir and Channel 4's Controller of Funded Content, Simon Wells.
At a jam-packed RTS early evening event in late October, a panel of leading commissioners, producers and advertising experts explained how to make branded programming – and identified some of the pitfalls.
Greg Barnett, long-serving commissioning editor for factual entertainment at Channel 5, argued that the way programmes are being made is changing.
In recent years, Channel 4’s new national HQ in Leeds and the BBC’s relocation of 2,300 posts to Salford have dominated our perception of out-of-London programme production.
This is perhaps not surprising: the corporation has the largest Ofcom quota for UK production outside the M25 – 50% – followed by Channel 4 and ITV, who both have 35%, and Channel 5, with 10%.
The new initiative is part of the commitment made by channel 5 to create mainstream programmes that accurately reflect contemporary Britain.
The TV Collective was founded ten years ago by Simone Pennant and promotes the commercial and creative value that having diversity can bring to British film and TV studios.
Channel 5 are looking for nine small or medium size BAME companies, primarily based in the regions, who are owned and managed by BAME talent.
Among the new commissions includes Milkshake! Monkey’s Amazing Adventures, which follows iconic character Milkshake! Monkey as he visits various locations across the UK to learn about the geography and history of the country.
The channel has also announced six potential projects in development for Milkshake! and for the Young Audiences Contestable fund.
Milkshake! also announced a strong commitment to develop content from the UK and has confirmed more investment to boost UK commissions on the channel to 300 programmes by 2021.
ITV Studios’ Managing Director, Julian Bellamy, wants people to know that he is open for business for creative talent and great ideas – wherever they may come from.
“We’re in a world now where creative talent has never been more in demand, more diverse, more commercial, more mobile – and if you don’t embrace that as a producer, you won’t survive and prosper,” he said.
Bellamy already has a large talent pool to choose from. ITV’s strategy of acquiring independent production companies means that it owns 23 labels in the UK alone, with investment in a further five.
It’s a good time to sit down with Ben Frow, Channel 5’s director of programmes. A purple patch that started with the station winning Channel of the Year at the Edinburgh TV Awards last August has just been topped with the station’s best Christmas since 2005 – and all this after Frow’s “carnage” assessment of the first half of the year.
From his now much more comfortable perch, the executive is happy to reel off a catalogue of titles that, in those first months of 2018, passed most of the nation by.
Teachers Training to Kill is a one-off documentary that explores gun control in America and the disturbing amount of mass shootings taking place in US schools.
Created by James Graham (A Brilliant Young Mind), Brexit: The Uncivil War explores the inside story behind one of the most divisive campaigns in British politics, Vote Leave.
