Kate Bulkley

With programme budgets under pressure, TV is turning to advertisers to fund shows directly. And the amounts that brands can bring to the table are significant – anything up to half a million pounds for an hour of TV.

This was the message from a packed RTS early-evening event in October, at which a panel of leading commissioners, producers and advertising experts discussed how they make branded programming.

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.

A lot has been written about a recent taxi ride that may change the face of UK television. Brian Roberts, the CEO and Chair of US media and technology company Comcast, was visiting London when he asked his cabbie for his opinion of Sky TV.

It may have seemed like an innocent question, but the driver was so effusive about Sky that, so the story goes, the next thing you know, Comcast was launching an audacious £22bn bid to buy the UK-based pay-TV giant.