Television Magazine

The past few years have been eventful for most, but the highs and lows of ITV’s fortunes have been particularly pronounced. Its advertising revenues were hit hard by the pandemic, but the broadcaster bounced back to achieve record advertising in 2021-22. At the end of 2022, there was another watershed moment: it launched ITVX, its heavyweight streaming service to replace ITV Hub with a combined 26,000 hours of ITV and Britbox content. But, this year, its advertising ­revenues have again slumped.

Liberty Global’s decision to sell its stake in All3Media was “bittersweet”, said its CEO and Vice-Chair Mike Fries. The telecommunications giant and its partner, Warner Bros. Discovery, are in the process of selling the production and distribution company responsible for Fleabag, Gogglebox and The Traitors. But the sale had “nothing to do with the business itself – we love Jane [Turton] and what All3 does.

Matthew Garrahan, Financial Times: Sky was primarily a satellite business. You’ve moved aggressively into IP. Are you turning off the satellite dishes any time soon?

Dana Strong, Sky: It’s a key strategic pillar for us to move on to a new, IP-based platform and this year we literally blew the satellite dish up in our TV commercials.… Seeing where the trends in consumption were going, we wanted to ensure consumers had choice…

Parents, rejoice! From 13 February, there will be another televisual offering to help keep the little ones occupied. Sky Kids is a 24-hour, ad-free, linear-TV channel aimed at the under-sevens. Going head-to-head with CBeebies with shows that it promises will be entertaining and educational, the channel will be ­available automatically to those who subscribe to the £9.99 a month Now Entertainment package or the £6 a month Sky Kids package.

‘I look at them both standing under the lamp. Ingrid… and this plain Jane, with a muddy complexion, a big nose, and a mouth like a crack in a pie.’*

‘… but there’s a lovely view of the gasworks, we share a bathroom with the community, and this wallpaper’s contemporary. What more do you want?’**

Anyone thinking these lines were spoken by one of the sharp-tongued, backstreet battleaxes from an early episode of Coronation Street wouldn’t be far wrong. Here’s why.

ITVX drama Nolly is Russell T Davies’s love letter to a soap that became a national institution. Crossroads, which originally ran from 1964 to 1988, was ridiculed for its cheap production values and slightly wooden acting yet was adored by up to 15 million loyal viewers – and it almost gave Davies his first writing job.

What does the job involve?

A mix of covering breaking large events – a lot of which in recent years have been wars – and self-starter pieces. As a team, we do long-form stories, too. The withdrawal of British forces from Afghanistan was not just a news story for us, it also became an hour-long programme.

Why is it important?

As Sally Wainwright’s masterful Yorkshire noir approaches the end of its third and final series – and Sarah Lancashire’s heroic Sergeant Catherine Cawood her long overdue retirement – it’s worth savouring every episode.

Obsessed with... Happy Valley is the BBC’s companion podcast, in which comedians Amy Gledhill and Isy Suttie discuss the drama episode by episode. From the start, Wainwright begins to weave several narrative strands, so there is plenty to pore over.

I’ve got two films coming out this year so it’s going to look as if I’m really busy. In fact, one of them was written in 2006 and the other in 2009. Years of frustration and fiddling are now behind me.

At the end of last year, I was working frantically on a film and my new book. I finished the book, and the film was placed in a medically induced development coma. I know it will be woken from sleep any day but, for now, for the first time ever, I could just, you know, write. I could write that thing that I have always wanted to write. Face the blank page at last.

Open your Christmas TV guide this year and, amid all the wholesome dramas, jolly comedies and gooey romcoms, you’ll find a glaring anomaly.

I Hate Suzie, Lucy Prebble and Billie Piper’s brutally frank and funny 2020 tragicomedy about the undoing of an actor named Suzie Pickles (played by Piper), is getting the Christmas treatment on Sky Atlantic.