Television Magazine

Cécile Frot-Coutaz, head of YouTube, EMEA, has urged broadcasters to form more partnerships with the Google-­owned platform, which this summer was revealed to be the third most-watched video service in the UK after the BBC and ITV.

Speaking at the RTS Digital Convention, the former Fremantle CEO emphasised that her company had plenty of evidence to show that legacy platforms seeking young audiences would be smart to cement their ties with the video-sharing platform.

Google the words “public service broadcasting” and you’ll see that the first few links relate to a well-known band that has played at Glastonbury, the Royal Albert Hall and Brixton. Its first album was called Inform – Educate – Entertain. 

Only after that will you find links to Ofcom’s page on public service broadcasting and the Government’s new Public Service Broadcasting Advisory Panel. 

In those far-off days, when colour TV was still something of a novelty and viewers were restricted to a trio of TV channels, the two funniest people on the box were, without question, Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise. 

Not for nothing was Morecambe voted the funniest person of the 20th century, ahead of such other greats as Tommy Cooper and John Cleese, in an internet poll taken in 1999. 

Victory is not always achieved by the first out of the blocks or the fastest car into the opening corner. Sometimes, steadiness of purpose and coming from behind is more effective. That sums up the strategy that Discovery has adopted in the uber-competitive streaming wars.

Having watched Netflix, Amazon Prime and, more recently, Disney+ and others enter the global streaming market, Discovery+ will launch its own service in the US only in January. Some observers have argued that it might be too little, too late.

This week heralds the final week of lockdown two, a week that would normally be the start of the Christmas party season. But this year’s end is eerily quiet. Quiet, assuming you don’t count the dulcet tones of my WFH co-workers: a six-month-old, a three-year-old and my wonderful (but very loud) husband. So far, so 2020.

JANUARY

“Great fears of the Sicknesse here in the City, it being said that two or three houses are already shut up. God preserve us all.” The very first mention of the plague in The Diary of Samuel Pepys, on 30 April 1665. Fast forward 355 years and there’s this on 11 January on the ITV News site: “Health authorities in the central Chinese city of Wuhan are reporting the first death from a new type of coronavirus.”

Seen again, almost three decades on, with the world at a virtual standstill due to Covid-19, Pole to Pole can induce mixed reactions. Michael Palin’s most adventurous trek is a delight. It overflows with the presenter’s love of travel and discovery, which, frustratingly, is precisely what we are missing right now.… Our only option is to soak up the sights and hope that, one day soon, we will be able to follow in Palin’s footsteps.

All my days have been starting the same way this year – like much of the country, I have spent most of them at home. I usually get up early, as I like the quiet tranquillity of the early morning.

After breakfast, the peace dissipates into the usual busyness of the day, when the phone starts ringing and emails start pinging. A cue for me to head to my home office.

One of my current projects is the animation Master Moley, for which I voice the title character and am an executive producer.

When Broadcasting House was opened in 1932, the front of the building was likened to the prow of a ship. With a commanding view that befitted the vessel’s bridge was the grandest office. It belonged to John Reith, the first Director-General. But the office above his, acknowledged as the second-grandest in the building, with equally magnificent wood panelling and an even loftier view down Langham Place, was that of the chief engineer.

Line of Duty creator Jed Mercurio decided he probably should learn to write – after he’d already penned a hit BBC drama series. “I did it backwards,” the former medic told the RTS Midlands Careers Fair 2020.

Mercurio had been a junior doctor working in Birmingham hospitals when he replied to an advert in the British Medical Journal. It had been placed by a production company looking for drama ideas.