Television Titbits From The Edinburgh Festival
Five’s director of programmes, Dan Chambers, on a possible merger with Channel 4: “At the moment there are so many dogs sniffing so many bottoms nobody knows what will happen. There’s so much flirtation going on between channel bosses – it looks as if the foreplay will go on forever.”
Veteran BBC broadcaster, John Humphrys, on reality television: “The good television of today is probably better that the best television of the old days. But the bad television of today is worse. It is damaging. It coarsens and turns us into voyeurs. The good cannot pay the dues of the bad when the bad is indefensible.”
Channel 4’s director of programmes, Kevin Lygo, on a possible merger with Five: “The fact that we sell our advertising at a premium and that Five is a discount, bargain basement option is a potential problem when talking about merging the sales houses.”
Veteran media commentator, Ray Snoddy, on stupid ideas: “How come really intelligent and well-meaning people in media can manage effortlessly to come up with really big ideas that actually turn out to be exceedingly daft? Is this a random process – like being hit on the head by an asteroid? Or are there patterns to the incidence of this particular disease?”
ITV chief executive, Charles Allen, on his plans for the UK’s largest commercial broadcaster: “I see ITV developing into a package of channels over the next five years, in some ways very similar to the BBC, but funded from a commercial perspective. The days of the BBC and ITV thinking their main role is to kill each other are over.”
Mick Mernagh, director of consumer insight at MediaCom, on the need for a single source measurement survey: “From the point of view of a modern communications planning agency, silos of audience measurement do not actually make any sense, unless you have an understanding of what else is happening in the media world and what levels of engagement the consumer is faced with.”
Veteran media commentator, Ray Snoddy, on the possible privatisation of Channel 4: “It is unbelievably naive of Channel 4 to virtually invite privatisation by taking such a suicidally half-baked idea to the Treasury. Does this really do justice to the pioneers who fought so hard to establish the independence of Channel 4 form the ITV barons of the day?”
Stuart Misson, managing director of marketing agency Octagon, on the future of television advertising: “Media spend needs to work a lot harder because if it doesn’t advertisers will start planning away from television and will start seeking other forms of media to sell their brands. Big FMCG advertisers are never going to exclude television completely but they are going to start questioning their return on their investment.”
Chris Harrison, managing director of Spring London, on the importance of branded entertainment: “Advertiser funded programming is not going to be a marginal, niche activity. It is going to be the most significant development in branded communications since the internet.”
Channel 4 chief executive, Andy Duncan, on forming a partnership with the BBC: “A lot of people talk about digital switch over, but at the same time there’s also some major changes going on in terms of interactivity, in terms of broadband and so on. I think that Channel 4 can definitely work with the BBC and piggy back on some of the technical development work it has done.”
BBC director general, Mark Thompson on a less populist BBC: “Commercial broadcasters sometimes feel they have to flood the schedule with a particular format or genre to exploit it commercially while they can. The BBC doesn’t have to do that. On commercial channels, economic considerations may dictate keeping a programme on air years after the creative life has left it. Again the BBC is not forced to do that.”
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