chrismoyles.net
- Mon Sep 23, 2002 1:07 pm
#27587
The fight-back starts here
Maggie Brown
Monday September 23, 2002
In one of those quirks of timing, Chris Evans' comeback, on Channel 5 tonight coincides with Dawn Airey, the chief executive who agreed the gamble, heading out of the door. And so a show that some see as part of a make or break moment in the channel's brief history becomes part of a bigger story about its future.
First among the problems it now faces, obviously, is the question of what happens following Airey's departure. Can it be business as usual? She ran a tight knit team. Other senior executives may leave too, destabilising it. The other key builder of the business is deputy chief executive Nick Milligan, who has driven ad sales.
Then there is the question of ownership, an issue some say dogs Channel 5's development just as surely as it does ITV. Lord Hollick, with a third of the shares, is viewed by majority owner RTL as a drag on future development.
Then there's the ratings pressure. Didier Bellens, chief executive of RTL, the continental broadcaster that controls Channel 5, recently talked at an RTS event of a 10% share for Channel 5, overtaking Channel 4 - but with "mercifully no timescale", remarks one commissioner.
Currently Channel 5's share is 6.4%, up from 5.8% a year ago, a great achievement in current markets. Advertising income increased 24% on last year and may rise a further 13% next year. "We're going to give ITV a serious kicking," says Milligan.
A key part of that strategy is Evans's baby, Live with Chris Moyles, a nightly show launched tonight at 7pm. After a two year absence his return to TV will be behind rather than in front of the cameras, but the "lite" half hour of comment, fun and silly competitions is truly his creation. It is aimed squarely, says Evans, at "three million disenfranchised young males" with nothing to watch but soap operas and factual programmes. Carling sponsored it sight unseen for £500,000 last week.
"I don't consider it a comeback," says the focused Evans, just before the final rehearsal. "Of course I feel anxious, I thought about it last thing at night, first thing this morning. But I had eight hours sleep in between. It's good old genuine nerves, like the first day at school. You just want to get on with it, it's ready to air."
In fact a lot of hopes and reputations are dependent on the happenings on the TV set, in the cramped upper floors of the Babushka Bar in Islington's Caledonian Road. Channel 5's programme chiefs, Kevin Lygo and Andrew Newman, are a year into tearing up Airey's sleazy schedules and crave a breakthrough entertainment hit to push ratings over 7% - a positive return on their £3m investment in the show - and continue Channel 5's stream of goodish news.
Evans says the end of The Big Breakfast left a hole needing to be filled - by him. "An awful lot of reality television doesn't deal with the day, it deals with a bizarre stream of events, created in a laboratorial way, as if people are specimens, rather than humans. And they are being put into situations which are almost inhuman. It is very voyeuristic, shocking. I'm playing to the regular side of people's nature. Sure, I tune in every night to watch reality TV, but as a programme producer I don't want to do that."
That's why, when Lygo asked him to fill the 7pm problem slot, which has veered confusingly between the religious architecture of Divine Inspirations and How to Survive 50,000 Volts, he opted for a pub. "A place young men instantly identify with," adds Evans.
The atmospheric Victorian pub, undergoing renovation, is on the bit of the road where it turns upwards from grotty King's Cross and meets gentrified Canonbury: young City workers might go to play there, and the programme's opening sequences show people leaving work. Step upstairs and you walk into a full TV gallery. Through the door at the end, a snug bar has been styled into a studio by the Big Brother house designer. Grouped at bar tables, each night's audience will be themed - tonight hairdressers, then bouncers. "We're going to advertise at the end of the show. Ideally people should know each other from work, though they could be the local football team," says Evans.
There's no sound-proofing, and buses and cars whiz by outside. Stand at the nearby bus stop, and you're likely to be pounced on while the show's on air and dared to sing a song for £100. In one pilot a car drew up and the driver handed over a television set, on air. "That's the best thing. Not sanitised - keep it real," says series producer Steve Kidgell, who has Channel 4's The Priory on his CV.
For Moyles, the mouthy afternoon Radio 1 DJ, who once hosted One Big Belly shows for the station and was recently censured for saying he'd like to lead Charlotte Church "through the forest of sexuality" on her 16th birthday, it is also a moment of truth. Can he transfer to television?
At 27 some say the Leeds-born bruiser is Evans's heir. Evans recruited him because he suited the format. Moyles has a rising audience of six million for his afternoon show, which ends at 5.45 pm. Radio 1 controller Andy Parfitt says he has tremendous talent for tapping into the tastes of the youth audience. He has just renewed his contract for two years. Yet BBC TV chiefs are pleased he's appearing on a rival network. "Early days," they smile.
The format relies entirely on Moyles. It will be him dispatching four members of the audience to find their lookalikes in nearby King's Cross station while the programme is on air. And sending pints of lager down the extended bar. If the glass lands on a letter A the audience gets an electric shock (everyone's index finger is wired up), if M, it's the turn of Moyles. There's no delay in transmission should the air turn blue.
In pilots last week his abrasive, self-obsessed radio style seemed toned down and he was a shade kinder to women. He has also lost three stone: but he'll never be matinee idol material. Evans says: "He's less threatening in usual life than on the radio. There's a real twinkle in his eye and we're encouraging that, encouraging him to be more like the person I know, to smile.
"Three hours of radio is exhausting, when it's based on your personality. Who's got that much to say? You get a bit ratty. But here, the work's all done for you, you come in and sprinkle your magic dust. When you have 35 people working on your behalf you have to be a bit more humble, more affable".
Lygo confirms that he's "fairly confident" the show will work. "This is the biggest one we're trying. But it's very realistic in its ambitions. In the end it's Chris Moyles's show, it will live or die by Chris Moyles's performance. It's zoo telly. I don't think people should turn on and expect to see a revolutionary show."
David Pullan, the marketing director behind Channel 5's drastic rebranding last week - as five - calls the show "emblematic. Entertainment properties are those which define the channel. They have to be yours, commissioned by you, owned by you".
That's why Live with Chris Moyles matters: if it does better than the average 300,000-400,000 audience at 7pm, even if only 500,000 tune in - a Channel 5 target - and they're young working males, that's a plus. An executive at a rival network agrees that Lygo's is the correct strategy. Channel 5, with an incomplete terrestrial transmission network, relies more than its rivals on Sky and cable distribution. So it must compete aggressively in a multichannel environment, where the young male audience is heavily represented. The question is whether it will be enough to break some of their taste for The Simpsons on Sky One, or Buffy/Star Trek offerings on BBC2.
More broadly, Channel 5 now feels boxed in, with ITV fighting back with a boosted budget and soaps colonising the 8-9 pm area where Channel 5 has had an impact with factual programmes and series like House Doctor. Lygo is also taking a further gamble this week, by dropping the 9pm film on Sundays and Wednesdays, and substituting light factual on Sundays, such as last night's Michael Jackson's Face. On Wednesday there is a Revealed strand: the story behind Tutankhamen, the Dambusters, Robin Hood. Some think it's foolhardy.
Isn't this dangerous? "Yes," says Lygo. "But by removing a movie you improve the quality of movies you play, drop the weakest, so the perception and reality of movies is enhanced. I'm not that nervous about the decision to try this. If it doesn't work, we'll reinstate movies. We have to try. You won't grow the audience by just playing movies."
Pullan says audience research shows people are confused by the "random" nature of the Channel 5 schedule. "Once all the new shows are slotted in you'll see a more logical consistent and coherent flow." Indeed, the stripped format of Live with Chris Moyles is uncannily similar to the original programming blueprint Airey drew up six years ago.
As well as using buzzwords like "straight talking", "smart", "fun to watch" and "rewarding", executives talk about Channel 5 plugging "market failures" - and not just by pandering to under-served young males. That's why Chris Shaw, controller of news, current affairs and documentaries, is so keen to woo trusted faces alongside Kirsty Young for Channel 5 News. Audiences want a return to more location reporting, to cut out the two-ways between studio presenter and correspondent, he says. Martin Bell has done a spell in Malawi, Angela Rippon is signed up and Kate Adie is expected to be free next year.
Meanwhile, Lygo, in a calculated bet on Evans's refreshed creative powers, has also commissioned a second daytime live show from his new UMTV company - 200 hours of programming hosted by Gaby Roslin, who launched The Big Breakfast with him. Evans was redrafting the proposal last Friday morning. Terry Wogan, bereft of a regular BBC TV slot, is being pursued as co-presenter. As Lygo says: "One of advantages of Channel 5 is if you do well, you're a very big star for us, you shine very brightly. And if it doesn't work, you haven't got very far to fall, have you?"
Maggie Brown
Monday September 23, 2002
In one of those quirks of timing, Chris Evans' comeback, on Channel 5 tonight coincides with Dawn Airey, the chief executive who agreed the gamble, heading out of the door. And so a show that some see as part of a make or break moment in the channel's brief history becomes part of a bigger story about its future.
First among the problems it now faces, obviously, is the question of what happens following Airey's departure. Can it be business as usual? She ran a tight knit team. Other senior executives may leave too, destabilising it. The other key builder of the business is deputy chief executive Nick Milligan, who has driven ad sales.
Then there is the question of ownership, an issue some say dogs Channel 5's development just as surely as it does ITV. Lord Hollick, with a third of the shares, is viewed by majority owner RTL as a drag on future development.
Then there's the ratings pressure. Didier Bellens, chief executive of RTL, the continental broadcaster that controls Channel 5, recently talked at an RTS event of a 10% share for Channel 5, overtaking Channel 4 - but with "mercifully no timescale", remarks one commissioner.
Currently Channel 5's share is 6.4%, up from 5.8% a year ago, a great achievement in current markets. Advertising income increased 24% on last year and may rise a further 13% next year. "We're going to give ITV a serious kicking," says Milligan.
A key part of that strategy is Evans's baby, Live with Chris Moyles, a nightly show launched tonight at 7pm. After a two year absence his return to TV will be behind rather than in front of the cameras, but the "lite" half hour of comment, fun and silly competitions is truly his creation. It is aimed squarely, says Evans, at "three million disenfranchised young males" with nothing to watch but soap operas and factual programmes. Carling sponsored it sight unseen for £500,000 last week.
"I don't consider it a comeback," says the focused Evans, just before the final rehearsal. "Of course I feel anxious, I thought about it last thing at night, first thing this morning. But I had eight hours sleep in between. It's good old genuine nerves, like the first day at school. You just want to get on with it, it's ready to air."
In fact a lot of hopes and reputations are dependent on the happenings on the TV set, in the cramped upper floors of the Babushka Bar in Islington's Caledonian Road. Channel 5's programme chiefs, Kevin Lygo and Andrew Newman, are a year into tearing up Airey's sleazy schedules and crave a breakthrough entertainment hit to push ratings over 7% - a positive return on their £3m investment in the show - and continue Channel 5's stream of goodish news.
Evans says the end of The Big Breakfast left a hole needing to be filled - by him. "An awful lot of reality television doesn't deal with the day, it deals with a bizarre stream of events, created in a laboratorial way, as if people are specimens, rather than humans. And they are being put into situations which are almost inhuman. It is very voyeuristic, shocking. I'm playing to the regular side of people's nature. Sure, I tune in every night to watch reality TV, but as a programme producer I don't want to do that."
That's why, when Lygo asked him to fill the 7pm problem slot, which has veered confusingly between the religious architecture of Divine Inspirations and How to Survive 50,000 Volts, he opted for a pub. "A place young men instantly identify with," adds Evans.
The atmospheric Victorian pub, undergoing renovation, is on the bit of the road where it turns upwards from grotty King's Cross and meets gentrified Canonbury: young City workers might go to play there, and the programme's opening sequences show people leaving work. Step upstairs and you walk into a full TV gallery. Through the door at the end, a snug bar has been styled into a studio by the Big Brother house designer. Grouped at bar tables, each night's audience will be themed - tonight hairdressers, then bouncers. "We're going to advertise at the end of the show. Ideally people should know each other from work, though they could be the local football team," says Evans.
There's no sound-proofing, and buses and cars whiz by outside. Stand at the nearby bus stop, and you're likely to be pounced on while the show's on air and dared to sing a song for £100. In one pilot a car drew up and the driver handed over a television set, on air. "That's the best thing. Not sanitised - keep it real," says series producer Steve Kidgell, who has Channel 4's The Priory on his CV.
For Moyles, the mouthy afternoon Radio 1 DJ, who once hosted One Big Belly shows for the station and was recently censured for saying he'd like to lead Charlotte Church "through the forest of sexuality" on her 16th birthday, it is also a moment of truth. Can he transfer to television?
At 27 some say the Leeds-born bruiser is Evans's heir. Evans recruited him because he suited the format. Moyles has a rising audience of six million for his afternoon show, which ends at 5.45 pm. Radio 1 controller Andy Parfitt says he has tremendous talent for tapping into the tastes of the youth audience. He has just renewed his contract for two years. Yet BBC TV chiefs are pleased he's appearing on a rival network. "Early days," they smile.
The format relies entirely on Moyles. It will be him dispatching four members of the audience to find their lookalikes in nearby King's Cross station while the programme is on air. And sending pints of lager down the extended bar. If the glass lands on a letter A the audience gets an electric shock (everyone's index finger is wired up), if M, it's the turn of Moyles. There's no delay in transmission should the air turn blue.
In pilots last week his abrasive, self-obsessed radio style seemed toned down and he was a shade kinder to women. He has also lost three stone: but he'll never be matinee idol material. Evans says: "He's less threatening in usual life than on the radio. There's a real twinkle in his eye and we're encouraging that, encouraging him to be more like the person I know, to smile.
"Three hours of radio is exhausting, when it's based on your personality. Who's got that much to say? You get a bit ratty. But here, the work's all done for you, you come in and sprinkle your magic dust. When you have 35 people working on your behalf you have to be a bit more humble, more affable".
Lygo confirms that he's "fairly confident" the show will work. "This is the biggest one we're trying. But it's very realistic in its ambitions. In the end it's Chris Moyles's show, it will live or die by Chris Moyles's performance. It's zoo telly. I don't think people should turn on and expect to see a revolutionary show."
David Pullan, the marketing director behind Channel 5's drastic rebranding last week - as five - calls the show "emblematic. Entertainment properties are those which define the channel. They have to be yours, commissioned by you, owned by you".
That's why Live with Chris Moyles matters: if it does better than the average 300,000-400,000 audience at 7pm, even if only 500,000 tune in - a Channel 5 target - and they're young working males, that's a plus. An executive at a rival network agrees that Lygo's is the correct strategy. Channel 5, with an incomplete terrestrial transmission network, relies more than its rivals on Sky and cable distribution. So it must compete aggressively in a multichannel environment, where the young male audience is heavily represented. The question is whether it will be enough to break some of their taste for The Simpsons on Sky One, or Buffy/Star Trek offerings on BBC2.
More broadly, Channel 5 now feels boxed in, with ITV fighting back with a boosted budget and soaps colonising the 8-9 pm area where Channel 5 has had an impact with factual programmes and series like House Doctor. Lygo is also taking a further gamble this week, by dropping the 9pm film on Sundays and Wednesdays, and substituting light factual on Sundays, such as last night's Michael Jackson's Face. On Wednesday there is a Revealed strand: the story behind Tutankhamen, the Dambusters, Robin Hood. Some think it's foolhardy.
Isn't this dangerous? "Yes," says Lygo. "But by removing a movie you improve the quality of movies you play, drop the weakest, so the perception and reality of movies is enhanced. I'm not that nervous about the decision to try this. If it doesn't work, we'll reinstate movies. We have to try. You won't grow the audience by just playing movies."
Pullan says audience research shows people are confused by the "random" nature of the Channel 5 schedule. "Once all the new shows are slotted in you'll see a more logical consistent and coherent flow." Indeed, the stripped format of Live with Chris Moyles is uncannily similar to the original programming blueprint Airey drew up six years ago.
As well as using buzzwords like "straight talking", "smart", "fun to watch" and "rewarding", executives talk about Channel 5 plugging "market failures" - and not just by pandering to under-served young males. That's why Chris Shaw, controller of news, current affairs and documentaries, is so keen to woo trusted faces alongside Kirsty Young for Channel 5 News. Audiences want a return to more location reporting, to cut out the two-ways between studio presenter and correspondent, he says. Martin Bell has done a spell in Malawi, Angela Rippon is signed up and Kate Adie is expected to be free next year.
Meanwhile, Lygo, in a calculated bet on Evans's refreshed creative powers, has also commissioned a second daytime live show from his new UMTV company - 200 hours of programming hosted by Gaby Roslin, who launched The Big Breakfast with him. Evans was redrafting the proposal last Friday morning. Terry Wogan, bereft of a regular BBC TV slot, is being pursued as co-presenter. As Lygo says: "One of advantages of Channel 5 is if you do well, you're a very big star for us, you shine very brightly. And if it doesn't work, you haven't got very far to fall, have you?"
dave benson phillips
