Lorraine Heggessey has been in television long enough to know the difference between popular and populist. As controller of BBC1, one of the most influential jobs in the media, she was lambasted from all quarters for an unshakable devotion to mass-market entertainment. Heggessey ducked the brickbats, resolutely defending her corner from journalists and rival broadcasters, who accused her of neglecting her public-service duty. “I’m naturally very resilient,” she says, “and quite optimistic. I’m very much a glass three-quarters full kind of person.”
The term "dumbing down" was practically invented for Heggessey’s tenure, particularly after she relegated news programme Panorama to the scheduling sidelines—but at least she had the public on her side. When Greg Dyke made her the first female controller of BBC1 in 2000, the channel’s ratings were steadily sinking. But Heggessey arrested the slide, turning BBC1 into the country’s most-watched channel. She left in April last year, taking up an offer she “couldn’t refuse” to become chief executive of independent production company Talkback Thames, whose numerous hits include The Apprentice, The X Factor and The Bill. For a notorious populist, it was almost a spiritual homecoming.
“I never know whether populist is meant to be an insult or a compliment,” says Heggessey, her booming voice at odds with her tiny frame, “but I’ll take it as a compliment. It’s very easy to make a programme about Egyptian stamp collecting because the 1,000 people who are already interested in it will think it’s completely fascinating. But to take geology—which we did with the British Isles: a Natural History—and pull in six million viewers a week, well that’s difficult. Trying to make all subjects accessible was a challenge, and it was a challenge we succeeded in.”
Heggessey is lively company, and combative, too, often answering her own question rather than the one posed—a hangover, no doubt, from the time in her career when every media enquiry carried the potential for ambush. At Talkback Thames, though, she has the chance to shine in relative anonymity. “One of the lovely things now is that I’m not so high profile—I can operate a little bit more out of the public gaze. Running BBC1 is one of the most publicly visible jobs you can do—certainly the media makes it so.” Was it ever too much? “Everywhere you go, everyone has a view on how you’re doing your job,” she says. “Which is why, when I went on holiday, I never told anybody what I did. My children were under strict instructions not to say anything.”
At Talkback, Heggessey prefers to let her colleagues take the credit (her heads of department are either “fantastic” or “fabulous”), but she strikes you as the kind of chief executive who’d be willing to step in and take the flak when required. Not that there’s much flak to take. Traditionally strong in entertainment, Talkback Thames is getting stronger. The company—owned by an arm of Europe’s largest TV and radio company RTL—doubled its profits in entertainment programming last year, with the X Factor once again winning most of the plaudits. BBC2’s reality programme The Apprentice has completed a successful second series and some of the company’s domestic hits are beginning to find audiences outside the UK.
Heggessey’s role at Talkback is less about programme-making, more about steering the company in the right direction—plus “hiring the best people and keeping them here”. Her move across to the independent production sector may have been a surprise (particularly since her departure closely followed a very public statement indicating plans to the contrary) but it was one of a series of similar high-profile moves over the last 12 months—the majority of them from the BBC, which has lost entertainment executives Jane Lush and Fenia Vardanis, BBC3 controller Stuart Murphy, head of children’s drama Elaine Sperber and head of comedy commissioning Mark Freeland to independent production companies.
Whatever that list of departures says about the BBC’s ability to retain top executives, it does indicate the power of the independent or “indie” sector. Two independents—RDF and Shed—have floated successfully, while All3Media has appointed investment bank UBS to advise on a potential listing this year. The long-standing image of indies putting creativity above profit is dissolving. And as the sector consolidates, the members of a small band of UK “super-indies” are beginning to flex their muscles.
Many attribute the sector’s makeover to the Communications Act of 2004 which, for the first time, granted indies the rights to their own programmes, historically held by the broadcaster. With control of the rights came the opportunity to profit from merchandising, the chance to re-sell back-catalogue programmes abroad, and interest from the City which began to see the sector as solid investment material. The growth in popularity of exports to the US, which have more than doubled in value over the last five years, is one direct result. Last year, half of the US’s top-12 shows were UK imports. But the Communications Act didn’t account for was use of new media—a potentially lucrative new revenue stream for new, or even back-catalogue, content. Both broadcasters and independent producers are keen to exploit the opportunity to deliver old and new content over different platforms, such as broadband or mobile. “Viewers might want to download old episodes, or they might pay a premium for seeing this week’s episode before anyone else,” says Heggessey. “It’s difficult to know until you try it.”
The BBC has already agreed to hand over new media exploitation rights to the producers, but the remaining major networks have continued to stall, no doubt with one eye on the next big thing in television: TV on-demand. Mark Bradford, a director at digital TV consultancy Brand New Entertainment, says there is still some way to go before the right commercial models are developed, but, he says: “The transition from a linear to an on-demand model offers huge opportunities. As well as the new revenue streams available via mobile phones, broadband and IPTV [internet protocol TV], there is also the opportunity to sell content direct to consumers and move away from the traditional commissioning model.”
With the power to watch what they want, when they want to, viewers take on decision-making power, which has prompted some analysts to predict that all but the largest of broadcasters will become increasingly irrelevant. Heggessey disagrees. “I think it will be a very gradual transference to complete on-demand viewing,” she says. “But there will always be a role for channels—there’s only so much time in the day, so [you need] somebody to aggregate content for you, whether it’s Google or the BBC.”
Tim Westcott, senior analyst, TV at research company Screen Digest, agrees it will be a while before any seismic changes occur. “Talkback is in a good position, both in terms of what it can do with its content and how it can develop ideas at the outset that will translate well onto mobile or the internet. But it’s still early days, and there’s no-one making pots of money out of this yet,” he says. “The vast majority of [Talkback’s] earnings come from contracts with TV companies, so Talkback’s main priority is to get programmes commissioned. Anything you can get from mobile or online content is the cherry on the cake.”
All of which makes Heggessey’s relationship with her ex-paymaster all the more important. Having worked on both sides of the commissioning desk, Heggessey is able to put herself in the broadcaster’s shoes and spot the schedule gaps that need filling. “We are now very focused on what slots the broadcasters need programmes for and we develop for those slots, rather than developing in a vacuum and just hoping a broadcaster will take it,” she says.
Even if you can spot the gaps, turning a pilot into a first series, and then turning that first series into a second, requires more than a foot in the commissioning editor’s door. “It’s difficult,” she says, “because you have to continually develop, knowing that your hit rate might only be something like one in 10.”
Eager to make her mark in the commercial space, Heggessey would like both financial and critical success, particularly in drama, but she is accutely aware of the budgetary hurdles. “It’s still a challenge to deliver drama that sells around the world,” she says, “because there isn’t enough money to compete with the US. The Hollywood studios can underwrite drama pilots, but we can’t afford to spend $15m on the first episode of Lost, without a [definite] commission. I don’t think any British broadcaster, let alone a British indie, could spend even a 10th of that without knowing there was a commission to fall back on.”
With the rights back in the hands of the production companies—and especially where there are shareholders to please—the pressure is on to create programmes that transcend cultural boundaries so that they can be sold abroad. “The British audience loves programmes that reflect Britain,” says Heggessey, “but we probably need to learn what travels.” Or perhaps just learn to make more programmes like The Apprentice, a US import. “We kept the basic format of The Apprentice, but we really brought out the British sensibilities and made it a programme relevant to a British audience,” she says.
It was a resounding success, but critics suggested maybe that was because the overall standard of candidate was deliberately lowered to ensure maximum viewer entertainment. After all, watching Sir Alan Sugar get increasingly irritated with his hapless candidates is far more entertaining than watching him begrudgingly hand out praise. But Heggessey denies the charge. “We really did take the best candidates we could find,” she says. “[Apprentice hopeful] Alexa had a degree in economics from Cambridge and, it turns out, she doesn’t know how to change a £20 note. It’s easy to criticise but I think if you went to any major company and had a look at their newest, rawest recruits you would probably find similar kinds of behaviour.”
Discussing the contestants’ business credentials allows Heggessey to steer the conversation niftily on to her own, almost as if she’s expecting to be challenged. “At the BBC, I was given money to spend and now I have to make money, but it’s not rocket science,” she says. “It’s quite interesting that, in television, a lot of programme makers don’t really think about the audience, they just think about themselves and what kind of programmes they’d like to make—they don’t necessarily see a need to make a profit out of it. But if we don’t make a profit we can’t run a business.” Even Sir Alan would agree with that.
