GENRE REPORT
ENTERTAINMENT
KATIE RAWCLIFFE, HEAD OF ENTS COMMISSIONING, ITV
Lycett shows. “One of the things we’ve been thinking about a lot is how we bring the real world into our entertainment formats,” he says. Part of that is taking it out of the studio.
With Traitors, the setting of the castle, the arrival on a train, the contestants returning to their rooms each evening. “There’s a lot of effort to make it look and feel different and almost scripted,” says McLean. “It’s where we’re looking - to big scripted players - and we expect to match them. The first five, ten minutes of your show has to feel like the opening of a movie these days.” At Channel 4, Temptation Island followed
so many shows onto an alluring retreat with beauty and beaches. Head of Entertainment Phil Harris says, “with the reality genre, I always feel that you either really want to be there or you really don’t want to be there.” What about Scared of the Dark? That’ll be reverse psychology “You didn’t want to be there and that’s what made it entertaining,” says Harris. Both shows have been a success. Arguably, the studio-setting, with low
costs on lighting, might have brought Scared of the Dark in on a lower budget. But, with inflationary pressures, it’s hard to keep costs down, making it hard to answer the demand for high-volume, low-cost entertainment
“AUDIENCES JUST WANT TO SMILE, THERE’S AN ELEMENT OF NOSTALGIA AND ESCAPISM”
JAMES TOWNLEY, BANIJAY
What’s been working for you recently? One of the standout things for us was I’m a Celebrity at the end of 2022. It bucked the trend and was up 3.3 million, or thereabouts, year on year. If we can create conversation around our shows, the viewers still hanker after those golden moments of watching telly in sync. I’m a Celebrity South Africa has been interesting for us because it isn’t live. The way we’ve shot it has a continuing narrative. So, it’s talked about, but box-settable as well. It’s worked for us at 9pm mid-week, both in terms of overnights and also on ITVX. What’s your focus at the moment? A big focus for us is always Saturday night. We’re trying to link it all together and hold people for the entire Saturday. We’ve got some of the biggest shows on ITV in terms of Saturday – The 1% Club, In with a Shout, In For a Penny and Britain’s Got Talent is back, and consolidating over seven million views. We’ve got great talent across them, there’s a mix of play-along and spectacle. There’s been recent successes with the likes of The 1% Club with Lee Mack. It’s a clever format, with play along so you feel smart when you’re watching it. We’ve just launched In With A Shout with Joel Dommett, that seems to have gone well. What are you looking for now? We care about lots of people watching at the same time whether that’s on ITV1 or streaming on ITVX. The top priority for Entertainment is to bring people into ITVX streaming live and then they can find all that other amazing content that’s there. The big drive for us is to get people to ITVX with those big brands. We’ve got a big development pot and can take creative risks. It’s about the talent as well. We’ve been doing development with Daisy May Cooper. Weekend mornings, we’ve got Oti Mabuse and Laura Whitmore. Those are parts of the schedule where we can watch talent grow.
Summer 2023
televisual.com 53
MICHAEL MCINTYRE’S THE WHEEL
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