Liz Warner: BAFTA Television Lecture

Krish Majumdar: Good evening and welcome to BAFTA, my name’s Krish Majumdar, I’m the Chair of BAFTA’s Television Committee, and welcome to BAFTA’s annual Television Lecture. This is one of the high points of… ooh, I’m on. Can you hear me? Did you hear the beginning? This is one of BAFTA’s most important evenings in our television calendar, we do our annual lecture. Every year the BAFTA Television Committee invites a creative leader in the industry to come and deliver an authored personal take and look at the television industry and creativity within it. In the last few years we’ve had people like Lorraine Heggessey, Colin Callender from HBO Films, Paul Abbott. Two years ago we had Sir Lenny Henry, who delivered a lecture that created shockwaves through the industry on the issue of diversity and reignited a really important debate about diversity. So this lecture for us is really important, and last year we had the brilliant Tim Hincks deliver it. This year we’ve invited the creative leader, thinker, she’s been a CEO, run an indy, commissioning editor, Liz Warner. 

And Liz, I’ll say a few words about Liz in a moment and why we’ve invited her; I wanted to take this opportunity to say a few words about BAFTA and what we do as an Academy. I mean most of you may know that we do awards ceremonies, but we are a charity and we do events like this, over 200 events like this, 250 events, all over the country, and in fact internationally as well. And BAFTA for me is about two things: it’s about excellence and inspiration. We do things like this lecture, BAFTA Guru is our website where we kind of aggregate all the content that we do. We have access to world-class talent, and the point of what we do is, we get people to come and share their experience and expertise, and the point is to inspire practitioners, the industry, and the public, and I’m really proud of what we do. And if you don’t know about it please go on BAFTA’s website, look at BAFTA Guru, there’s amazing events. We had the BAFTA Guru weekend recently, we had people like Kenton Allen came and gave up his Bank Holiday weekend to talk to 200 young people about how to get into the industry, and really invaluable tips about how to progress. And it’s such a hard industry to break into at the moment, and I just think the work we do, a lot of people don’t know about it, so I’m really passionate that we spread the word and we inspire more people, and tonight is really important for that, and that’s why we’ve invited Liz Warner. 

I worked for Liz, I think probably about 12 years ago when she was at betty, and I found her to be a really inspirational boss and creative leader, and that’s one of the reasons why we’ve asked her to come. I mean she started off working as a journalist, she was a freelance writer, and then she became a freelance TV producer, and she worked at BBC Youth and Entertainment, she was the head of Youth Department with John Whiston in Manchester, and she worked with over 400 people who were under 30. She oversaw teams in the editorial of The Rough Guide, Katy Puckrik, The Sunday Show, Travel Show, guest Films With Jonathan Ross, Sam Mendes, Jane Horrocks, Richard E. Grant and many more. And when she was at Channel 4, when she was Commissioning Editor in the Features Department, during her four-year tenure she commissioned the first Grand Designs, Nigella, Hugh’s River Cottage, Location, Location, Location. 

She popularised education, women’s bits and embarrassing illnesses, social issues from young drinking to the BAFTA-winner on domestic violence with Hermione Norris and Mark Strong. She worked with talent like Kirsty and Phil, Davina, and Kevin McLeod, and she was the Commissioning Editor of the first Big Brother. Then she became the founder of betty, she was there for 13 years and it became one of the country’s leading independent producers with a turnover heading towards £20million, with a range of programming from Emmy award-winning drama on child abuse to the BAFTA-nominated Undateables. Not to mention Freaky Eaters, numerous episodes of the BBC Three debt turnaround series, and a team of over 200 in central London, and a small office in New York. The thing I really take from Liz and what she does is, she’s a real moderniser, she’s an agent for change, and she likes to be ahead of the curve, and that’s why we’ve asked her to come here today. She’s highly motivated on social issues, disabilities, learning difficulties, social mobility, domestic violence, teen mental health, debt, women’s health, eating disorders, these have been at the heart of her work. She’s also been a mentor for BAME people, and she’s also been the Cultural Diversity Network Champion in 2015. She likes to think out of the box, and you’re going to hear what she’s got to say tonight about the future of television. So I’d like to welcome onto the stage, Liz Warner.

Liz Warner: Thank you Krish, and thank you all for coming. How could I turn down an invitation to talk about creativity? It’s a subject close to my heart, it’s been the lifeblood, the driving force of my career, a very happy career that has spanned ITV, BBC, Channel 4, and 13 entrepreneurial years running independent production company betty. But it’s creativity I’m worried about. I’m here because I believe television is getting boring. Old and boring. I think the TV that we in this room have spent many hours worrying over and crafting has become duller, less inventive, and less risky. And I’m as guilty as the next person of making some of it, though not as guilty as some. It is dying, slowly dying, year on year. We have failed to engage with a whole generation of digital talent, the younger generation are not switching on, television is failing the young.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved television, I’ve loved its ability to bring character, narrative and emotion to a mass audience. I’ve loved meeting so many brilliant people, and even enjoyed the work-life imbalance. I still love it when it’s at its best, watching the first series of Catastrophe over and over again, Sharon Horgan you’re amazing. But I’m a very instinctive person, and my gut has been telling me for a couple of years now that something in TV was wrong. Really bold, crazy, inventive ideas were getting knocked back. The truly original ideas or pilots that break form were just not getting through, whilst predictable ideas with echoes of the past were all getting made. Commissioners were seeking reassurance over risk, ratings comfort over creativity.

I’d also noticed that fewer and fewer young people were applying to work as researchers and runners, and the ones that were applying were of a slightly different breed. Where were the naughty ones? When I first set up betty way back in 2001 we were inundated with applications from sparky offspring of often very well connected parents. One particular one comes to mind: A bright, posh north London boy related to a rabbi, who had never even been on public transport. At betty we also worked hard to attract the sparky offspring of less well-connected parents, like Dave Gibson, the northern stand-up who became the runner and doubled up as the party Christmas star turn.

TV felt like a cool place to work, but by last year the deluge of, “I want to work in TV” emails had become a dribble. So I left television, appropriately on April Fool’s Day, and I started a trip to the future to find out where the young people were. I went to hang out with the kids, not in an inappropriate way behind the bike sheds; I went to the digital world to hang out with the IT crowd. I started by mentoring a digital indy in Oxford called Angel Sharp, run by bright young things called Hannah, Daniel, Jonny, Amy and Tom, some of whom are here tonight. I’ve been hanging around Stylist Magazine’s office in Lamb’s Conduit Street consulting Director of Digital, Maggie Hitchins. I’ve visited BBC Three, and I’ve been meeting the staff of Vice, and annoying Andy Taylor at Little Dot Studios with a barrage of questions. I’ve been to a dreadful YouTuber’s conference populated by Jims and Zoellas, after which I was virtually suicidal. And I’ve been on an over-40s vlogging course, after which I was truly suicidal.

[Clip plays]

[Applause]

Now you see why I was behind the camera for 20 years. So I’ve been to the future, and it was energising and inspiring, but I’m now back to share what I’ve found with my industry: television. So in the next half hour I want to ask four questions I think TV should be asking itself. Can television afford to lose a generation of talent to the internet? Will television continue to age and shrink? Can we find a way to close the gap between TV and the internet? And finally, where are the future creative geniuses, the mavericks to grow our creative economy?

So I’ll start with, can we afford to lose a generation of talent to the internet? I don’t think so. It’s got beyond being anecdotal and I think we’re facing a creative chasm and a crisis. Headhunters keep ringing me, not to offer jobs I might add, but to ask for references on the same lists of 40-something people. They’re struggling to find the new creative directors to lead television. TV’s gene pool is in decline. There’s been a gradual talent drain, and barely noticed it has become an older people’s business. This is refreshing in one-way says the older woman, that there was a time when an older woman struggled to work in television on or off screen. But I think the pendulum has swung far too far the other way, TV has grown old on and off screen. This is because it has been too obsessively focused on its overnight ratings, too focused on the mainstream, and too focused on holding up a declining share.

Just look at this. As you can see this is the figures of viewing, how many people are watching over the last five years. Look at the pink line; it’s like 16-24 year-olds careering off the scale. Blue line, children to teenagers, rapidly going down. 25-34 year-olds. And yet the consistent mark still sort of 35+, just staying there, unable to move their remote control. Every morning in broadcaster land is stressful. Many a breakfast I have had has been ruined at about 9.37, 9.47, as the overnight show ratings come through. It’s enough to make toast curl watching the commissioning editor’s face opposite me, as every day is judgement day. No room for failure, experimentation or flop. Everything has to rate. And we all know that with no turkeys and no flops come no hits. Nothing is allowed to fail or grow slowly. When faced with a choice of which generation to pursue, TV has followed the older generation, and we all know which way the older generation voted exactly two weeks ago today. 

BBC Four survived, and BBC Three went digital, with drastic budget cuts. The major channels have not created any new youth shows. Most children’s TV migrated off the main channels and now, so has youth. So what’s to go next? 30-40-somethings? Middle age? Youth is niche, we know that, and it gets small audiences, but it is also the future. It keeps young audiences connected to TV. So as a result of ignoring youth the large talent incubators such as T4, Reportage, The Big Breakfast, The 11 O’clock Show and Eurotrash simply don’t exist. Not only did these shows reach young people, but they attracted bright young minds to work on them. Many of those young people now run television. That’s probably why they are remaking 90s hits like TFI, presented by a 50 year-old, or returning to the comfort of remakes such as Cold Feet, or the sitcoms of yesteryear, seven of which are to be resurrected by the BBC in the next year. It’s easier and cheaper to rerun a proven brand than create a new, risky, brilliant one like Catastrophe.

This means long-running series like Don’t Tell The Bride have a second life, being bought by rival channel Sky from the BBC. Or Bizarre ER goes from BBC Three to young channel E4. And after 13 years Traffic Cops goes from BBC One to Five later this year. It sounds like the BBC has been selling its second-hand series on eBay, but what this does do is clog up this ecosystem with old material. Television needs to innovate, not regurgitate. It has become overly reliant on reassuring bonnet and blue light dramas, and talent shows demonstrating everything from singing to dancing while singing. 

Jane Lush, the incoming Head of BAFTA, recently said, “The last real innovation in entertainment was Big Brother,” and that was on the 18th of July, 16 years ago. I should know, I remember the day well. As the Paul Oakenfold music pulsed, the housemates all went mad and rolled themselves in mud, and the live feed to the web was held together by a piece of Elastoplast. It was groundbreaking, it was really exciting. But television since then has seemed to becoming increasingly creatively mainstream, all Daily Mail and mature. Which may not be a problem in the short term, but it will be a problem in the long term. If the under-40s continue to disconnect then TV loses relevance to a generation. We have just seen exactly what happens when politics loses connection with a generation, that should be a warning sign enough. I’m not predicting that TV is over by any means, but TV has got itself stuck in a rut. But we can do something about it. I have some suggestions for giving TV a Botox injection, or a collective defibrillation, when I come to questions three and four. We do have a collective response.

So how long have we got before someone finds a note in TV’s pocket saying, ‘Do not resuscitate’? Well I think, and I actually feel quite seriously about this, I think D-Day is here. I’ve heard the conversations in broadcaster corridors about digital being a long way off, or not something that I need to worry about in my lifetime. But it is, digital disruption is here now. When the TV ratings are below a million regularly, and YouTubers are getting over a million, the digital disruption is upon us. Media analyst Richard Broughton said, “The traditional TV economy is stagnating, and new drivers, social media, social video and multichannel networks are pushing the market forward.” So there is a warning, and we should heed it. 

We now have a generation who’ve grown up doing this, and not doing this. A generation don’t watch television, why would they want to work in it? They’re growing up with Peppa Pig on YouTube as their first port of call, not CBeebies. They’re watching lip balm tutorials and how to plait their hair, not Blue Peter. I moved house last year and didn’t take the television. That’s a surprise to many of you. Not one of the three teenagers in my family has complained, they watch YouTube clips, or sport on a laptop. They download The Dumping Ground drama from iPlayer as a series and watch every episode. If TV doesn’t provide the puerile, risky or anarchic, young people will seek it elsewhere, online. Not only will they seek it, but they’ll make it, which is why boys are filming themselves liquidising vats, or worse. Or wrapping phones in burritos and dropping them out of windows, I saw the other day. Girls are doing the falling trust test, which if you don’t know is a thing where you sort of, it’s from Mean Girls, where you just like fall backwards and see if your friends catch you, randomly. Or you do the no makeup challenge. 

But it doesn’t need us to look too far back to realise that this was the stuff of youth TV. You might even remember Can You Live Without…?, it was a hit show on Channel 4 in 2000. It did Can You Live Without Makeup? And The Word show, people bathing in maggots or licking sweaty armpits on a weekly basis. Users are generating their own entertainment, making You’ve Been Framed moments daily. They don’t need access to broadcasters; they don’t need expensive equipment or networks. They have iPhones and YouTube. Digital is raw, honest, authentic in nature, its intimate, and it has a direct dialogue with its audience. 

Here is Joe Wicks, the buff young man called The Body Coach. He gets lean in 15, and apparently you do too. Joe is an internet star, a publishing fitness sensation. A young fan said to me recently, “When I watch him on his terrace in Surbiton, he goes out and does some press ups, and he talks to me, I believe he’s doing it for me.” The raw shooting style, the direct manner, the unstyled flat: all authentic, real and cheap to make, and over a million are watching. But TV online, whether it is a doc made on an iPhone for Vice, or an internet mini drama made by an aspiring writer using her friends as actors, or Joe here working out on his terrace, is relevant to the new generation. It’s by them, for them, and of them.

A young digital producer said to me only this week when I was talking to him about this, “We are the digital democracy, and everyone can make it. Television is the dictatorship with a very small, very narrow group of people, sometimes only one dictator, telling us what we should watch.” That is why we in television should worry, as young people prefer to be making their own entertainment for their generation, even if it’s on a teaspoon of a TV budget. And they aren’t all making dross, or watching dross.

Meet Tom. I mentioned him earlier as one of the bright young things. He has a 2.1 in Physics, a Masters in Film, and I quote his online CV, sorry Tom. “I am broad-minded and cheery. I’m well read. I prefer a creative approach that doesn’t regurgitate what has come before.” Tom shoots and edits his films, as do most digital natives. 25 years ago, he might have been a perfect candidate as a BBC production trainee. Now 24, Tom has just got a job in London, only Tom is not working for the BBC or for an indy, he’s working for Google, making witty listicles for Diagonal View. Let’s have a look at what Tom watches.

[Clip plays]

[Applause]

Tom is just one of a swathe of talents, I’ve met many in the year, and he represents a generation. Meet Isaac. He’s also a digital rising star, Chief Creative Director of SBTV, who left Channel 4 commissioning recently, preferring the creative freedom and democracy of YouTube. Danielle. Danielle, 27, wrote and launched her debut drama, Dear Jesus, on the internet. Would TV have backed a newcomer, commissioned a black series of a fashion writer called Mercedes? I doubt it. And Jack. Jack Hurry is 23, a YouTube star who’s seeking longer form content and documentary. Who is there to teach him narrative film and invest in his longer form material?

These are the people TV needs. TV needs their talent, their energy, their ideas. But to them, TV is too risk averse, too uptight and dull. Slow and convoluted, TV has too many constraining rules, too many restrictions to entry, and boring offices. Sad when television was the glimmering flame to the nation’s talented moths, from a young Stephen Fry to Stephen Frears, from Jane Root to Jane Featherstone, James Corden to Jamie, Shane Meadows to Shane Richie, and Pat Llewellyn to Postman Pat. TV used to be part of the 90s cultural agenda, part of Blur, Britpop and Cool Britannia. It doesn’t feel cool anymore, it’s more of a warm bath or a nice Victoria Sponge for an ageing demographic.

So onto question two. Ooh, no we’re not. We’re not onto question two. Will television continue to age and shrink? I’m sure we can all understand that. Yes it will if it continues down the same path of risk averse, culturally bland programming. And yes, as it fails to bring young people in with entertainment, comedy and mischief, all genres in decline. Now we can look at my graph, and if you need evidence here it is. Look at the tiny slit, the blue, the three, the four; it’s self-explanatory as you go up to the 29% of 65+. I think it says it all.

Television does however hold the trump card. It may be older, but it holds the wealth of advertising. Mainstream terrestrial TV controls the bulk of a £5billion spend between select few channels. The funding for the shrinking, wealthy, older market is increasing, and has increased for the last five years. Advertisers know television can guarantee an audience, they’re there. It might be smaller and older, but they’re sitting there and engaged for a programme duration. Although internet advertising spend is larger and increasing, its value per view is in free fall, as advertisers have little idea or no control over who is watching what on the internet, and with one click their ad can be dismissed.

So while advertising is increasing its spend on traditional TV on that section of 29% grey, there is no motivation for TV to change. Maybe an honest look at the average age of the viewers of the mainstream terrestrial channels may spark an Austin Reed or BHS moment. We all know the viewing figures are gradually in decline, but just exactly what is the average age of the viewers of each channel? I commissioned a special piece of research to reveal just that, and we have the results in a moment. 

In terrestrial TV we know drama is having a moment, as everyone has realised it has a longer shelf life, downloads well and streams well. Soap and live events still thrive across all generations; Strictly and Bake Off defy the trends. But isn’t it telling when Angela Ripon, 71, is in such high demand. Channels fight over Anne Robinson, also 71. Prunella Scales, 84, has dementia, and is filmed on a boat trip and gets a cult following. And The Real Marigold Hotel is the highest rated show on BBC Two, and immediately recommissioned. 

Presenter wish lists are now starting with Gloria Hunniford, Joanna Lumley and Penelope Keith. It’s not the age of the presenters I take against, I like old people on TV, but it’s the sheer amount of commissions and the lack of imagination in many of the ideas; the wandering around Britain with a certain person, and the lack of youth in the mix. Is it any wonder that Caravanner of the Year and Paul Merton’s Secret Stations is driving young audiences online. TV is super serving a certain sector of the population, some of whom don’t even have to pay the license fee.

[Clip plays]

[Applause]

A seasoned national newspaper columnist recently likened the terrestrial channels not to the Daily Mail, but to the Daily Express. He said they always do well with Royals, a cure for Alzheimer’s, house prices and a cold snap. But one cold snap too many, or they forget the flu jab, and the viewers will be gone. When the mean age of the UK population is 42, is it right that TV has become the bowling green of the media? Bearing in mind that the mean age of the population of the UK is 42, shall we now please celebrate the average age of the viewers for the main channels.

I’d like to start by announcing the happy birthday to BBC One. Happy birthday, you’re 62.

[Applause]

And that’s with Eastenders, without Eastenders it’s probably even older than that. Moving on, BBC Two surprisingly is also 62. Come in, happy birthday BBC Two.

[Applause]

It’s actually 62 and a half, so it’s a little, little bit older than BBC One. ITV, welcome in, you’re 60, happy birthday.

[Applause]

Next is Channel 5, coming in at 58.

[Applause]

And Channel 4, the youth channel, the one I’m really fond of, coming in at (even older than me), Channel 4 is 55.

[Applause]

Now maybe anyone in the audience would like to guess the age of E4, anybody? The youth channel E4? 42! To the lady in the black. Thank you Enders, thank you everybody for the cakes, thank you, Tim was head of cakes, thank you.

[Applause]

Thank you Enders for that hard won research, you can imagine how difficult that has been to extract, work out, etc. And everyone can share the cakes afterwards in the bar. The cake is free, but the drinks aren’t apparently.

So TV is not the only business with this issue, there are parallels in other industries. Look at the housing market, the value all rests with the older generation and the younger generation can’t get a look in. Or look at the food industry where the supermarkets have made the food offering so mass in appeal that it lacks dirt or surprise, and it’s the artisan food suppliers, the food vans and farmers markets that are thriving, or the price disruptors like Lidl and Aldi.

This disparity, or rather this chasm between older mainstream holding the wealth and younger artisans making iPhone TV in their bedrooms brings me to question three. And this is where it does get exciting and challenging to all of us. So to recap, if question one is can TV afford to lose a generation of talent to the internet, the answer is a resounding no. The second question is, is TV going to continue to shrink and age? The answer is, it does so at its peril. And that takes us onto the third question, which is can we find a way to close the gap between wealthy old television and digital?

I think TV needs to turn and find a way to work with digital talents and spend real money in this area. Not commission three shorts for its on demand service, that is not a digital strategy. Genuine money spent will help form a genuine connection with a younger audience and shift value to longer form digital. But when television holds onto the lion’s share of wealth, why would you leave the luxury hotel of television and mix with the digital natives outside the barbed wire encampment? You have to, because youth lives there and the future is hiding in there, and we need to find a way. Otherwise it’s like television executives and talents are in a cave, they’re looking inwards and they can see the flames flickering on the walls, but the fire is behind them, and it will follow them in.

There have been some small investments. ITV and Channel Mum, Endemol and Endemol Beyond, All3 and Little Dot, and ITN invested in Diagonal View. But tiny in comparison to the opportunity. The gap between TV and digital is wide; it’s a chasm of talent. It’s a chasm in terms of language and understanding and wealth. But as Evan Davis or any Harvard graduate would work out, a gap in the market is an opportunity; it’s where the future opportunity lies. If I had £10million or even £100million to invest, I would mine the gap, invest in creative risk, and stop consolidating the traditional TV market. Further consolidation is in danger of buying some overpaid employees and disincentivising a new generation of real entrepreneurs.

Walter Iuzzolino, the curator and presenter of foreign drama channel Walter Presents, spotted this opportunity with curated content. When walking from pitch to pitch around London we talked a lot about the future potential of this new era, and we shopped a bit too. He’s gone into it successfully with curated archive on Walter Presents, and I think the future will hold many more models like this for curated archive and commissioned original programming, but it needs more bold, creative and business minds. We can’t spend the next five years quoting Vice, a Canadian blokey import as the only success story.

Tony Garnett, a TV drama force majeure, now aged 80, who created great dramas such as 90s hit This Life, wrote in March this year, “We should be closing a shameful gap and release pent up creativity.” He said, “The BBC should be creatively exploring the possibilities of digital media, renewing the creativity of the formula-driven main channels.” He was so right. The BBC and others should be investing a large amount in digital content, not just BBC Three. We in the UK are known for our cultural wealth, we’re known for our talents and our voice. They all need a UK platform. Should we create a new Channel 4 for the internet? A newly licensed, part ad-funded multi-channel network? I think so. Or license and launch a national PSB portfolio of online digitally curated channels.

We need to do something before YouTube, Google and Facebook suck our UK intellectual rights back up their USA pipelines, and hoover up the ad spend without investing back in the UK content. And before all our children say, “Awesome,” or “Aahsome.” We need to be investing in the UK digital content and its cultural agenda, not leaving it to the US tech companies to drive the agenda. The next Apple should be grown in the UK, we have some of the best orchards, we are the world leaders in creative content. So the new channels, the new Netflix, the new Amazon and the new Pixar should be UK-grown. It’s not just the salty inlets of California where innovation comes from. It can be Exeter, already home to Crowdcube, or Oxford, already home to 60 digital indies. Or Manchester, Newcastle, or Bournemouth, or Hastings. As young people can’t afford to live in London, it’s likely the new orchards will evolve outside the capital. And this would also help disconnect the disenfranchised who feel London is another country.

Come on Britain, we have a voice, and it’s getting drowned out on the internet by American accents. We have many intelligent, culturally diverse and interesting voices, and we should be investing in the future creative industry. BBC Three was a bold foot forward, still yet to prove itself. All4, a small step in the right direction. And Vice has cracked it with a young male audience, but it is a magazine with some videos, not a fully-fledged online digital channel - yet. But hey, investors are throwing money at its promise.

The very least we should be doing is talking about a UK online channel that curates and commissions, breathes new life into hundreds of small startups and digital indies who are waiting for the money that TV currently receives, to show you how to make food against the clock, or how to avoid Alzheimer’s. Tech has Old Street, TV has Soho. Where does digital content belong? It needs a UK home. Tech giants need our content to add value, we have the content and we need to be the world leaders in the creation of drama, factual, satire, comedy and entertainment. The plethora of young digital companies want the money to move on from their listicles and vlogs, to supply long-form TV to generation rent, for whom nine-year property series and Homes Under The Hammer are not relevant.

So fourth and final question, it’s about the red squirrels of Britain. That’s in case you don’t know what a squirrel is. And by that I mean, where are the future mentors and mentalists? It seems TV has become invaded by grey squirrels, and by red squirrels I mean the truly eccentric creative geniuses, who are often difficult to manage or don’t conform to HR rules, but come up with hits. If TV is thinking of entering the digital world, it needs to recapture some of its own lost youth. I threatened you with Botox, and here it is. TV greats need to find their digital avatars, and I think every great creative who sold their indy, consolidated or benefitted from a large, healthy TV salary should be looking to find and help fund the future.

Campaign Magazine headline, only four weeks ago, was about how the ad industry had failed to succession manage. So has television. Should television have its St Martins or Slade, where dinosaurs like me can share narrative skills with the creative upstarts of the future? And TV needs to put fun back on the agenda. The wealth is in TV, but it’s not being spent correctly, it’s being spent on re-edits and fine slicing, it’s being spent on giving everything too much attention. Some things need to be let go; some things need to be crap, and some brilliant.

When I worked with 400 people under 30 at BBC Manchester, every Thursday we had transmission drinks, a lot of transmission drinks, to the point where Friday was spent eating chips and lying under our desks. We had a laugh; my BBC interview was a night out in Manchester during which my car was towed away. My second interview with Janet Street-Porter, she was lying on the floor with a bad back so couldn’t get up to see me. She yelled a couple of questions at me over the desk and I had the job. I’m not suggesting license-funded alcoholism, just more hedonism, and work in TV being more fun and flamboyant. Somewhere where crazy ideas can fly, where showmen and eccentrics are celebrated and nurtured. It’s not about lots more money, but an adjustment of attitude. Less uptight, less controlling, and less agonised.

Digital TV could teach us all a lot. Creativity is born from risk, from freedom, rule breakers and mavericks, and eccentrics. Not all of them are easy people I’d like to say, but we need Stephen Lambert - I can’t believe I’m saying that - and God bless her, we need Hilary Bells. We need Chris Morris, John Roland, Kate Teckman and David Glover. TV has become overrun by process, intervention and focus-grouping grey squirrels. Creativity doesn’t come from organised management creative breakfasts, that is like asking M&S middle management to design the knickers, and we all know what trouble M&S are facing, so much so they brought in Alexa Chung to go through the archives.

So old father TV needs to not watch the flames on the cave wall, but turn and run towards the digital flicker and take part. And that doesn’t mean hiring an Oxbridge graduate who has an Instagram account and only used is to regram other people’s work. It means investing in a creative sector in a new form of video content and harnessing the talents of a whole generation. It means embracing a new intimacy, authenticity and honest shooting grammar. It doesn’t mean iPhone overtakes HD, there’s room for both. Though if some TV was filmed on iPhone that might leave some money for a party. It could be a whole lot more fun working like natives, than second-guessing what a 90 year-old tribute show might be, or making yet another makeover series with three part reprises and a clink or prosecco glasses at the end.

It’s exciting; the future is very exciting if it holds some of this risk and all of this potential. TV is the new TV if we can close the gap and go native. TV is becoming old and boring. It is dying on the vine. And unless we harness young digital talents we will fail the young. Our children deserve more than ‘how to braid your hair on the loo’, or ‘five cats that look like Martin Freeman’. The people making content deserve to be paid more, and future digital talent needs incentives. But we will get what we pay for.

The three year-old Peppa Pig screen swipers of today deserve freedom from branded material, masquerading as editorial. My children and yours deserve British satire, British comedy, niche pleasures, a varied diet of factual shocks, surprises, humour and enlightenment. They deserve editorial integrity and British well-made content with a beginning, middle and an end. So please, please, let’s get naughty again. Let’s break the rules, let’s challenge form, mash generations, and spend some serious money on the digital future. 

[Applause]

Sathnam Sanghera: The thing is, Liz…

LW: I should have said ‘The End’, shouldn’t I?

SS: The End. The End.

LW: The End.

SS: The thing is, Liz, I really love Paul Merton’s Secret Stations.

LW: How old are you?

SS: Thank you, that was a really fantastic talk. Not going to mention that. That was a really great talk. I loved the graphs, and I loved not thinking about Brexit for about 30 minutes. I guess I’m here for two reasons, firstly, you couldn’t get Joe Wicks. And secondly, I actually did the first ever interview with you in a national newspaper, I think about 15 years ago, and I was 20-something and you were 38, and I actually read the piece… You look exactly the same. I read the piece today, and actually you were worrying about the things then, the same things basically, the same themes. So I guess the first question is, what has changed, and is it really any worse?

LW: Television any worse?

SS: Yeah.

LW: Yes. What’s changed is the viewing habits have changed, and technology’s moved so fast, and obviously I was ahead of my time then predicting, and no one’s listened to me. I suppose technology’s moved on a pace, and TV hasn’t moved at the same, TV Creativity hasn’t moved with it. I mean we’ve had digital, you know we at betty had a digital person sent on attachment, Tom, who was sent by Channel 4 on a six-month attachment, and no one knew what to do with digital Tom, so he was sort of you know, ended up being called Tombola Tom because we felt like we’d won him in a tombola. And it was, the two languages didn’t mesh, people didn’t know what to do with him. And I should say there’s someone laughing very loudly, but she was on the development team. But it’s that…

SS: I thought it was Tom himself.

LW: It’s Tom himself. Tom would be welcomed back. But it’s the language, they just haven’t merged.

SS: But people were worrying intensely then weren’t they? Do people just always worry in TV? I mean I work in print where we worry too, but it seems TV have a particular neurosis.

LW: I think they worry more now than they used to. I mean when I was at the BBC people didn’t worry so much.

SS: But I guess the question is, how do you, I mean you talked about risk there and you know ratings and so on, how do you change attitudes towards risk at say the BBC or Channel 4, when you do have the pressure of daily ratings?

LW: That’s a very big question for now. I think that you have to hire people who like risk, and you have to be risky. I mean I think you have to embrace more of a risk culture. I think that probably some indies have a risk culture, but I think also all corporations have you know, run the chance of becoming fossilised and less risky as they get older. So they’ve got older, so it’s a case of employing younger people who are more likely to take risks than perhaps the management are.

SS: Can they take risks given that their demographic is, like you said 62, or their target audience? Can they afford to take risks?

LW: Well, if they don’t it’s all going to go off the edge of a cliff, so they need to take risks even to get the 30/40-somethings, and I’m saying that they need to take risks by investing in digital content. I’m not sort of saying that the digital content all needs to go on Channel 4, I’m saying that there needs to be new platforms as well.

SS: I guess, also I guess you’re in a funny position in that you know you’re working in kind of innovation and youth and so on, and yet you’re not necessarily of that demographic. How do you personally keep fresh? Is that an over-intimate question? I know you’re an obsessive Radio 4 listener…

LW: I love Radio 4.

SS: And I bet you do actually watch Paul Merton’s Secret Stations.

LW: I do not watch Paul Merton’s Secret Stations. I really don’t, but I do listen to Radio 4 obsessively in the car. I’ve always been a bit of a creative magpie so I suppose I’m sort of, I read widely and I talk to people a lot, I think that’s what I do. So I hang out with, you know I listen to my own children, I’ve got nine Godchildren, I listen to what they’re all saying as they grow up. I like being with young people even though I’m not a young person, and they feed you, don’t they. And I read really widely, so I read obsessively and I pick things up, I’m a magpie, so I listen across and…

SS: Do you ever watch anything or deal with some new technology and think, “I don’t get this.”

LW: Yeah, every day.

SS: Really?

LW: I’m technologically useless, everybody knows that. I can’t even operate the printer.

SS: So do you use Snapchat and…

LW: I do not use Snapchat.

SS: Right. Do you need, do we need to know about all this new technology if you work in TV.

LW: Yes, you do sort of need to know, but I mean I’m not going to have to operate it; I don’t have to do it all. Like I don’t have to edit a TV programme, but I can still tell you what is good and bad in the programme. I can go to an edit and say, “That bit’s boring, and that bits,” whatever. I don’t have to be able to do it all.

SS: How do you feel when you say watch YouTube, which doesn’t have say the production values that the stuff you make.

LW: I find it obsessive.

SS: Really?

LW: Yeah, I go through and I watch bits of this and then I watch bits of that, and I think you can find all sorts of different things that I would never have thought of a year ago, before I turned my telly off.

SS: So if you were say 21 and starting out in telly, and you hadn’t gone to Oxbridge like me, and did you also go to Oxbridge or were you fuddy-duddies?

LW: No, I’m not fuddy-duddies.

SS: Where would you start now?

LW: If I wanted to work in terrestrial TV or any TV?

SS: Well just in creative media.

LW: Oh okay, I’ll tell you what I would do is then, I would start filming. I would use my phone or I would beg, steal or borrow or save up to buy a camera and I would start making TV, and I would upload it. And I would start making TV, because now you don’t have to wait for anybody else to do that. So you can go and make a little documentary or you can go and make a comedy, you can do it all. So I would just start.

SS: Isn’t the problem, though, that it’s not necessarily easy to make money that way.

LW: It’s really difficult to make money, and that is the problem, that’s the rub of the whole discussion is what I’m trying to say is that the money needs to shift to the next generation, because they want to make. You know so it’s fine if you start making a little documentary on your iPhone, but when you want to move on to making a longer form piece, you need money, and you might need a bit more kit and you might need some lenses, but so it needs to move on. And at the moment the main money for short form is branded, and that isn’t where the future lies I don’t think.

SS: And how switched on do you think the established broadcasters are to digital? I mean you’ve talked about the things they need to do, how receptive do you think they are to the fact that all of this is happening?

LW: Well I don’t know, but to date they haven’t been. They’ve been trying but it’s been small, incremental steps. I don’t think they realise that it’s well, they must be realising that there’s a crashing generation gap coming down the line, and it’s just shifting that way.

SS: And in terms of all the stuff you watched in preparation for this lecture, what were you most impressed by? What were the most inventive and interesting things?

LW: Well I’ve been with people for the last year, so I’ve been impressed with people like Tom and Danielle, you know who’s the young writer. I’ve been more impressed by the people than anything else. I’ve met some amazing people, so having been into all these worlds for a year and having mentored some and worked alongside them, I just see innovation and I see people. The great thing I see is multi-skill as well. So in TV it would all be delineated, there’d be a graphics person and there’d be a cameraman, there’d be a soundman. When I went to work with Angel Sharp you’d go in and I’d say, “Oh,” the first thing to see when someone suggested I would like their stuff, I thought their quality was amazing. And then I’d go in and they were operating and editing in their bedrooms, there was five macs and they’re sitting there, and I went, “Oh, that’s brilliant, who did the graphics??” And they went, “I did.” I said, “That really nice funny, warm voiceover, who did that?” “I did it.” So they do all of it.

SS: And what was Vice like? Was that any different? Because that’s print, but they make video as well, right?

LW: They’re beginning to make video, yeah.

SS: And what was your feeling.

LW: I haven’t been into Vice, I’ve only met the Vice staff out of Vice.

SS: Oh I see, okay. And how did they compare to other people you met?

LW: They were slightly different in that I’d probably seen hands on experience more at Angel Sharp than at Vice, but young people who want to tell stories.

SS: But are they necessarily any different from say the young people when you were starting out?

LW: No.

SS: They’ve basically got the same attitude, right?

LW: Yeah.

SS: They wanna do fun stuff and original stuff.

LW: They’re not that different. But they’re the people that aren’t going to television.

SS: Yeah. So if you were starting out you’d definitely go into, you’d go online.

LW: Well I would start; I mean I’m sure you might… Yes, I would, I would go online. But I mean, that’s where you can start innovating, because it’s so much more difficult to go into TV, and if you go into television, you know why would I be wanting to go to make Paul Merton’s Secret Stations.

SS: Fair enough. If you were like launching Big Brother now in 2016, how would you do it differently given everything you’ve talked about here? The different environment we have. It’s a difficult question, isn’t it?

LW: It’s really difficult because…

SS: I should have probably asked you this beforehand.

LW: No, it’s fine. It’s difficult because everyone’s so knowing now of reality TV, and the brilliance of its original iteration was that they didn’t know what they were going into, and I think that made the first one and almost the second one unique, because it did feel like something so new. How would I do it differently? I would probably start it, probably not on television. But it didn’t start, I mean we started with three little minute trailers at 10 o’clock and it went live on the web.

SS: When it started? Oh really?

LW: Yeah, yeah. Even stuck with, I mean it literally was stuck with Elastoplast, the tape like that, and it went live on the internet. So it was ahead of its time. And then the live feed went out on E4 the year after, which became sort of compulsory viewing.

SS: It’s pretty damning that that’s still seen as the last, as you said in your lecture, that that was the last great big innovation in creative content on mainstream TV, isn’t it?

LW: I don’t expect them to come across every year. I don’t think they come every year, I don’t think everyone can expect them, you know but they…

SS: It’s been quite a long time.

LW: It’s been quite a long time.

SS: You’re known as a champion of diversity, and you’ve been talking about technological innovation here, do you think the two things are linked, that if you innovate technologically you necessarily are more diverse.

LW: I think you could and should be. I think what it does is it should make things more open to all. So you know, when people are said to say it is a democracy, it doesn’t have to be filtered through white middle class people does it?

SS: No, but it tends to be, doesn’t it?

LW: Well it has been, TV has been. But the internet, YouTube doesn’t have any inhibitors to entry, does it?

SS: No. We’re going to open it out to some general questions in a bit, but if you had to give yourself some advice, if you could meet your younger self, what advice would it be in terms of TV?

LW: In terms of TV?

SS: Yeah.

LW: What would I have done differently?

SS: No, what would you…

LW: If I was starting out now?

SS: Yeah.

LW: Don’t take it so seriously.

SS: Did you take Big Brother very seriously?

LW: Well we all took it terribly seriously. I mean it was so serious that even when Nasty Nick was like whatever, we started to believe it was sort of like a national issue. And we even got in like people to come and mine sweep, you know like bug sweep the whole house because people actually started to believe the conspiracy. We got such in a bubble we actually started to believe it, so it was really weird. I would say never be afraid, don’t be afraid of anybody, don’t be afraid of commissioning people, don’t be afraid of broadcasters, just don’t be afraid.

SS: Were you afraid?

LW: No. No, that’s something my father taught me. So I think it’s really good to not be afraid. And I think the thing is hire the best possible, if you get into the situation where you can hire, is just hire people better than yourself, and hire the best people possible around you, don’t be intimidated by their skills, they can only help make you look better.

SS: Excellent. Alright, we’re going to open it out now for some questions. People are normally, there’s normally a long silence because nobody wants to be the first one to ask a question, right. Oh we’ve got a hand, we’ve got two hands. Three, four. If you want to give your name as well.

Q: Hi, my name’s Laura. I just want to thank you for a really inspirational talk because I couldn’t agree more; TV has become really outdated in my view as well. I’m very curious to know about what you’re doing next basically.

SS: Yes. I should say that you sold betty to Discovery…

LW: Three years ago. Four years ago.

SS: And what have you been doing since?

LW: Well working at betty until last year, and then in the last year I’ve been doing what I said. All my digital mentoring, working for different digital companies. I can’t tell you what I’m doing next.

SS: Ah, that implies you are going to do something.

LW: I am going to do something; absolutely I’m going to do something.

SS: Is it going to be in this space?

LW: This…

SS: Not literally this room. This technological space.

LW: It’s definitely going to have a digital component, whatever I do next.

SS: That’s exciting. I’m sorry the answer was so vague, but thanks for the question. Next question. By the way, this is being recorded, I should have said that. Question over… I didn’t say it because then you definitely wouldn’t ask any questions.

Q: Eve Kaye. My question is, what should the broadcasters be doing? Who should be funding the digital channel that you’ve talked about and described very well, because I think what you’ve said is very convincing. So how, where are we going to get the revenues to do it, and should, how can we engage advertisers to maybe participate?

SS: That’s a good question. I think you mentioned that it would be ad-funded.

LW: Ad-funded or subscription. You know you’re either AVOD or SVOD, so you’re going to be subscription video on-demand if you’re convinced enough you’ll get subscribers, or advertiser video on-demand. So Walter’s AVOD, his channel, so Channel 4 took a risk there, why not more like that? So they’ve got to shift the money from old form to new form. So the money’s there, it comes in from advertisers, they’ve got to convince advertisers to go with them; I suppose they need to show advertisers these graphs.

SS: They’re good graphs, very good graphs. Do you feel that…

LW: I’m not really fond of a graph normally, as you know.

SS: Do you think that the attitude towards technological innovation amongst advertisers is further ahead than in TV?

LW: I think that they’ve been trying, and I think they’ve been splashing the cash, and I heard Martin Sorrell talking about it on Radio 4. And he was saying that you know, it’s still the Wild West, they still very much view it as the Wild West, they can’t find the sort of, even though they’ve got analytics and it’s really difficult for them to work out where the money’s going. So I don’t think that they are that much more advanced than television.

SS: I guess someone has to take a lead.

LW: Someone’s got to take a lead and say, “Right, I’m taking all my ad spend from TV and I’m going to put it all into this new channel for young people.”

SS: Good question.

Q: Hi Liz, is it on? Johnny Webb. So are you saying that you think that, is part of your argument that scheduled TV is kind of over for young people, and we should sort of leave that for the older folks who love it, because you’re talking a lot about television investing in new digital channels. Or can you imagine scheduled TV having its own revolution and with all of that new digital talent coming through and shorter form programmes, or do you think it all lives on new digital platforms.

LW: I think it will be both. I think scheduled TV will continue, I mean there’s a lot of us to still live out a long time you know. So it’s not going to disappear overnight.

Q: But you’re not talking about innovating on scheduled TV so much as investing in new places?

LW: I think a bit of both would be needed. If I were doing, I would be slightly refreshing the mix to bring 30 to 40-somethings and looking at the mix of programming and what young people are liking more. You know like the decline of entertainment shows, and when entertainment plays it plays really well to a younger audience. Or when comedy plays it plays well, or they download it well, it downloads well. You know like Love Island’s doing really, really well online, but it’s got a life on a terrestrial channel as well, so that’s the sort of perfect model of a younger programme that’s serving both.

SS: I didn’t realise, I mean one of the surprising things about what you put on is that stuff is scheduled on YouTube as well, there’s a Breakfast show, and I had no idea.

LW: Yeah, yeah. It’s quite a lot of people, some of the vloggers schedule their, they put their stuff out at 10am so it works in LA so they’ve got two audiences. You know they’ve got their audience, they’re very aware.

SS: It continues the…

LW: It does, it does yeah.

SS: I think there’s a question at the front.

Q: Lucy Hines. You were talking about the red squirrels; I’d like to know about the naughtiest things you’ve ever done during your career.

LW: I didn’t say I’m a red squirrel; I’m a grey squirrel. The naughtiest things I’ve ever done? And it’s being recorded; you say it’s being recorded?

SS: We can turn it off for this bit.

LW: Oh I’ve done all sorts of stupid things, you know. I can’t think. Oh yeah, well, I’ve missed planes because I’ve been too busy shopping. I’ve just had fun along the way, I’ve done lots and lots of, I’ve had fun along the way.

SS: I once missed a plane because I was watching Paul Merton’s Secret Stations. Another question at the top.

Q: Hi, sorry. Thank you so much, my name’s Danielle by the way. Thank you so much Liz, I thought that was amazing, And I think it’s, as a YouTube content creator, I think it’s really important to speak about the difficulties faced when you want to create something that’s maybe like a drama or a comedy series, and you have to fund those. And I think that there is a synergy that can happen between traditional broadcasters and YouTube content creators where we can exchange ideas because there’s stuff that we know that you don’t know, and stuff that you know that we don’t know. And I don’t think it’s like we’re completely at war, but there is something there has to be that coming together where we can share ideas and grow this thing, because we don’t want to be left behind, and I know you guys want to make money. And we know how to make that happen, but we don’t have the access, so yeah, thanks.

SS: Is there a question? Thank you, though. Over there. I think there’s a couple over there. Actually, can I ask a question related to that about production values? I mean there’s this famous thing that actually because kids nowadays listen to music on their computers they don’t want high quality music, like sound-wise. Do you think something is happening similar with TV? Like we don’t necessarily need higher production values for say drama, because people don’t grow up with that?

LW: I think that you need both. I think there will be, I think it’s true, a lot of it could be you know, if the story’s brilliant or the character’s amazing, it’s always been slightly the case in TV that it doesn’t have to be all looking brilliant. But I think that with certain dramas, there’ll be a need for both, people love visuals, and I think people do want high quality as well. But I just think there needs to be greater delineation between rough and ready and really high end. I think what’s happened is that we’ve tried to make too much in the middle, and the money sort of doesn’t go, and that we should probably make some, as I said, something a bit crap and something a bit brilliant and just cut out the middle.

SS: Okay, sorry, I interrupted. I don’t know where we are next.

Q: Hi.

SS: Over there, sorry, over there.

Q: Is it working? Can you hear me? Oh, sorry. That was a really interesting talk, so thank you very much. Do you think broadcasters such as the BBC should invest more in radio? Because I was listening on Radio 4 and they were talking about how the funding of radio is sometimes, staggers a bit, and as we’re always on the go, we’re travelling, we’re rushing to work, I think we listen more through our headphones that we do watching. Maybe that might just be me, what’s your opinion.

LW: I totally agree, I think I totally agree. I think that radio’s got quite a lot more in common with the internet than telly sometimes. And that you know podcasts are doing really, really well, and I completely agree. I often wondered why BBC Three wasn’t given to Radio 1, I sort of felt they’d got a lot more in common to run the new BBC Three, so yes I completely think it’s, yes.

SS: That’s a very good point that, I say as a Radio 4 contributor. So the mic is there but we’ll come to you at the back, sorry.

Q: Alright, me, okay. Emma Hardy, hi, thank you for that speech, it was fantastic. As you’ve said there is an enormous amount of content online, and there’s a lot of fantastic content online. And I think the challenge there is at the moment to get the audiences. I think there’s a stat out recently that 94% of viewing on YouTube is on 1% of the content. How do you think production companies, talent, broadcasters can attract those audiences online and get heard?

LW: Curation I think is one of the surefire ways is that, you know because it’s like there is so much you just don’t know where to find what you like. It’s sort of what Tom was saying is that, you know, and also algorithms will be set so it sends you more of what you’ve already seen, so it’s narrowing your view to a certain extent. So if you like this you’ll get more of it like this, which makes you go like that as a person. So I sort of think curation is going to be the answer, so you’ll buy into people, a bit like you know newspaper editors or columnists, you buy into their tastes and their take and you’ll like, so it’s like, if you like what I like, you know you’ll like this. So I think a lot more of that.

SS: Thank you, I think we have a question at the back, and a microphone as well.

Q: Hi, I’m Nas, and I was just wondering, you talk a lot about fun, but when I look at, I was just kind of thinking and looking, and I look at something like AJ+ for instance which is Al Jazeera’s globally conscious digital arm. And it’s extraordinary you know, they’re tackling issues that I just do not see on television, like law enforcement, you know they’re talking about race, talking about poverty, and I wonder whether you think there’s a misunderstanding that you know the digital world is just fun and young people just want fun, because I kind of wonder if they just want fun or not.

LW: I think they don’t want just fun, I think they want a lot more fun than they’re getting on the telly, but I think that also this is matched by a real interest in you know a fantastically much more politicised youth, and much more interested in documentaries. So I see definitely they want much more you know in terms of documentary as well.

SS: I think that came across in that guy who was interviewed was saying he watches all this educational stuff, which is hard to see where would that be on a normal TV, BBC Four?

LW: Yeah, like sort of he’s watching a vlogger on physics or a vlogger on science or whatever, so I sort of think that there’s a thirst for intelligence that people don’t always deliver on.

SS: So I guess that if you want to change the technology, you’re also going to change the content. And there’ll be more documentaries perhaps and more different types of TV?

LW: Yeah, well if people start to shift their money to it, yes.

SS: Thank you, very good question Nas, thanks. Question over here.

Q: Hi, my name is Amy. And I just want to, thanks for the talk by the way, and I just want to ask, because I have a background in biology and I’m also making my own films, and I have a special interest in wildlife, expedition, documentaries, kind of thing. So, and I’m really interested in sort of BBC blue chip documentaries, and over the past few years there’s more and more behind the scenes shareable content on the internet, for example the polar bear broke into the house of a film crew, that went viral on the internet. The BBC are also making more social, shareable videos, like the 360 degree where you can sort of go with the expedition crew to Antarctica. And also the documentaries have also been on BBC iPlayer where people can watch for free, so it all seems like those blue chip documentaries are available to the young people. But at the same time there is a drop in money in making those kind of documentaries, because there’s more programme like Simon Reeve documentary where they spend two or three days filming in the other side of the world, and that’s it, they fly to somewhere else rather than spending two, three months in a field and trying to follow one species of animals. So as a young person I do worry about the future for the blue chip documentary, and I wonder what do you think about that, would blue chip documentary die in future?

SS: When you say blue chip documentaries, do you mean very high end?

Q: Yeah.

LW: You mean like David Attenborough or… I think that goes back to slightly what I was saying before about very much cheaper and very, very much more expensive would be the way I would go, and the middle ground would be less money spent on the middle ground. So that you can do the big blue chip, I think that there’s a real demand for blue chip, high-end quality programming like that. And also when they’re really, really well-funded they can afford a digital crew to do the sort of behind the scenes and all the stuff that you like that then gets played on iPlayer as well. So I would say I don’t know how the BBC’s spending their money, and I think that now, you know I know Discovery pulled out from co-funding all their natural world stuff so they’ve got less money probably, but it would be a shame if it went.

SS: And actually a lot of the stuff that is most popular on say YouTube does come from these blue chip kind of documentaries and content, doesn’t it?

LW: Some does, yeah, yeah.

SS: A question in the middle, and one over there.

Q: Hello, hi, my name’s Simon. Hello. I was just wondering, a lot of the talk so far seems to have focused around the issue of money as much as anything else, and there just not being the money for the digital platforms. So my question is sort of, if the structure that television has currently has caused all these issues for it with the ageing viewership, isn’t it more important to get money to the digital, because as soon as you start with the regular broadcasters taking over the digital platforms, aren’t you possibly in danger of losing some of the individuality as similar sorts of systems take over? So, does it matter necessarily that television goes digital, or is it just more important that digital platforms get funding.

LW: I think it’s more important that digital platforms get funding. I don’t mind where the funding comes from, so you know I was saying there that it would be great if it wasn’t all from America, so that the UK could actually own its own platform. So I’m not saying necessarily it needs to come from the BBC or ITV or Channel 4, though Channel 4 has started doing some others, but I think that the money needs to shift.

SS: It’s all in a lot of flux isn’t it, there are a lot of publishers now going into video aren’t there?

LW: Yeah, yeah, well you know, when I saw Amy actually only the other week at their office in Oxford, they were doing behind the scenes of museums, so you know they do the Ashmolean and it’s all online and people go and spend hours in the museum at night on the internet.

SS: Another couple of questions, I don’t know where the microphone is.

Q: I’ve got one here, is it working? It’s Sam Anthony. I just want to know where the cake was for BBC Three? And also, would you like to run BBC Three? Are they getting it right, or are they getting it vaguely right?

SS: I thought they closed down BBC Three, have I got that wrong?

Q: No they haven’t closed it down, it’s online.

LW: They didn’t close it down, it’s online, it’s online.

SS: The BBC Three commissioner’s going to be here, probably.

LW: No.

SS: Phew. Okay.

LW: Back to the question which was…

Q: Where was the cake?

LW: Where was the cake. We didn’t get the facts.

Q: What was written on it, and would you like to run BBC Three? Do you think they’re getting it right?

LW: I don’t want to run BBC Three.

SS: We can cross that off the list.

LW: I don’t want to run BBC Three. I’m not sure they are getting it right. I think that they are half man, half beast. You know I think they’re half internet, half TV. They don’t seem to have a digital persona, and they’re still sort of half television. So the launch tape was like a channel tape for a channel, a terrestrial channel, not a digital programme. And it seems, you know they’ve got some longer form documentaries cut into ten-minute chunks, which doesn’t make a digital channel. So I’m not sure, you agree?

Q: Oh, totally.

LW: I don’t think it’s there yet.

SS: Does this sort of thing mean that the BBC are always going to be on the back foot when it comes to taking, like developing innovation, in that they’ve got so many institutional issues.

LW: It doesn’t help them.

SS: No, okay. We didn’t have a BBC Three cake because we didn’t have the data.

Q: Oh, hi, I’m Dorothy; I’m the Head of News and Current Affairs at Channel 4. In that role actually I commissioned Can You Live Without Your Makeup?

LW: I know you did, Dorothy.

Q: Yeah, which was so good I think I should just do it all over again. You were talking about what young people like to watch, and I thought you’d be interested to know that last month we had 230million views of our digital videos for Channel 4 News, which was an absolute breakthrough for us, and I think one of the really exciting things is that young people really want to watch very serious news. And you talked about breaching the gap, and I think one of the things that’s very important is that news brands that people trust should go out and create content everywhere on all platforms that young people know they can trust, alongside fantastic, different, wild things that people create, you’ve got to have both I think.

LW: I agree.

SS: Yeah, maybe all this digital stuff creates more of a market for like the really authoritative stuff.

LW: Well strong brands, if you can deliver on the right platforms, that’s the key isn’t it, that your news is available on other platforms. So it’s not just, and who would trust, you know would you trust Buzzfeed more than Channel 4 News?

SS: Okay, we have time for one more, two questions, and now we’ve got eight hands up. Can we get through them, okay, there’s a question over there.

Q: Hi, hi Liz, it’s Danielle Lauren.

SS: I don’t know where, who’s speaking. Oh there she is.

Q: Hi. First of all, massive fan of yours and have been for a while. I’ve been working in TV for the last 17 years, and the last eight years I’ve been doing that crossover between TV and digital. And I feel like everything you’ve been saying today I’ve been saying for years and years, and I’ve sat across from CEOs of major companies and talked to broadcasters about this, and no one’s buying it. So my question is, everything you’ve said I agree with, I think you put forward a really excellent case, but now what? Like now what, because I find it really infuriating because I work in the youth market, I completely get that this is how people are engaging with content, I’m a digital native, I use Snapchat, I love it all. But for some reason, whether it’s big broadcasters or little indies, no one’s buying into the vision, so what do we do if we’re on the same path as you?

LW: I think you’ve just got to, I mean all you can do is make, I mean that’s partly why I did this is that I just want to stimulate debate around it. I really want people to get engaged with it.

SS: Are you going to take over the BBC? That’s what you’re going to do next isn’t it?

LW: Oh no no no no no. I’m, help, I agree with you, help. People need, I mean…

SS: It must be very frustrating for people your age.

Q: Yeah, I mean I absolutely love TV and one of the things I’ve been doing is working with incredible indies trying to teach them how to use Snapchat, get them invigorated, because I think you know ultimately we’re all storytellers, and we just love communicating with audiences, and for the first time we get to have such a direct relationship. So yeah, it is very infuriating, but it seems that the decision-makers, and I understand, it’s a fear, it’s a fear of change and the attitude is to just not do anything.

LW: Go and work for Vice. Go and work for Dorothy.

SS: Do you think there’s still snobbery in TV about online?

Q: Yes, yes.

SS: That’s incredible given the viewing numbers that there’s still snobbery. What’s behind that?

LW: I think it’s, there is a language difference, and there is a generational difference, and I just think people, it’s too comfortable, TV’s comfortable.

SS: Do you think some people still think all this Snapchat, all this YouTube stuff’s going to go away eventually?

LW: I think some people are hoping it will.

SS: Maybe two more questions.

Q: Hello, hi. Hi Liz, it’s Jane Millichip, nice to see you again. Young people are, all the evidence shows they’re brand disloyal, they’re culturally promiscuousness, they will not be advertised to or scheduled for. Isn’t there a danger that if we try and reverse that into television as we know it, it will, we’ll just cock it up. In the sense that you know we’ll become white man got no rhythm at the disco. And you know I have serious doubts about you know Vice Media’s attempt with Viceland, they seem to be abandoning you know the subversive roots and the authenticity that they grew with.

LW: Yeah, I think you’re, I completely agree with you. I worry for it too, and don’t see Vice transferring to Viceland and becoming a sort of mainstream, you know lesser channel.

Q: So how do we do it?

LW: I think we’ve got to do it outside of that, you know I think if we try and reverse it into TV, if you try and reverse digital into TV it probably will look like a bad dad dancing. So I think it’s got to be other platforms, new platform. You know I think it’s got to be a whole new platform, I mean I would literally start a new Channel 4 for the internet.

SS: There you go, that’s what she’s doing.

LW: Not Channel 4, though.

SS: There’s so many, we’ve only got time for really one more question. There’s someone at the back who has had their hand up for so long, can we go for them? And whoever’s got the mic can ask a question too. They haven’t. Let’s just have this dude.

Q: Hello, my name is Folicheri Ilionare [?] and I have been working in the industry for a little while, about 30-something years. One of the things I find is that we are older people talking and thinking about what young people would like to see, as opposed to asking them what they want to see. And I have a 19 year-old son, it’s very interesting to watch the way in which he watches television, or not watches television in the sense that it is. It’s always the stuff which is online, it’s always bulk watching, 13-part you know series, so Netflix-style of watching television and film. It’s very interesting to see that way of watching media in that sense, and so I think that we’ve got to somehow find a way to engage regarding, you know I would love it if there was a commissioning editor who was a young person, who was actually producing that, you know so we were getting something that is direct and live and kinetic. And I also think another thing, because you say you have, we’re told you have a background in diversity, the online content is an area within which Black and Asian and people from what are classified as minorities, though we are majority in the world, actually use to be creative. And there’s some amazing stuff which is coming out of there, and it reflects a diversity of culture and what is actually happening now. And also it shows the true face of what this country is like, well maybe in some inner cities, which is we see the diversity on screen, and that’s something that is still lacking in all areas. That’s all I really want to say.

SS: There’s lots of good points there, but to turn your remarks into maybe a question is that there’s a contradiction in that everyone who commissions is quite old, and how do they cater for young, do we need younger commissioners?

LW: Yes, absolutely. But that’s only if you want TV to answer this problem, you know in terrestrial TV. I don’t think you can look, I don’t claim to know what young, you know I’ve asked young people to speak for themselves which is why I asked Tom to make the tape about what he watches because I don’t want to be the old people trying to say, “Oh and this is what young people watch.” I only know from my own experience in my own house what my children are watching, but I think that, I just think some young commissioning editors put into existing channels isn’t the solution, the solution has got to be bigger than that. It’s got to be outside of that, it’s got to be different platforms. I’m not trying to, I think the existing terrestrials need to be slightly younger, but they’re never going to go right back to, we can’t turn the clock back.

SS: No. I’m sorry, we haven’t got any time for any more questions, but the fact that so many people still want to ask you questions is a sign of what a brilliant talk it was, really stimulating and really appreciate your time. Thank you.

LW: Thank you.

[Applause]

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Liz Warner Television Lecture 2016 - Transcript