It’s not all doom and gloom in TV land. This week I head towards the light to unveil a land where everything is shiny, chirpy and consistently upbeat. Entertainment may not be where your heart is, but it’s definitely where the money is!
I have written a couple of articles here casting doubt on the financial and long-term future of UK broadcasters and their current structures. However, of course there is light at the end of the tunnel even for the big corporations, and it may be in the form of a glitter ball hanging over a shiny floor. Glossy Entertainment television is where much of the big money is headed, and it may be the saviour of big audiences and communal viewing.
Established factual indies are building-up their own Entertainment departments and broadcasters want to replicate the kind of audiences that Strictly Come Dancing, The X Factor and Dancing On ice have commanded over the last few years. If you doubt that these formats can sell abroad, just ask multi-millionaires Simons Fuller and Simon Cowell, who have watched Pop Idol (X Factor by another name) become the dominant monster of the US television schedule.
The wider international market is equally open to our own brand of glossy fun. I can only imagine that our expertise in this area is a direct descendant of the Victorian music hall, which fed into the first television variety shows of the 1950s. The advertisers love it as much as the audience do.
Top notch British shiny floor producers are rare and coveted in the UK, I can think of eight who are in permanent demand for the big live/as live Saturday night shows. These showrunners are constantly wooed and charmed by production companies wanting to keep them close for the next project on the slate. They are paid well but not outrageously so, which is a surprise because their employers’ biggest fear is that they will give up on the UK altogether and go to Los Angeles instead.
There is a community of British Entertainment series and executive producers working in the LA studios making the US equivalent of our entertainment shows, who are not only paid vast amounts for doing much the same job as here, but they also command a level of professional respect and lionisation which would be culturally unthinkable here. Some have gone to the States briefly and come back again, but for most it’s a one-way trip. They are to US Entertainment television what German émigrés once were to rocket science.
Can anyone work in Entertainment? I don’t think so. A Factual Entertainment department boss explained to me his theory that your head needs to be wired one way or the other for television. If you think that the most important factor in your work is the storyline, then you’re not made for Entertainment. Instead, you must always start with the question of whether it will entertain people for its own sake, and any story comes after that. Of course, Factual Entertainment is the hybrid which can use the documentary-maker’s skills for different ends. I have heard makers of Wife Swap, The Apprentice and The Secret Millionaire proudly set out the important social messages that they have passed on to their audiences through the medium of an Entertainment format, but even to think that way is to miss the point.
Entertainment is meant to be fun and escapist, not education by other means. If you can’t accept that, then it’s really not the genre for you. Strangely, Entertainment people are often rather serious and grounded in person, whereas factual producers are often more liable to frivolity outside their work, but I haven’t yet worked out quite why!
If you really care about making Entertainment for its own sake, then there may be a golden future waiting for your career. In recessionary times, Entertainment should be more popular than ever, and British formats are still selling widely across the globe. Big money is pumped into the productions, and advertisers are still thrilled to be involved in big weekend family audiences involving celebrity and music. I expect that these shows will be the last bastions of the broadcasters as other media eat away at their audiences and their incomes, and you can be sure that Entertainment will be a key genre for any new kinds of programmes made for online, mobile or any other delivery.
So who do we think is the most influential figure of 21st Century television? It could turn out to be the all singing and dancing hoofer, who has kept us amused on stage for the last 150 years with a bit of a joke.