The Edinburgh TV Festival, the annual shindig of the movers, shakers, and changemakers of the British television industry, took place last week and change was very much on the schedule, reports Michael Burns.
The headline issues facing the TV industry in the UK are significant – high inflation, market contraction, shrunken ad revenue for commercial broadcasters, freelancers being out of work for long periods, and firms ranging from indies to hire companies to VFX facilities going under. Content is still being made, but it’s now made at the extremes: a few big, expensive shows and lots of lower-cost, high-volume shows.
In his Mactaggart Lecture, playwright and dramatist James Graham talked about the boom and bust of TV, pointing out that two years ago post-Covid, a trend in the industry was over-production. “And now: a drought, a desert,” he said.
“Maybe at some point, we can interrogate how it’s even possible for an industry that is manufacturing one of the most in-demand products on Earth – content, entertainment, stories - to have drifted into a global business model where so few can make any money from something that’s never been in higher demand.”
Possible solutions were explored in ‘Opportunity Knocks: How Indies can Survive and Thrive into 2025’. Moderating, Sam Barcroft, Founder of Creatorville, said there were good opportunities for providing content to platforms like YouTube and TikTok “with no gatekeepers”.
The panel also highlighted approaches such as diversification and pivoting to new genres, making shows for brands directly, forming partnerships with larger co-producers, and exploring international markets.
During a networking event by festival sponsor Scottish Screen, Claire Mundell, Executive Producer, Founder, and Creative Director of Synchronicity Films, said the key is to make productions with a global appeal.
“It’s a challenging time for all of us because the bubble has burst. There’s a market correction in place,” she said. “But we’re all still here, still selling, developing, making projects. We just delivered a big show for Sky and Peacock. The Tattooist of Auschwitz had 5,000 extras, with 74 days of filming, it took six years to make… and we’re a company based in Govan [in Glasgow]. I love that we can defy expectations of what sort of content comes from the nations and regions. Everyone needs to remember that talent isn’t about geography, it’s just about opportunity.
Read more The Tattooist of Auschwitz: bringing an authentic look to the hit novel adaptation
“We’re still privately owned,” she added. “I hope it does encourage people to think just like a programme maker or a filmmaker, not like necessarily like a Scottish filmmaker or a Welsh filmmaker or an English filmmaker, just someone who can reach for big stories that will have a global resonance.”
Eyeless in Gaza
A hard-hitting panel session Reporting Gaza saw a team of TV journalists including Lindsey Hilsum, International Editor, Channel 4 News and ITV News Global Security Editor Rohit Kachroo discuss the challenges in reporting the war in Gaza, tackling accusations of bias from both sides, the lack of access and eye-witness reporting, and the targeting of media personnel.
Moderated by Jon Williams, Executive Director of The Rory Peck Trust, it was one of the standout sessions of the week, particularly the contributions from Palestinian Journalist and Filmmaker Yousef Hammash, and Israeli author and Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy, the latter speaking over a video link from Tel Aviv. However, there were no solutions here, no optimistic outlook, but the obvious rapport between Hammash and Levy brought some small comfort.
Sustainable measures
Sustainability and social justice were a major focus this year, with sessions like ‘Creating The Change We Want To See’ and ‘How to Get Climate Content Commissioned’. Broadcaster and Paralympian Ade Adepitan, appearing on both panels, shared his experiences filming the BBC’s Climate Change - Ade on the Frontline, stressing the need for global perspectives. Kevin McCloud of Grand Designs spoke on the media’s responsibility to not only report but also represent the fight against climate change.
Adepitan added: “Our battle is not really with the public. I think that they get it. They just need to be told in a palatable way how [to do it]. The bigger problem is the misinformation from the fossil fuel industry, the lobbyists, and the beef industry. When we’re making these films, we should bear that in mind. It’s not a battle over whether climate change is happening or not. It’s a battle of information.”
Sreya Biswas, Head of Natural History, BBC Commissioning, highlighted how the real-life drama of On Thin Ice: Putin v Greenpeace could shock audiences into action. “Ultimately, we are in the entertainment industry, therefore even if the message is serious, people want to be entertained at the end of the day,” she said.
Writer David Macpherson discussed a similar method behind his HETV series for Amazon Prime, The Rig, which doesn’t just have a message about climate change embedded in the sci-fi, but also a subtext about the just transition of oil workers to a green economy.
Paige Wilson, a Climate Story Consultant for Heard, talked about how Channel 5 has an editorial pledge “to get some sustainable or climate messaging into every hour of every programme”, and she used the example of Traffic Cops to show how production teams can include sustainable messaging within programmes, not always in the most obvious ways, but very effectively.
Adepitan added: “If there was ever a time that TV could make a difference to the world, it is now. I speak with climate scientists, I work on this all the time, and time is running out. If you have content, if you have ideas, don’t overthink it, fight as hard as you can to get it out there.”
Read more Green screens: creating sustainable productions on location
The future now
Technology got its own strand this year, in the shape of ‘Frontiers’, kicking off with a couple of well-received sessions looking at where TV meets gaming, and what is actually working in the digital space. The potential offered by technology was explored in ‘will.i.am: AI and The Future of Creativity’. Interviewed by Dr Alex Connock, Senior Fellow at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, the musician and serial tech entrepreneur talked about his early interest in AI and his work to create his own productivity tool, FYI, then introduced an AI-powered audio platform RAiDiO.FYI running on his phone. The Black Eyed Peas singer used the latter to illustrate how readily AI can be used by creators to produce interactive content and demonstrated its role as co-host on TV show The Voice.
Class issues
A recurring theme at this year’s festival was the lack of working-class voices in the industry.
“As part of the recent survey, released this year to Channel 4 News from the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, only 8% of people working in television are from a working-class background. That’s across the entire field. In leadership roles, it will be even lower,” said playwright/dramatist James Graham in his Mactaggart Lecture. “That compares with between 46-49% of British people who identify as working class. Only 8% bring their experiences, outlook, stories, and culture, to a platform that is meant to reflect all those things back to us. This is the lowest percentage of people from lower socio-economic backgrounds in television in at least a decade, likely longer.
“Factor into this the fact that working-class audiences have been measured to be the demographic who consume the most hours of television, both linear and SVOD,” he continued. “They are the largest potential audience to reach, for the content we make. Yet they are the demographic least able to find a foothold in the industry to bring their experiences and stories to make that work.”
The issue was raised again in a session hosted by Comedian, Actor and Writer Lucy Beaumont who heard from Channel 4, Screen Skills and Creative Access about what schemes and initiatives they were using to tackle this ‘silent prejudice’.
While some worthy measures are having some success, illustrated by the stories of two beneficiaries on the panel, it does raise the question of how people in the general population actually get to hear about the initiatives. Perhaps broadcasters could use their biggest assets, their content platforms, to help solve the problem.
Beaumont seemed to have come to the same conclusion when she asked why TV jobs aren’t advertised on TV. This was on a more vociferous later panel, ‘The C Word: TV’s Last Taboo’ hosted by Author, Speaker, and Visiting Senior LSE Fellow, Sam McAlister.
McAlister was surprised that the 8% figure was so high. “People think that we are a meritocratic industry, but when I was working in TV, I saw no evidence of that,” she said. “We’re often silent about the informal ways that people enter television. We all know someone in TV who went to the same Oxbridge College as some famous person who’s become a presenter.”
Topics discussed included the hidden underpinning of middle-class resources that are essential to support a career in TV today, whether freelancers from lower socio-economic backgrounds can survive in an uncertain market, and how almost half the population were viewed as something ‘other’ by many with power in TV.
Producer/Presenter David Olusoga said the industry was “dangerously susceptible to stereotypes because of its lack of integration and socio-economic diversity”, while McAlister noted that the stereotyping had become worse since Brexit.
Because of the lack of socio-economic diversity, Olusoga observed some TV executives are surrounded by people drawn from a tiny percentage of the population, just like them.
“The problem is the higher up you go into television, the more decisions you make, the less likely you are to have any connection with any person in working-class life and with working-class culture,” he added.
There were lots of valid arguments in each panel session, but as showed by polls of the audience, most were drawn from that same disadvantaged socio-economic bracket. I couldn’t help but wonder if those with the actual power to change things were engaged at the Festival’s other sessions, more concerned with what was on the slates of the broadcasters and streamers.
They wouldn’t have been able to miss the message from Presenter Carol Vorderman in her Alternative Mactaggart keynote though: “The truth is that being a part of television nowadays is akin to getting on in the Conservative party – your family background, where you went to school, and if you live and are active in London – these are the three factors which will largely determine whether or not you even get your foot through the door, let alone rise through the ranks,” she said.
Vorderman hit hard, saying this issue should make the UK TV industry fear for its future.
“Those working-class people feel they are not represented, their situation is not represented, the lack of opportunities and lack of money and jobs is not represented, and so where do they go? They go to social media in their droves,” she noted. “For the first time ever, a massive quarter of people in the UK are not watching broadcast television on a weekly basis and the annual rate of decline is so large it’s likely that within five years, less than half of the UK population will be with us at all.”
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