By Emily Belton
The famous Hollywood saying “nobody knows anything” best summarises the process of commissioning television programmes. This sounds surprising coming from the Director of Television for the ITV network, Peter Fincham, and is even more unexpected from the man who commissioned Downton Abbey.
Nonetheless, it turns out that he has good reasons for his statement. Fincham was speaking at a talk co-hosted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and Oxford Media Society at green templeton College , November 11, 2011.
The rest of his talk reveals not only the unpredictable nature of the television industry but also the ups and downs of a career in media. His tales are exciting and are certainly worth a listen - it seems that many agree: the packed room in Green Templeton College is testament to his standing in the media sector.
Fincham draws on his experiences of a varied career to enlighten his audience about. His application for a research position in the Late, Late Breakfast show in the BBC was not successful. He tells us that he was rejected for not being “populist” enough (or in his own words, he had too much of an “Oxbridge-y air about him”). While success may have arrived late in the day for Fincham, when it did eventually come, it did so in grand proportions.
He started out as a producer of the fledgling independent production company TalkBack in 1985, and eventually sold it in 2000 in a £62m deal. He was surprised when he was asked to be Controller of the BBC in 2005: “The BBC is an organisation of insiders” and he was an “outsider”. “I didn’t work my way up in conventional television at all”, he said.
Fincham believes TV journalism is imperative given the industry’s high levels of regulation and its impartiality. When he poses the rhetorical question, “Do we want the biggest national channels to have a duty of impartiality? the answer is a resounding “Yes”. As a strategist, reveals that British audiences want wholly British productions, hence the appeal of Downton Abbey and other programmes.
What of the future of television? Even though he has heard ominous predictions of TV viewing increasingly becoming ‘time-shifted’, i.e. being watched on Sky+ or TiVos, he believes that it won’t undermine the commercial underpinning of TV. TV has a “great future” ahead of it, and any issues that do arise will have solutions. In fact, he suggests an increase in live event programming in response to this rise in time-shifting viewing. While we don’t find out which programmes Fincham would cut if he had the ultimate choice, we do learn that he thinks The Apprentice, which he worked on under TalkBack, has “turned into a fantastic show”.
Finally, his advice to students thinking of embarking on a career in media is to keep knocking on doors. There is “a lot of demand for television”, with “far more output than twenty years ago”. You just need to “get through that door”. He was involved in making his first TV programme when he was 32 years old; you shouldn’t expect to be producing “the year after you graduate”.
Overall, Fincham delivers a fascinating talk, and the audience leaves having learnt something about both the television industry and the vicissitudes of a life in media.
The next Media Society event comes up November 17, 2011 with Guy Black, the Executive Director of the Telegraph Group at 8pm in Lecture Room A, Queen’s College.
The famous Hollywood saying “nobody knows anything” best summarises the process of commissioning television programmes. This sounds surprising coming from the Director of Television for the ITV network, Peter Fincham, and is even more unexpected from the man who commissioned Downton Abbey.
Nonetheless, it turns out that he has good reasons for his statement. Fincham was speaking at a talk co-hosted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and Oxford Media Society at green templeton College , November 11, 2011.
The rest of his talk reveals not only the unpredictable nature of the television industry but also the ups and downs of a career in media. His tales are exciting and are certainly worth a listen - it seems that many agree: the packed room in Green Templeton College is testament to his standing in the media sector.
Fincham draws on his experiences of a varied career to enlighten his audience about. His application for a research position in the Late, Late Breakfast show in the BBC was not successful. He tells us that he was rejected for not being “populist” enough (or in his own words, he had too much of an “Oxbridge-y air about him”). While success may have arrived late in the day for Fincham, when it did eventually come, it did so in grand proportions.
He started out as a producer of the fledgling independent production company TalkBack in 1985, and eventually sold it in 2000 in a £62m deal. He was surprised when he was asked to be Controller of the BBC in 2005: “The BBC is an organisation of insiders” and he was an “outsider”. “I didn’t work my way up in conventional television at all”, he said.
Fincham believes TV journalism is imperative given the industry’s high levels of regulation and its impartiality. When he poses the rhetorical question, “Do we want the biggest national channels to have a duty of impartiality? the answer is a resounding “Yes”. As a strategist, reveals that British audiences want wholly British productions, hence the appeal of Downton Abbey and other programmes.
What of the future of television? Even though he has heard ominous predictions of TV viewing increasingly becoming ‘time-shifted’, i.e. being watched on Sky+ or TiVos, he believes that it won’t undermine the commercial underpinning of TV. TV has a “great future” ahead of it, and any issues that do arise will have solutions. In fact, he suggests an increase in live event programming in response to this rise in time-shifting viewing. While we don’t find out which programmes Fincham would cut if he had the ultimate choice, we do learn that he thinks The Apprentice, which he worked on under TalkBack, has “turned into a fantastic show”.
Finally, his advice to students thinking of embarking on a career in media is to keep knocking on doors. There is “a lot of demand for television”, with “far more output than twenty years ago”. You just need to “get through that door”. He was involved in making his first TV programme when he was 32 years old; you shouldn’t expect to be producing “the year after you graduate”.
Overall, Fincham delivers a fascinating talk, and the audience leaves having learnt something about both the television industry and the vicissitudes of a life in media.
The next Media Society event comes up November 17, 2011 with Guy Black, the Executive Director of the Telegraph Group at 8pm in Lecture Room A, Queen’s College.
