Originally Posted by Steve Williams:
“Where are these half hour quizzes and sitcoms? They've barely enough sitcoms to do one a week, let alone a couple. And as we know, Watchdog and Rogue Traders used to be individual half hour programmes, now it's one hour long programme, so the difference in hours on screen is totally negligible (especially as Watchdog used to be more or less all year round).
Don't buy at all the suggestion people are not wacthing things on Thursdays because they're Thursdays. People watch programmes, not days. Nobody can remember what was on last Thursday, or the Thursday before that.”
They don't have them because they don't make them Steve. It is why BBC1 pre-watershef comedy has been in the toilet for so long.
Rogue Traders should be spun back out as a half hour series where it was successful. Put it in the 8.30pm, Emmerdale free half hour. Thursday is a dead day because there is a lot of shit on. When rubbish is on you stay away from the day generally. This is what is happening now.
Quote:
“That was absolutely their idea, Sky have always wanted a British HBO. They nearly did it at the turn of the century when they were planning to turn Sky Premier into a British HBO because they commissioned Harry Enfield's dreadful Sky show and Baddiel's Syndrome for Sky Premier and they were definitely going to put lots more home made shows on it, and they started commissioning films their own films (I think it only got as far as one, this one - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tube_Tales). But in the end they chickened out and showed all the British content on Sky One, I think they realised not enough people would want to pay for it.
Seemingly the idea is that Sky Atlantic is the posh one, Sky One is the brash family one and Sky Living is the feamle one, but then they've specifically gone out of their way to say Sky Living isn't female skewing, but unfortunately they haven't said what it is instead. So nobody knows.
But Sky have always done this, they always talk about things in the most generic terms. If you read Morning Glory by Ian Jones he talks about when they were launching RI:SE, which was a Sky production, and all the way up to the launch they never said what was actually going to happen on the programme or why people should watch. When it started, guess what, nothing happened on it, and nobody knew why they should bother watching. This has always been the Sky way. So they say Sky Atlantic isn't just about US imports, but they never say what it actually is about. They're just more concerned with creating an image about it being aspirational and classy. So they wouldn't do a sitcom with a studio audience, for example, because that wouldn't be the Sky way, it doesn't fit the image. They don't know what they want, but they know what they don't want.
Sky are so desperate to be HBO, even the "Sky original programme" ident you now get before the original content is a blatant steal from HBO. But the question is whether the HBO concept will ever work in Britain. I would suggest, it probably won't. The main reason why HBO is so renowned in America is because the networks are so conservative so going on HBO allows you to be creative, to swear and so on. We don't need that in the UK because you can do all that on terrestrial telly. If you couldn't swear on the BBC, there may be a need for a HBO-style network, but you can, so that's one USP out the window.
So what you're left with is some programming that may as well be on the Beeb on Channel Four. Has anything on Sky Atlantic been stuff you couldn't see on any other channel? Not really. I know Chris Chibnall said they were thinking of approaching Sky Atlantic with Broadchurch because they thought it might be the kind of thing they were after. The fact they eventually did it on primetime ITV tells you all you need to know, really, about the need for Sky Atlantic. If primetime ITV are willing to commission shows like that, what else can Sky Atlantic offer? The rest of the stuff seems in many cases to be retreads of Gavin and Stacey or Cold Feet, to be honest.
Also as well HBO shows loads of films and sport which I'm guessing the vast majority of people subscribe for. And it's no wonder, because if you subscribe to Sky Sports, you know you're going to get X hours of the sport you're interested in. If you subscribe to a channel for drama, what if you don't like any of the dramas they show?”
Most people want Sky for the sport, but they haven't got that massive breakout scripted success that makes you want to subscribe to see that. It's difficult for Sky to make drama nobody else can because unlike America, channels here make dramas with challenging content. That is the USP of cable/satellite in America. They can push the envelope in a way network TV can't. In Britain every main channel can push the envelope post watershed.
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BBC one January /February 2005!
