Originally Posted by Score:
“It's a bloodbath over at ITV! Steve November better watch his back, he's the only major department he's still standing.
Not surprising really. ITV factual has been a disaster. A few okay raters surrounded by a pile of flops.
Interestingly one of his biggest commissions in a while, Life at The Extreme is yet to air and, as I mentioned this morning, looks to have been handed a plum Monday slot. If that one bombs then he really has been a disaster.”
This Broadcast story says it all. Looks like it was more ITV's decision than Klein's. Fincham wanted Klein to broaden ITV's factual but the problem is the ITV audience are set in their ways and he didn't do enough to appeal to them.
http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/news/i...ontentID=42816
Quote:
“ITV parts company with Richard Klein
ITV has parted company with director of factual Richard Klein after two-and-a-half years.
The former BBC4 controller is thought to have left in abrupt circumstances following Kevin Lygo’s appointment as ITV director of television.
Broadcast understands that after initially struggling to contact Klein to agree his departure deal, a line of communication is now open. “He left the building and couldn’t be contacted,” said a source close to the situation.
Klein joined in summer 2013 after nearly four-and-a-half years as the boss of BBC4 and was given the freedom to take risks with ITV’s factual slate by former director of television Peter Fincham.
But Klein struggled to get to grips with his task, with producers claiming he failed to understand ITV’s heartland audience and that there were confusing messages about the types of shows his department wanted.
Problematic programmes have included The Wonder Of Britain, the Julia Bradbury series which was rested midway through its run last year, and more recently Saved. The latter could only manage a consolidated audience of 1.5m (5.3%) at 9pm last month.
It has proved difficult to identify a returnable factual brand on the scale of Long Lost Family and even bankable celebrity travelogues have not performed as well as in the past.
But there have been some high points during his tenure. The Mafia with Trevor McDonald pulled in up to 5.5m viewers last year, while The Sugar Free Farm has performed well in recent weeks.
Defending his record at the Edinburgh International Television Festival last year, Klein said ITV was competing with hundreds of channels which place greater emphasis on factual content. “The question about what is success in factual is a big and interesting question,” he told delegates.”
: 0.52m (2.4%)”
