Unwritten rules aren't worth the paper they're (not) written on.


And they can still do that by putting their own formats and ideas out for tender. The rules don't require them to "buy-in" programming.

It is an agreement based on trust, an old-fashioned "gentleman's agreement".

However the consequence of this is future agreements are going to be nailed down as hard as possible and will become much more onerous for everyone.

Obviously not many 'gentlemen' at either Love or Channel 4.

Obviously not. At C4 it's a very ungentle, vengeful woman!

Though that kind of ties the independent Producer into staying with the first broadcaster, in an ideal world the first broadcaster will be fair and pay the going rate for the show, but a contract that ties the show to staying with the first broadcaster gives carte blanche to treat the production company unfailry

A contract should have an end point and after that end point a new contract needs to be agreed. If the BBC/ITV/CH4/Sky ...etc. don't want shows walking away from them then they need to sign longer contracts and take a greater risk on the show failing

No real need for a gentleman's agreement when you've got a legally binding written contract in place.

The agreement/contract was "nailed down hard", however that contract has ended and there is now a new contract with someone else to show it in the future.

There has been no breach of trust, no breach of contract and no breach of any gentleman's agreements - even if they did exist.

The conversation I was replying to was that there "has always been an unwritten rule that a programme stays with the original broadcaster until the broadcaster decides they no longer want it", such an unwritten rule would have been a gentleman's agreement.

Now, such "unwritten" agreements will cease to exist and everything will be"nailed down hard" and I have not suggested there has been a breach of contract in any of my posts on this thread.

Apologies, I read your use of "... future agreements are going to be..." and indeed "Now, such agreements..." as an implication that you thought some trust had been broken and from now on the agreement would be written down in detail to stop that, wheras I was mentioning that such agreements would have been replaced with pretty detailed contracts a long time ago anyway.

However were, in this instance, Love Productions treated "unfairly"? After all, the BBC were prepared to pay a significant increase above the price paid for the previous contract.

http://www.express.co.uk/comment/exp...-Neela-Debnath

Maybe they're not, but until this summer when Love decided to be greedy, it has always worked and all the indies and broadcasters were happy working that way. The trust they had with broadcasters has been trampled on and killed.

We live in such nasty times when greed takes precedent.

Hear hear, great post.

The Voice.

Which the BBC originally got for £10m less than ITV bid; because the producers thought that ITV bought it only to bury it so it wouldn't go up against TXF or BGT.

A claim which makes no sense for at least two reasons (why would any production company accept £10 million less, and why would ITV buy a programme for the purposes of "burying" it?), and for which there has never been a shred of actual proof. Yet it gets trotted out on these forums as a definitive fact without fail.

I wonder what the theory is now, is ITV still planning to bury it so it doesn't go up against X Factor or BGT?

The production company would accept less if they thought it would do better in other markets or other ways.

For example IIRC the head guys at Studio Ghibli (probably the best known Japanese anime film company) flat out refused to licence their works in the English speaking world for a number of years because they didn't trust how it would be handled (after a couple of their early films were butchered by poor editing), and it was only the fact that Miyazaki got to know and trust one of the top guy sat Pixar that led to their eventual release.
That decision would have cost he production company tens of millions in the intervening years, but kept the artistic intent of the content intact.

Companies don't just look at the money they could get now, they look at how it will affect their image, how the company they're looking to work with will handle the product and if it's going to affect them in other markets.


ITV could potentially have bought the rights and simply done the production on the cheap, shown it at poor hours, or mucked around with the showtime and format.
This is not unknown in commercial TV, as if you can buy up the rights for something that might compete with one of your big shows and either kill it, or keep it small it can work out in your favour financially. For example if ITV thought they would lose more than the cost of buying the show and doing a halfhearted effort if another broadcaster owned it, it would make sense financially to buy it (if it costs 25 million to buy the show and kill it, but they are facing a loss in advertising of 30 million if it's on a competing channel, you try buy it).

It's rather like the way the supermarkets were buying up land where they could put a new store even if they didn't have any plans to do so, by buying the land they stopped their competitors from getting those spots.
It's money down the drain in the short term, but it makes it harder for someone else to make money at their expense in the longer term.

All well and good, but in this instance the TV programme was The Voice, and the two interested parties were BBC1 and ITV, the two most watched UK TV channels. ITV already had a track record of having great success with a show remarkably similar to The Voice, ie X Factor. Because there were already various international versions of The Voice, there wasn't likely to be much if any overseas market for the UK version.

The suggestion that ITV would buy the show and then produce it cheaply (or do anything else to hold back its success) seems counter-intuitive. If anything, they have more of an interest in it being popular with viewers than the BBC because their revenue depends on its popularity, the BBC's doesn't.

The claim that the owners of The Voice format chose to accept £10 million less from BBC than ITV offered makes no sense. It didn't at the time, and it doesn't today.

Reported here. Okay, it's not "proof" I guess. But then no-one outside of the BBC or ITV would probably ever know for sure


In a similar way, Sky usually buy both the Pay and FTA rights for all their US imports so no other channel can ever show them; but don't ever use the FTA rights, (Unless it's on Pick 5 years later.)


A possible explanation has been offered. That you don't accept it does not make it any less possible.

Agreed. A reference in a Digital Spy article beginning with "Apparently" isn't exactly convincing. Endemol presumably knows as well.


That's not a particularly relevant argument to the case at hand. Sky keep the majority of the US shows they buy on Pay TV only because they know if they make them available FTA then fewer people will subscribe to Sky.


Common sense makes it less plausible. The original assertion, from a supposed "BBC source", would of course make the BBC look better in that a) they bid less than ITV and b) despite that, Endemol, despite being a profits-driven company, would accept £10 million to have the programme on the BBC.

Bringing this back to Bake Off, despite the programme 100% certainly getting significantly better viewing figures on BBC than it will on Channel 4, the Production Company chose to go with the higher bid. What a shocker, TV production companies are interested in making as much money as possible.

I heard that other broadcasters have offered the All-England Lawn Tennis Association more than the BBC offers for the rights to televise Wimbledon - but the rights owners stick with the BBC because they believe it's best for the sport. If it moved to another channel there's a good chance the event would lose its high profile.

Wasn't there also a rumour that ITV were thinking of buying the UK rights for The Voice just so they could use the spinning chair idea as a first audition round for a revamped X Factor?

Though you should also note that Ghbli has been suspended because it ran out of money.

Does anyone seriously think there is a shred of truth to that rumour? That makes even less sense than "ITV wanted to pay £20+ million for the rights to The Voice so they could assure its failure".

For starters, I doubt very much The Voice could obtain a patent, trademark or any other intellectual property right over spinning chairs on a TV programme, so only a moron would think they'd have to buy the rights to The Voice in order to be allowed to spin the chairs on X Factor.

How desperate would it look if the X Factor producers decided, "I know, let's have spinning chairs, no one will ever guess where we got that idea from"?

Well, i guess stranger things have happened. Jay Hunt buying TGBBO without any of the talent attached for one.

Has it?

IIRC they've suspended production operations because the staff have either retired, or moved on to other companies whilst they have no in house projects, a situation that is very common in Anime production, and Ghibli was unusual in that it did normally retain more than just the core staff as it did so much in house and had projects on the go all the time..

The time when they stopped licensing in English language regions ended about 15 years ago from memory, I believe Princess Mononoke was the first of the releases under their then new distribution deal, and they're still in business and making a lot of money from existing properties.

So the end in active production certainly isn't related to that decision to not do licencing 20-25 years ago (given they had many of their biggest hits after they started licencing again).