Exclusive Interview: Jeff Ford

December 14, 2010 World Screen
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Channel 5’s Jeff Ford

 

After being part of the RTL Group for years, Channel 5 Broadcasting Limited in the U.K. was purchased by Northern & Shell in August 2010. A major British publishing company, owned by Richard Desmond, whose magazines and newspapers include OK!, the Daily Express, the Daily Star and Star! Magazine, Northern & Shell also has interests in television, print, distribution, investment and property. Jeff Ford, the director of programs at Channel 5, talks about keeping the best of Five and its digital channels Five USA and Fiver, while working with the new owner to develop more celebrity-led shows that target a young demographic.
 
WS: With the new ownership, do you have more money to invest in programming?
FORD: There is more money in the budget. Richard [Desmond] has made it quite clear he wants to invest in the schedule, and he as even given examples of the scale and ambition of the shows he would like on the channel, shows like The X Factor and Coronation Street—not those exact ones, but shows of the same scale.
 
WS: Will acquisitions still play an important role in the schedule?
FORD: Yes, Channel 5 is known for its acquisitions. We do have the best drama shows and fantastic films and that will continue. We are known very well among the public for those and they are very, very successful.
 
WS: And you have a number of hit U.S shows. Whether they air on Five or on one of the digital channels, you have CSI, Law & Order NCIS and House. Will you continue to go after those important American series?
FORD: We also have The Mentalist and last year we had probably the biggest hit in terms of international TV, which was FlashForward. We are looking to continue to buy that very well-known straightforward precinct drama, but we are also looking to expand more into the 16-34 demographic, like we did with FlashForward. So we are looking to do that with new shows this year.
 
WS: Are there any shows you bought at the L.A. Screenings that you haven’t aired yet?
FORD: No, I think the Screenings were one of the worst I’ve seen in some time. There were a few great shows there, of course, as there always are, but on the whole I was disappointed. I read a lot of pieces in the press about European companies saying how great the Screenings were, but I thought it was a pretty poor offering this year.
 
We are in the process of discussion on a couple of shows for the main channel but we are not quite there yet.
 
WS: Do you have volume deals with any of the studios?
FORD: No, volume deals are a thing of the past.
 
WS: Under new ownership will your digital channels, Five USA and Fiver, continue to target the same audiences?
FORD: Yes, Five USA is a cinematic quality station that has some of the big shows we already mentioned plus others like Justified and Sons of Anarchy, which are brilliant and beautiful pieces to have. We try to aim a little more upmarket if we can. And Fiver is still very much a 16-34 channel, have great comedies like Archer, which worked very well for us. So there is a very big difference between the two channels and what they offer.
 
WS: Tell me about your catch-up TV services; are they quite popular?
FORD: Yes, for us they are part of our broadcast offering certainly on series and to a lesser extent on movies, although we’re looking to change that. If you have a series you do need to have some sort of catch-up rights, everybody has that now and it’s part of the broadcast rights that we always request.
 
WS: So the studios work with you on that, when you buy a show for your linear channel they give you the catch-up rights automatically?
FORD: They do, obviously there is a discussion, but to be perfectly honest they do. Most of the studios are broadcasters as well and they do exactly the same to the producers of the programs that they own or commission, [they also ask for] the catch-up rights. These days it’s part of the broadcast function that you offer a period of time after [a show originally airs] for people to catch-up.
 
WS: It’s incremental viewing.
FORD: Yes, exactly so you can get more viewers into the program. If it is a serial, you can get more people to watch episode two because if they can catch up on episode one it means that they are not out of the loop and they can continue to enjoy the show. That’s really part of what we are trying to do—to actually make the show more successful.
 
WS: What are some of the major issues affecting the British TV market?
FORD: There are a lot. [Rupert] Murdoch in one way, with the Living channels going into the Sky family, it’s creating a big 800-pound gorilla. I think it might be the 1,000-pound gorilla! We’ve got the BBC as well. That is the other 800-pound gorilla. I think there is still a lot of uncertainty about the quality of programming. There is still uncertainty about finances and how broadcasters can pay [for programming] because although advertising is coming back, budgets are still not what they were a few years ago, so there is still pressure on broadcasters to create a schedule that is ambitious but one that they can afford.
 
WS: Where would you like to see Five in the next 12 to 18 months?
FORD: My vision is a for a Five much more joined with Northern & Shell’s newspapers and magazines to really see how we can work together to create a better environment for programming. In terms of our program strategy, we are not really changing it hugely. Nothing is going to be thrown away, we are going to keep the schedule as it is, but we are going to develop more of the celebrity-led or observational documentaries, or certainly look at popular culture or reality, which is more suited to a 16-34 audience. Not everywhere because we have huge shows in Cowboy Builders and The Hotel Inspector and all our dramas. It’s about adding a little bit of a twist to what Five has been doing and the audience already expects us to do because we have a lot of shows that have celebrities, whether it’s Extreme Fishing with Robson Green or Rory and Paddy. We have celebrity programming already, it’s just giving it a younger twist.


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