Richard Woolfe

World Screen Weekly, August 30, 2007

Director of Programs

Sky One, Two and Three, BSkyB

As the director of programs for British satellite platform BSkyB’s entertainment services Sky One, Two and Three, Richard Woolfe is today among the most important executives in the U.K. television landscape. Getting into the business, though, was no easy feat back when there were only three channels in Britain. “It was very much a closed-shop affair and I tried to get in and I wrote lots of letters and kept getting rejections.” He says he received 106, “which I still have,” he quips.

Woolfe finally broke into the entertainment business with a stint at a radio station where “I used to take the producers cigarettes from the news agent and get the LPs out of the library,” he says. He eventually landed a job on the show That’s Life as a researcher, soon becoming a producer and going on to work on a host of other entertainment shows for various British broadcasters. After several years, Woolfe decided he wanted to take a stab at actually running a channel and got a job at the pay-TV entertainment outlet LIVING. After some four years there, where he led the network’s turnaround and made it one of the most successful pay-TV offerings in the U.K., Woolfe jumped at the chance to put his imprint on Sky’s entertainment offerings last year.

Of his tenure at Sky so far, Woolfe says he is most pleased about giving the channels he oversees an “absolutely clear, defined strategy. Everyone is on the same page, everyone knows we’re all about entertainment. We were a very disparate bunch when I first joined.”

Sky One is the flagship brand for BSkyB and it is maintaining that role in part with sought-after, high-profile American dramas. The channel has an office in Los Angeles, enabling it to keep an eye on developments in the U.S. market and develop solid relationships with the Hollywood studios. “We have a presence in the studios, on the sets. The agents know us, the talent knows us, the writers and the producers know us, and they also can see that we love our American shows, they’re a very important part of our strategy. [The studios] know how much we nurture our programming. We get fantastic access, over and beyond what I’ve ever had before at other broadcasters.”

That access is key, Woolfe says, for developing compelling marketing campaigns in order to generate awareness of shows and deliver audiences. “The key phrase we all talk about is, ‘How do we add value to this great programming?’ For 24 we did this CTU agent game, which was a really multimedia experience using mobile phones and website and computer technology. To get permission to do that from [Twentieth Century Fox meant] they put a lot of trust in us. [Disney-ABC International Television] knows how much we have nurtured and loved Lost since we brought it to Sky. I’m absolutely thrilled at the way we have taken ownership of that brand. That’s really critical. We’re in a very crowded marketplace in the U.K. and if our shows are going to work, we need our viewers to know about them.”

While American acquisitions are key, local content has also been important for Sky, and the broadcaster has taken on several formats of late, including two from Reveille: Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? and Nothing But the Truth. Drama is also a priority, Woolfe says, particularly following the success of Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather. “It’s Britain’s biggest ever digital commission in terms of ratings, at 2.8 million. It also won a BAFTA for us and many other awards. It marked a real turning point for us at Sky. [It demonstrated that] we’re not doing low-cost, high volume [content], we’re doing real quality drama and that show was led by an all-star cast and I think people were absolutely gobsmacked that A) we did it so well and B) that so many viewers came through.”

Sky has since commissioned The Colour of Money, another Pratchett adaptation. “We’re in development with some other dramas at the moment,” Woolfe says. As part of that initiative, Woolfe says that Sky is certainly looking at co-productions, particularly with American networks. “In a time of challenged budgets you have to find ways to make your money go further. We operate with a very open policy: we’ll find any ways to make shows happen.”

—By Mansha Daswani