Exclusive Interview: ITV Studios’ Kevin Lygo

September 1, 2011 World Screen

PREMIUM: Kevin Lygo, the managing director of ITV Studios, tells World Screen Newsflash about executing on his clear mandate at the British broadcasting group: make sure home-grown programs remain at the heart of ITV’s schedule, attract the best talent on and off the screen, and develop programming that can be sold worldwide.

 

WS: ITV Studios sold Prime Suspect to NBC. That was an important deal, was it not?
LYGO: Yes, it’s incredibly exciting, first, to be making an American prime-time network drama, and secondly, Prime Suspect was one of our beloved brands from the past. We’ve got a lot of expertise and tradition in this area with our stable of detectives, from Poirot and Miss Marple [to] Inspector Morse, that are known around the world. So to take Prime Suspect into the modern age with people like director Peter Berg and actor Maria Bello is very exciting.
 
ITV Studios Global Entertainment [ITV’s international-distribution arm] is serious about backing and getting big glamorous material and we’ve never had a U.S. procedural prime-time network drama on our slate before.
 
WS: Tell us about Simon Cowell’s new show Red or Black. How is your arrangement with Cowell’s production company SYCO different with Red or Black than it was with The X Factor?
LYGO: This was a priority for us when I arrived, that we become a very attractive partner for people who have really great ideas and are at the top of their game. ITV airs both The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent, which are two of our biggest entertainment shows, but they are not made by ITV Studios, so we get no revenues from back end or international distribution.
 
So we talked to Simon Cowell and his team about what we could bring to the idea and how we could work productively together. We were chosen to partner with SYCO and SYCO and ITV Studios made Red or Black first here in the U.K. It aired in September stripped across seven nights. It’s a big 90-minute show. It’s a family [show, a] fun, big game based essentially on luck. You start with as many people as you can, in our case 7,000 people, and you get them down to one person at the end of the show, who may or may not win one million pounds.
 
There is enormous interest in Red or Black around the world, and America in particular. We’re looking at what would be the best place to make it in the U.S. It is a very big, ambitious show, as you would expect from Simon Cowell.
 
WS: Tell us about Titanic, which is a big event with international co-financing partners. Do you plan to do other international co-productions?
LYGO: Yes. ITV had worked with Julian Fellowes in the past, because Downton Abbey [which Fellowes also created] is on ITV. Titanic was the next thing he was very interested in doing. So we jumped in. It’s a very expensive project and we needed a lot of co-production partners, but we have found people very receptive to it. We had a combination of a really well-established writer like Julian, ITV Studios as a very well-respected producer of this type of drama and then the ITV network committing early, so we found it not too difficult to bring in partners. ABC came in quite early. There is quite an appetite for this type of high-end event drama. We absolutely intend to do more, but they’re not that easy and you’ve got to find the right combination of elements to make something that international partners all understand and want on their networks.
 
WS: An important element of the Transformation Plan that Adam Crozier has set was strengthening the relationship between ITV and ITV Studios. Has that relationship improved?
LYGO: We’re all sleeping together on the top floor of the building and we find that really helps! [Laughs] No, it obviously had been a bit of an issue here, but I think everyone understands now, on whatever side of the fence they are standing, that the Holy Grail is to create programming together that is successful on ITV and that we can also take around the world. So the concentration of resources, the hiring of new people and a general fresh approach between commissioning and the studio is well under way. These shows that we’ve just mentioned are evidence of how it’s going; I think it’s really good.

WS: You have an important formats business, too. How has that been doing?
LYGO: That’s all part of the entertainment development. One of our most successful international shows is Come Dine with Me, which is on the air in 30 countries now. It’s a very small format and there is something attractive about small formats—almost every territory in the world can make their own version because they are inexpensive to produce and can be made in bulk. Whereas if you take something like I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! we haven’t yet found a way that some of the smaller countries can make it cost-effectively because it just needs such a massive budget. So we are working both ends of the spectrum here. Again, it’s about getting people here, brainstorming, creating an environment where talented people can come up with ideas that you can then take forward. But absolutely, formats are central to what we are about.
 
WS: Money has been made available to ITV Studios to develop and fund pilots and scripts. How has the development process at ITV been? Is it as expensive as it can be in the U.S.?
LYGO: No, I don’t think it is. It is quite expensive but the truth is the expense of scripted programming is simply getting writers to commit. It’s partly about their time and our scripted development team’s time and you don’t want 100 people writing scripts because you would never manage it properly. And many writers get pissed off because you are only going to get 20 things on air, so we’re a bit more targeted. It’s a sniper approach rather than the Gatling gun. Writers write best when they have a relationship with the producer or developer who is working alongside them and so in a three-way split with the network, with our own development team and the writing community in the U.K., so far [our development process] has been working well. It has its own pace because you want to work with the best writers and you have to wait for their availability. Some are slow, some are quick, some do a very fast first draft and an agonizingly slow second one, and so forth. It’s going to take a while, but we are certainly developing many, many scripts at this point and already some have come through. I would say it’s an ongoing process that should deliver us a consistent choice of dramas that we want to make.
 
WS: Is it common to go six or eight episodes once a project gets greenlit?
LYGO: It’s not common. Everybody agrees in theory that it’s the way forward. But I think [everyone’s] still quite cautious and certainly in the development stage you are asking for one script and maybe a second and then really it’s more a network issue, for most dramas, as to how many episodes they want. There are certain types of drama that we are stepping into in a major way that we call a family drama here in the U.K. It’s the type of drama that we play pre-watershed [before 9 p.m.] often on a Saturday or Sunday night. These are series in the tradition of Merlin. Primeval is one that ran successfully on ITV. It is this sort of family drama we are looking into because we’ve got a sense that many countries around the world would appreciate it. Robin Hood would be an example. They are known brands that many countries would like if you can guarantee a quality writer and producer, and can cast it up, and we are looking to do more of these.
 
WS: At Channel 4 you oversaw commissioners; now you are more in a role of having to pitch ideas to networks, whether it be ITV or other ones. What skill set did you have, or have to develop, to wear this new hat?
LYGO: I think falling to my knees and begging. No, obviously because I have had eight million people pitch to me over the years I’ve got an innate sense of what you don’t like and what works more effectively. So I think the skills are pretty similar. I have to say I genuinely haven’t found it difficult and quite enjoy it—when you really believe in something you are happy to pitch it.         


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