Exclusive Interview: ITV’s Kevin Lygo

PREMIUM: Kevin Lygo tells World Screen about what the priorities have been in his first year as ITV’s director of television.

WS: What have your priorities been in your first year as ITV’s director of television?
LYGO: The first thing you’ve got to get right is the team of people around you. You’re going to fail miserably if you’re not all on the same page. So it’s been a year of changing teams, refreshing key roles, a lot of new commissioning editors coming in, a change in the scheduling/strategy team. A lot of time and effort has been invested in that, and we’re there now. I’m thrilled with the new team around us. We’re all eagerly getting on with 2017 and beyond.

WS: Were there parts of the schedule or genres that you felt needed particular attention?
LYGO: We’re in a good place to make some changes this year because the bedrock is solid. The performance of our daytime is very strong. It had been an issue in the past, but our morning show is performing well now. That affords us a kind of security blanket to try a few things that are a bit riskier. The soaps that we rely on are ever more important, and I’ve made it a focus to resource them more heavily and treat them like the crown jewels that they are. Later this year we’re introducing an extra episode of Coronation Street. We had to treat it very carefully and make sure that everybody, from the cast to the writers to the producers, is happy. We’ve spent over a year preparing to get that episode so it seamlessly arrives and sits there forever. Our Saturday nights are very strong. The Voice was the first big new thing this year and that started strongly for us, we’re delighted with how it’s performing. That will shortly be followed by The Voice Kids, which has not been done in the U.K. before, so we’re hopeful with that.

WS: What are some of the other new things you’re trying?
LYGO: Though it may not sound that radical, buying Lethal Weapon from Warner Bros. and trying that in ITV peak time for 18 weeks is quite a risk. It’s been nearly a decade since an American show was played in a proper peak-time slot. It is quite risky, but I want to do it because I love American programming and I think it’s terribly accessible for a mainstream audience. And it brings a glamor and production value and a cultural difference and an attitude from American TV that will feel fresh on ITV. So the hope is that it feels new but at the same time appropriate for our schedule. We’re launching The Nightly Show every weekday at 10 o’clock. It’s a half-hour talk/entertainment show, with a different host each week. It’s an eight-week experiment that we’re excited about. The real intention is that it lifts the channel in the mind of the viewer and to a certain extent the advertiser that we’re still an entertainment destination until 10:30 p.m. when our news will find a regular place. In a way, The Nightly Show and the news are umbilically linked because I need both of them to perform well to feel like it’s been a success. I find it frustrating that we’re directly against the BBC One news every night. There’s hope that at 10:30 we might even go up because we’re not directly against the bigger competition. So we’re very excited about what that 10 to 11 o’clock hour might be able to do now. If you imagine the night that Lethal Weapon plays, it’s going to be Lethal Weapon into The Nightly Show with a big star presenting it and then the news at 10:30 and suddenly whoops it’s 11 o’clock I should be in bed right now! I think it’s quite a different feel for the channel, one of confident entertainment.

WS: Netflix and Amazon are in an increasing number of U.K. homes and are starting to commission drama out of the U.K. Does your strategy change as the market becomes more competitive?
LYGO: As a TV viewer, I’m glad Netflix is here. It’s proper competition, but it doesn’t eat into our main source of income—advertising. It’s a good healthy thing to have. It’s a bit like the competition we’ve always had with the BBC. But I think we do need to realize that when there’s something of a particular nature, and that tends to be drama, with a cliffhanger ending, [people want to binge watch]. It does make us feel, are we scheduling our thrillers once a week in the same slot in the right way? There’s something very satisfying as a viewer to watch three or four episodes in a row when you want. We need to work out how we do that. Some of that is how we schedule, some of that is how we commission and what we commission, and are we doing exactly the right thing for what we have. I don’t think it affects at least half of what we do, which is traditional high-quality episode-ending dramas—Midsomer Murders, Vera, Endeavour. We’ve got some on at the moment, and they’re doing exactly what they always do. I don’t think it affects something like Victoria or Cold Feet or The Durrells, which are warm, good shows that you’re happy to watch on a weekly basis but you’re not desperate to watch the next episode straight away like you would for a thriller. We can’t ignore [the OTT platforms]. They’re not biting into our viewing heavily, but our antenna is twitching about the way they’re offering [content]. We have to be honest that it’s glorious to watch a bunch of episodes until you’ve got to go to bed.

WS: How much viewing is taking place on the ITV Player and what’s resonating particularly well on an on-demand basis?
LYGO: It’s growing. We’re very happy with the performance technically—it never crashes, it always delivers when it says it will. You take all that stuff for granted once it’s there. But it wasn’t always like that. It used to stick, it used to crash. Now it’s a really efficient technical service. The uptake is dramatic, and it’s growing faster than the BBC iPlayer and Channel 4 [on demand] are growing. It’s from a lower base and all that, but it is attracting a lot more people and certainly the ever-elusive 16 to 34s. Over 50 percent of all 16 to 24s in the country have registered to use the Hub [ITV’s online destination for on-demand, catch-up and live streaming]. That’s a big thing for us. The types of shows that are most watched are ones that are deliberately younger skewed. For example, we had a big hit on ITV2 with Love Island, a big, brassy, fun reality show that we ran in the summer. Much of its effect was felt on the Hub. It averaged around 1.3 million viewers consolidated, but also around 1 million requests per episode on the ITV Hub. It was incredibly strong for 16 to 34s. So you can see how [linear and online] can work in tandem.

The old-fashioned way [for viewing] was, BBC One had a good drama at 9 o’clock, and we had a good drama at 9 o’clock, so you made a choice on that night and you’d watch one. But you’re now more inclined to record the other one and catch-up and watch it later. So you get around a 20-percent [ratings] increase over the course of a week. And this year with some of our dramas it’s a bit more. Again, what does that mean about the way we schedule? What type of drama does this most affect? Everybody is thinking this through at the moment. Of course, because your dramas take a year to deliver, you’re making judgments quite well in advance of the reality. But at the moment it just means more people are spending more time with ITV.

WS: Tell us about your deal with AwesomenessTV for a block on ITV2 targeting millennial audiences.
LYGO: All the mainstream broadcasters are mindful of what 16- to 34-year-olds are doing. They are the most tricky to get ahold of when you want to get ahold of them. They’re still watching a hell of a lot of TV—on tablets and phones and at different times of the day. Awesomeness was a way to combine both our studio ambitions and our network ambitions here for attracting 16 to 34s. American shows when they’re good are sometimes the best way of getting younger viewers. It doesn’t really matter what it gets on a linear overnight viewing. It’s how is it affecting viewers on the Hub over time? Are we attracting more 16- to 34-year-olds to come and watch the channel and be familiar with ITV and associate younger-skewing brands with ITV? It’s a good experiment to test the waters with that.

WS: What’s the thought process that goes into bringing back successful franchises like Cold Feet and Prime Suspect?
LYGO: I suppose the first thing that was done was Endeavour, the prequel to Morse. It was an original, fresh, clever idea. And that’s what we’ve done with Prime Suspect. We’re calling it Prime Suspect 1973. It’s Tennison’s first day in the job. With Cold Feet, it was born out of a slight frustration that these non-genre-based shows, so not crime, not thriller, are so hard to get traction on. With Cold Feet, everybody has their own fond memory of the series. It was a way of getting a relationship drama, if you like, on air with a head start. Because the cast were all up for doing it, that was interesting in itself. The writer had the good idea of not reinventing it—but it’s been 13 years since we last saw them, what have they been up to?

WS: What goes into keeping your long established entertainment brands like Got Talent fresh every season?
LYGO: With the great big shows like X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent and I’m a Celebrity, there is absolute evidence that they can run and run and run. It’s so rare to find shows that get massive audiences. The job of the broadcaster and the producer now is to very carefully think, How can we keep this show on air? It’s not, Oh God, shall we do one more series and then out? Invariably whatever you replace it with doesn’t do quite as well. Even though they may be lower rating than they were in their peak, they’re still monstrously big shows. The way I organized the commissioning team, we have people whose job it is to be utterly focused on reenergizing and keeping fresh the old shows that audiences love. That’s what we’ve done with the big returners. It’s a challenge, there’s no doubt about it, because so many similar talent-based shows are on now and these shows are ten years old. But if we weren’t happy with them they wouldn’t be on. So it’s a nice challenge. They’re still doing better than most things, so it’s absolutely as important to try and reinvent them and refresh them as it is to find new shows.

WS: Are you happy with the current ratings system in place in the U.K.? Are there areas where you wish you had better viewing data?
LYGO: It’s a gold standard, so we have to accept what we’re given. You can see that around 86 percent is still live viewing. The overnights are still a drug. I don’t think we’re quite as addicted as we used to be. You can see that dramas particularly do increase by quite a significant number [in catch-up]. As a broadcaster we need to be clear with ourselves and then communicate outwards, does it matter if a viewer is overnight or on the catch-up systems? There are all different ways you can catch up. Does it matter if it’s later that night or seven days later or 30 days later? I think we’re all struggling a bit to be sure of what we prefer. If we could get them all in one night, overnight, would we like that? I think we would probably still say yes. But the devil is in the detail of how we monetize these viewers. In the old days you got everybody in one night and then everybody would be talking about [the show]. Now that you spread audiences over a longer period, not everybody is talking about it, but they’ll get there eventually. And we need to balance the two.