Michaela Coel forced the UK TV industry to confront its own flaws
The Edinburgh TV festival is dominated by the MacTaggart Lecture – an annual talk by a prominent figure on the future of the industry. This year it gave the honour to the actor and screenwriter Michaela Coel, a 30-year-old rising star who has only written one major TV series. She used the opportunity to deliver a highly personal and frank account of the struggles involved in breaking into the UK TV industry. Audience members said they were shellshocked after hearing Coel describe how she coped with being sexually assaulted, and top executives pledged to do more to support young creative talent. The real judgment will be whether anything has changed by the time of next year’s event. JW
Everyone wants to know where Netflix, Amazon and YouTube are going next – but it’s hard to find out
The TV festival is still dominated by traditional British broadcasters, with independent production companies queuing up to hear what the people running the likes of BBC One and Channel 4 – who still control massive budgets – want to commission. Industry representatives find it harder to understand what sort of shows the streaming giants are after, given that they never share public viewing figures. Netflix’s Brandon Riegg hinted that while shows such as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy attract online buzz, other less fashionable shows attract similar audiences: “There are many, many shows that do equally well but don’t get spoken about as much from a critical or social media perspective.” JW
Finnish Weird could be the new Nordic Noir
A panel about the new directions for the Scandi TV revolution offered one of the catchiest soundbites of the festival. “We’re weird people doing weird things,” said Ville Vilén, the creative director of the Finnish public service broadcasting company, Yle. As well as next year’s Moomin series with Sky, the country will be delivering what Vilén promises are uniquely Finnish shows with a tonality and feel that are distinct from its Nordic neighbours. It won’t be all woolly jumpers, snow and murders: instead it is focusing on youth programming, taking cues from Norway’s Skam, and hoping to make something that travels beyond its borders. LB
The industry needs to do more about diversity
Paul Coleman, the writer behind Peter Kay’s Car Share, told the festival that the show resonated with audiences because it set out “to show working-class people who were going to a 9-to-5 job”. Channel 4 also attracted unwanted publicity and headlines after being branded “Britain’s poshest broadcaster”, based on the social backgrounds of its employees. But the author of the academic research made clear that the broadcaster was taking this industry-wide issue seriously and had willingly put itself in the line of fire by choosing to provide in-depth data on its staff – unlike other rival channels. JW
Product placement is here to stay
The brains behind Love Island’s product placements and partnerships were on hand to make the case for more of the same. According to them, brands are attempting to “tell stories” with their products, rather than just shoehorning them in whenever possible. That might surprise some who thought that Dani Dyer and her cohort were asked to wear a particular brand of glitter because of a contractual obligation, but purveyors of the practice made the case for embracing it rather than turning up one’s nose. It’s simple maths, they say: instead of having two or three key sponsorship partners, why not use product placement and bag a dozen? LB
Jeremy Corbyn’s proposals for the media industry were greeted with interest – and confusion
A packed-out audience came to listen to the Labour leader discuss his plans to impose a tax on tech firms to subsidise the BBC and force the broadcaster to publish in-depth data on the social backgrounds of its staff. While the TV audience cheered his attacks on the Daily Mail, they were more confused about exactly how his plans for a new Digital Broadcasting Corporation to compete with Netflix would actually work. Senior executives also privately expressed fears about the idea of allowing their own staff to vote for their bosses. Meanwhile, the culture secretary, Jeremy Wright, turned up turned up and gave a perfunctory and largely ignored speech in which he admitted he knew little about the industry, while making vague pledges about the ability of British production companies to easily work in the EU after Brexit. JW
True crime needs to up its game
In a panel featuring true crime specialists such as A&E Network and Investigation Discovery, there was talk about (1) how the success of Netflix shows such as The Staircase and Making a Murderer drive viewers to traditional homes of true crime and (2) there is a need to improve the quality of those specialist offerings. No more cheap reconstructions featuring some strange shadowy figure on a dodgy-looking set; now viewers expect and want high quality production. One of the key differences between the UK and US true crime is the level of exposition. In the UK, viewers expect to know the details of the case, while in the US the “Why Done It” format, which gets into the motives rather than the grizzly details, are more popular. LB
Terrestrial channels with small budgets can still punch above their weight
Channel 5 doesn’t enjoy an enormous budget, with the controller, Ben Frow, telling the festival he pays a relatively paltry £100,000 for an hour of peak-time television, despite it being “almost impossible” to make a show on this budget. Despite this, the channel has become an unexpected success story in recent years thanks to the likes of Can’t Pay? We’ll Take it Away! and a string of behind-the-scenes documentaries on topics ranging from Nando’s to the North York Moors railway. The award comes after Cruising with Jane McDonald won the channel its first Bafta - 21 years after the channel first went on air. JW
