the real Thing

Big Brother Hell is other people, reckoned Sartre. If anyone can be blamed for bringing that particular version of damnation into our living rooms,it is Peter Bazalgette.

Bazalgette directs the creative efforts of Endemol Entertainment UK, a TV production group whose televisual outpourings stretch from the original make-over shows Ground Force and Changing Rooms to that voyeuristic ratings engine Big Brother. These shows have made Endemol a fortune and earned "Baz" his own industry nickname. The most recent shows have - to varying degrees - dragged various nobodies kicking and screaming into the limelight for our pleasure. All of which is summed up by television's phrase de jour, reality TV.

"Not a useful term at all," says Bazalgette. "It's a catch-all phrase which is mainly used by Americans to mean anything that isn't fiction. They even call Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? reality TV." What about Bazalgette's own shows, with their rather unreal premises - such as swapping homes with friends or neighbours or locking up 10 people in a camera-lined prefab? "The premises might be totally artificial but what flows from them is where the reality comes in," he argues.

This blurry nature of TV genres these days is a trend that Bazalgette finds exciting. In days of old, everything was compartmentalised, he says. Sitcom was Dad's Army; light entertainment was The Black And White Minstrels; and soap was Corrie. "Now we have things like The Royle Family," he says. "Sitcom, drama or Pinter play? It means people are being more inventive and breaking down the barriers."

Whatever reality TV means, it's obvious that it is taking over the schedules, ousting frail sitcoms, pricey dramas and once-fashionable docusoaps from their prime-time slots. A recent industry survey noted that, last season, there was a 10% drop in the number of new shows being launched in Europe, the United States and Australia - and suggested that this was largely down to real-life soaps hogging the grid.

Bazalgette's explanation for reality's hegemony is short: "Ratings." For TV commissioners, who are generally quite timorous at heart, reality shows mean they can combine the pulling power of a locally made show with the low-risk option of a programme formula that has been tried and tested overseas - as in the case of Big Brother, Survivor, Popstars and Temptation Island.

Given Big Brother's success on Channel 4, it will come as no surprise that Bazalgette's team is busy developing new reality formats with which to thrill us. "We're learning the multimedia lessons of Big Brother and applying them to other genres," he explains. These lessons mean spreading the concepts of series over as many media outlets as possible. Bazalgette lists those of Big Brother: an edited TV series; streaming on the web; nocturnal live coverage on E4; SMS text messaging; phone voting; and radio bulletins. "There'll also be a VHS and a book," adds Bazalgette. A total of eight revenue steams.

Currently shooting in Scotland - and boosting ratings on teen channel Trouble - is Cruel Summer, a show from Endemol-owned Brighter Pictures. It has 12 teens holed up in a Highland castle, competing for cash by undertaking unsavoury challenges suggested by the viewers via e-mail. So far, there has been worm eating and bathing nude in a bathtub full of live lobsters.

Another format, this time from Endemol-owned Initial, sees the reality genre mutating further - towards sport. "In The People's Club, we allow fans of a football team to actually run the club." This interactive docusoap, which has yet to find a broadcaster or a willing club, entails some Division Two or Three squad handing over the reins to, presumably, fan and non-fan alike, who vote on various management decisions via e-mail, remote and text messaging.

Currently before the cameras for E4 is Bar Wars, another Initial format that sees two teams - female versus male - running rival bars on a Greek island.

The list goes on: Fear Factor and Spy TV, currently shoring up Stateside network NBC's Monday-night reality block; and Shafted, a studio quiz that Bazalgette is engineering to grace UK screens soon.

Outside Endemol, the reality genre is evolving further into other areas, such as travel. In Pearson Television's The Great Adventure, globetrotting teams interact with viewers to complete various explorations. The simple talent show/elimination game-show idea on which ITV's Popstars was built is already seeing a retread for identical series about models, bands and DJs.

Some reality formats even involve members of the public becoming involved, perhaps unwittingly, in semi-scripted dramas or whodunits. Just like yesteryear's Candid Camera, ITV's new gameshow Oblivious proves that you could be partaking in a reality TV show while reading this paper. "Reality TV will evolve in every direction," says Bazalgette. "The world's our oyster. It's never been more exciting."

On the back of the rise in reality TV, the international market for formats has blossomed. "Three years ago, US network executives wouldn't even let me into a meeting," remembers Bazalgette. "Now, they're knocking down my door, asking to see what we've got." Thus, the Big Brother format has surfaced in no fewer than 18 countries, allowing Endemol to build a network of production outposts rather than simply programme-distribution offices. And, as Baz points out, it all helps UK plc's balance-of-trade figures. In fact, such is Europe's status as an exporter of formats that the continent is even challenging the power of the cornerstone of many a schedule - the imported US drama series.

"Each localisation has its own flavour," he continues. "The French version was more of a dating show, with the winning couple keeping the house." Baz's own leisure entertainment formats have also sold to 30 countries, with the French deal again throwing up a curio. "They wanted to re-version Ready Steady Cook, but with only one cook," he recalls. "We scratched our heads, as that's really just a man cooking on television. They paid us a format fee for four years but we could never work out why."

Some channels have been wholly transformed simply by one format. In the States, CBS was suddenly cool again after Survivor, while "channels in Spain, Italy and Holland that were used to single figure shares were suddenly getting 75% share, thanks to Big Brother," says Bazalgette. The UK version peaked at 55% and averaged about five million viewers.

Of the 25p made from each phone vote, nine pence went to BT, five pence went to the outfit that organised the voting poll, while Endemol, Channel 4 and four charities divvied up the rest. The predicted number of votes via the remote was wildly misjudged at 250,000 but ended up at five million - with BSkyB taking nine pence for each one. Exactly how much Endemol made is something of a touchy subject. "It's not the millions that some papers said it was," Bazalgette maintains. "Channel 4 and Endemol get a few hundred thousand each."

Those with some arithmetic can work out that Endemol and Channel 4 probably walked away with around (pounds) 400,000 each - about the price of an hour of drama on Channel 4.

On the subject of our leader-less fourth terrestrial, it should not be forgotten that one of its non-exec directors by the name of Peter Bazalgette is in the running for taking over as chief executive officer after the departure of Michael Jackson last month. Any thoughts on the channel's possible privatisation, Baz? For once, Endemol UK's creative director and outspoken industry campaigner falls silent. "I don't have anything to say on the matter," he stonewalls. "I'm off on holiday."

Survivor If success for a television show is bums on seats, then Survivor beat Big Brother fair and square in this summer's ratings battle. The desert-island extravaganza regularly attracted two million more viewers a week than its east London rival.

However, if success means becoming a household name, Big Brother triumphed. Most of us may not be able to remember their last names, but we all know that Helen is the dizzy, kind-hearted hairdresser from Wales and that Paul is the guy who claimed to have lived the life of an "international pop star" in order to impress her.

There is no doubt - even in the mind of its creator, Charlie Parsons - that Survivor did not live up to expectations. It failed to meet its weekly target of 10m viewers. And, in comparison with the earlier United States version or its rival Channel 4 show, it failed to attract the media's attention.

Parsons, in his first interview since Survivor's UK broadcast, declares himself baffled. His ability to create talked-about programmes is legendary. The Word and The Big Breakfast were his babies and he is fighting a legal battle to try to prove that Big Brother was too.

Of Survivor, he says: "From the press, you'd think it hadn't got any audience at all. I find it extremely baffling. It didn't get the audience we'd hoped for but you would never guess Survivor was getting two million more than Big Brother."

Survivor producer Nigel Lythgoe, whose previous project Popstars was a tearaway success, wasn't baffled. He told The Mirror exactly why he thought Survivor had failed.

"The whole show was marketed on the line, 'You don't win you survive.' I hated that. Of course it was about winning. The prize is a million pounds. And as far as 'surviving', I certainly wasn't going to let anyone die!"

It's a view Parsons doesn't share. He is just pleased that ITV poured so much money into promotion. But he and Lythgoe agree that Survivor was badly scheduled. For the first four weeks, there were five instalments a week, all on at different times and with the times varying from week to week. It was only in the fourth week that ITV schedulers decided to cut back to one show a week from the island and one from the studio with John Leslie interviewing the latest evictee.

Parsons says: "You can't market something that's in the wrong slot." He added that even some of his friends in the TV industry, used to navigating their way around multichannel schedules, were setting their video recorders at the wrong time.

He also thinks the John Leslie show confused the brand and that Survivor should have been shown in winter. "It was one of those things that perhaps played at the worst time of year. I had always thought, when we were pitching Survivor to ITV for the first time in 1994, that it should have been shown in winter. Watching people being miserable on a beach works better in winter."

But Parsons has no regrets about the way the programme was made. He defends even the naffer elements, such as the two tribes' pretentious names and the It's A Knockout team colours. He feels that there was a certain camp charm to the waffle about contestants having to blow out the flame that symbolised their life on the island. In the US, unofficial T-shirts with another of the show's slogans, "The tribe has spoken", were all the rage. "It's probably a little po- faced but it immediately identifies the show. In TV programmes, you always need something that people hate."

Parsons and Lythgoe agree on one other point. Survivor was not a reality show. For Parsons, the reality-TV label was invented by television company executives desperate to sort their creative teams into nice tidy departments. "We described it as part entertainment, part documentary and part soap opera - a hybrid, rather than its own genre."

Parsons doesn't sound embittered by his experiences with the reality genre, but he does hold a rather dim view of the UK television industry as a result.

"Everybody is terrified in the big multichannel environment of committing to big, bold ideas. People do not back big ideas. They can deal with big talent because they understand that." But, when it comes to programme ideas, commissioning editors would rather base their decisions on market research, according to Parsons.

His favourite shows on television now are those that take real risks, such as Brass Eye and League Of Gentlemen. He even sigles out Are You Being Served? for praise. "The jokes were dirtier than anything you could get on TV now."

Parsons claims he is not particularly interested in revisiting the reality format. His company, Castaway Television Productions, will continue to market and manage the Survivor franchise around the world. The show has now been made in 35 countries and has created innumerable spin-offs. As well as the usual T-shirts, websites and games, there could soon be Survivor corporate boot camp, if a Scandinavian company's idea bears fruit But Parsons wants to turn his creative attentions to inventing new formats or, as he calls them, "platinum standard ideas" - ideas from which, hopefully, he can make as much money as with Survivor, which has reportedly minted him a fortune of (pounds) 40m.

"I'm quite sure I don't want to do just TV. The reason the things we've done have been quite successful is because they are business ideas as well as TV ideas."

For Parsons, Survivor has set a new standard. The mark of a successful TV show is a multi-million-pound brand franchise.::::::::::::::spr26p4art::::::::::::::

Copyright 2001
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