PSBs should help freelancers and indies to plan their futures by doing a “genre audit” of the volume of their commissions, according to the chief executive of Banijay UK.
Patrick Holland told the Broadcasting Press Guild he is “arguing” with the UK’s main broadcasters to reveal their commissioning levels in each genre.
“If I’m a freelancer, I need to know if that’s the genre I’m working in, [whether] I need to retrain and move to another genre – rather than being constantly in the dark about what’s being made,” he said.
Understanding broadcasters’ spending priorities would also help indies manage their clash flow, he said.
Holland said he is currently “arguing with the PSBs” for them to provide data on how many hours they are commissioning in each genre currently.
The broadcasters’ ‘fewer, bigger, better’ policies is squeezing out many “mid-sized stalwarts” of the schedule, he said, particularly in factual entertainment, where Optomen’s Sort Your Life Out is a rare exception of a recent success.
Revealing such figures could, he believes, cement or contradict anecdotal observations about certain genres falling out of favour while others thrive.
He contrasted the current vogure for reality entertainment like The Traitors and a perceived lack of appetite for new panel shows.
“People can’t just say: ‘here’s how much we spend on entertainment’,” he said. “There has to be enough nuance in it so you can understand what the shifts are.
“The big beasts will buck the trend, but the smaller shows struggle … I hope, rather than a name-and-shame way, there’s a way of doing this where the data is being treated in a way that we can learn from it.”
Holland also called on Labour to extend the tax credit for British films with a budget of under £15m, introduced by the previous government in May, to be extended to high-end TV.
