Danny Cohen on...

Gavin & Stacey

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BBC3 controller Danny Cohen on...

Losing Gavin and Stacey
"I think it would be unlikely, with the Christmas special having transferred to BBC1, that Gavin and Stacey would come back to BBC3. I'm not expecting it to return. But the marvellous thing about that is it frees up financial and creative room for Matt and James' new sketch show."

The hunt for new comedy
"I'm more focused on narrative comedy than sketch. The shadow of Little Britain still looms quite large. It's not to the exclusion of sketch - Karen Taylor's new series [Touch Me, I'm Karen Taylor] has done phenomenally well for us - but in the balance we'll probably do a bit more narrative."

Managing BBC3's budget cut
"The one thing we can't do is make
everything weaker - take off bits here, bits there. At the same time we've got to work out how we save the money and at the moment one of ways we do that is not to spend much money at 7pm. That's going to continue because we've got to make choices."

Multiplatform
"It's as hard as I expected and the reason it's hard is it's all so new. It's a nascent part of our industry and we're all trying to learn very fast - but I feel we've 
developed a reputation for innovating and leading change in that area."

Peter Fincham's MacTaggart
"Peter's absolutely right to highlight entertainment as one of most important functions of television. What I would add is that entertainment can often be a word exchanged for compelling, and programmes like Blood Sweat and T-Shirts and Young Mums' Mansion are often more compelling than they are entertaining with a big E. It's another way of gripping your audience."

The BBC drama pilots
"I think it's quite a brave thing to do to show your workings on television and some of the ones that people didn't like as much got criticised. But if you can't try innovative brave pilots on bbc3, where can you? If people are trying to crush them out of the system with criticism, they're not helping anyone."