Ian Katz pledges era of risk-taking

Ian Katz will give cash injections to E4 and comedy as part of a wider commitment to risk-taking that he believes will help Channel 4 attract more young viewers.

The director of programmes unveiled his strategy on Wednesday (16 May), outlining a desire to establish a raft of new voices and dial up C4’s distinctiveness.

Katz’s plan to take risks will be most obvious at 10pm and 11pm on the main channel. The latter has been earmarked for a period of significant experimentation: a full series of Expectation’s anarchic Big Narstie/Mo Gilligan show will play there, as well as half a dozen pilots, including an attempt to reimagine the interview format.

Meanwhile, 10pm will be used to test spiky shows that offer young viewers an alternative to the news on BBC1 and ITV. Clerkenwell Films’ The End Of The F****** World is likely to play there if it returns for a second series, as well as several yet-to-be-announced doc series exploring subcultures of British society.

Friday nights are also being earmarked as a potential C4 fortress. The effect will be to add some jagged edges to a schedule Katz believes has become too smooth and one note.

He will also hand a meaningful £10m budget boost to comedy. Katz believes the genre’s competitive environment is more manageable than drama, and that C4’s most obvious rivals will be BBC2 and BBC3, rather than BBC1, ITV and the SVoD giants.

He is banking on comedy becoming truly channel-defining – thinking back to the likes of Father Ted and The Inbetweeners – and is impressed by how the genre overperforms on VoD, which chimes with C4’s wider push to improve its digital performance.

The aim is that C4 will offer new comedy every month, often at 10pm, alongside a significantly scaled-up version of online shorts strand Blaps.

After successful launches for Derry Girls and Lee And Dean this year, there is great excitement at C4 about the potential for Jamie Demetriou’s forthcoming Stath from Roughcut TV.

Katz has also decided to hand E4 an additional £10m, which Broadcast estimates to be around a 15% increase, and plans to appoint a dedicated controller for the youth channel.

That cash has been earmarked for more reality and fact ent formats, with a view to doubling down on the success of shows such as Lime Pictures’ stripped format Celebs Go Dating.

DIFFERENT APPROACH

Katz believes E4 is an incredibly strong brand and that it can build its share of young viewers, thanks in part to a strategy of exploiting shows on multiple platforms.

He is thinking about different approaches to windowing and box-setting programmes, as well as seeding content via social media prior to shows launching.

Channel 4 wants to reimagine its relationship with talent, plotting a long-term career path for the fresh voices it uncovers.

Katz is set to appoint a head of on-screen talent as part of the push, which is in part designed to help C4 hang on to the stars it discovers.

He is thought to be open-minded about striking exclusive contracts but also wants to develop pan-channel, holistic relationships where the broadcaster and on-screen stars are aligned in their ambitions.

Katz is taking heart from a slate that features eight to 10 new faces who will make their debut on C4 or E4 in 2019, with women and BAME talent well represented.

For example, comedian Jamali Maddix, best known for Viceland’s Hate Thy Neighbour format, will front 3 x 60-minute Futureproof from Acme Films. The specialist factual format will explore issues thrown up by the digital age: sex, fame and cryptocurrency.

The plan to back new talent and take risks at 10pm and 11pm is being balanced by a desire for splashy, popular shows to play at 8pm and 9pm.

Katz is searching for shows that can do the same job as the likes of Hunted and The Island, and will be buoyed by the ratings that The Great British Bake Off will deliver later this summer.

He also intends to supercharge shows that find significant audiences by handing them longer runs. Daytime hit Escape To The Chateau: DIY is expected to be one of the first shows to benefit from this approach.

In terms of commissioning priorities, much has been made of Katz’s news and current affairs background and he has been peppering the schedule with timely commissions such as this week’s Munroe Bergdorf doc, which follows on from Genderquake and its debate show.

He is fascinated by stories such as the Windrush scandal, the Grenfell fire and Brexit, which will be the subject of a docu-drama. He is also gripped by the idea of C4 returning to political satire and finding the contemporary version of Spitting Image or The Thick Of It.