Pact chief calls out lack of understanding about pressures faced by producers
John McVay has called out broadcasters for a lack of understanding around the financial pressures facing indies.
At the Edinburgh TV Festival session How To Avoid A World Without Indies, the Pact chief exec said too many commissioners are failing to understand the impact of rising costs on indies and urged them to be more “sophisticated” about helping suppliers arrange appropriate financing packages.
Indies are having to raise hundreds of millions of pounds each year “to subsidise the broadcasters’ schedules” through deficit financing, he said.
They also feel pressure from broadcasters to make shows that “they just can’t deliver” due to insufficient budgets and are unlikely to turn a profit. However producers feel compelled to push ahead because they “need the work and have everything ready to go”.
“Commissioners must be more savvy about the consequences of asking for a deficit, and where it places the producer. I’d like to see a lot more sophistication.”
McVay believes that there are too many commissioners who have never worked in production and are particularly guilty of failing to grasp the issue.
“It is the responsibility of the broadcaster to make sure that commissioners understand how the business works, and what these financing packages actually mean and what is realistic [for producers],” he said.
He added that broadcasters tend to “look favourably” on indies who can make shows more cheaply, saying: “Indies are competing on price as much as they are on ideas.”
But the BBC’s daytime and entertainment commissioning editor Neil McCallum vehemently disagreed.
“It’s definitely about the idea,” he said.
The majority – around 80% - of the daytime and ents commissions on his slate have been fully-funded because the BBC is commissioning fewer titles than it was a year ago, he added.
“The idea of deficit funding does exist but it is much further down in terms of ideal options,” he said. “We would look at firstly revising the editorial to try and get to a point where an indie thinks they can make a programme for the price we are willing to pay.”
Channel 4’s head of indie relations Rebecca Thompson said commissioners generally “share the responsibility” with indies and their finance and business affairs teams to work out financial packages.
“It is not just left on the indie to go and find other people’s money,” she said, adding that commissioners “take the lead” in trying to pull in other sources of finance, whether that means a co-producing with other channels or using a financial support scheme like the Diverse Indies Fund.
But, she agreed that commissioners would benefit from more training.
C4 is in the process of putting together a training package for commissioners to get a “full picture” of the pressure facing indies, and around how best to work with commissions affairs, production finance, legal and other departments.
“In the current climate, things are changing so fast,” she said. “As an industry, we need to figure out a way to be more flexible about money changing value really quickly, and the costs of things changing without warning.”
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