TV needs studio space, not flats

Like everyone who works in TV, I experienced a visceral jolt of panic watching Warren Beatty’s Oscars balls-up last week.

As someone who began their TV career on live studio shows, I instantly realised an awful mistake had been made – and cringed at what must have been happening in the gallery.

But as a viewer sat on my sofa eating a bag of Mini Eggs, it was telly gold and I loved it (and the even funnier bit earlier when the busload of star-struck tourists arrived and began taking selfies with Meryl and Mahershala).

It was edgy, unpredictable and all happening in front of an audience of slack-jawed celebrities. This is something that only happens when a studio show is transmitted live and uncensored.

Weirdly, even though viewers love this type of thing, these entertainment shows are a dying breed – and I was thus delighted by Kevin Lygo’s decision to put The Nightly Show in the ITV schedules. Finally, here is a new studio offering that does actually ‘disrupt the schedules’ (as every bored commissioner bleats on about in their briefings). Yay!

So why, when ITV is finally taking a giant editorial risk and making studio shows the cornerstone of its new schedule, does one of the bean-counters suddenly announce the closure of The London Studios, the only working TV studio complex left in London? It doesn’t make sense (but then, I am a naive TV producer).

Even worse, it sends a strong signal that studio shows don’t matter any more; a sinister state of affairs and depressing to contemplate when I next go in to pitch a debate show, shiny floor show or panel show.

Maybe I am upset because I began my career on The Word – a live studio show that took risks back in the ’90s. But even 25 years later, I feel the closure is a terrible mistake and one that will hurt the fragile ecology of the TV industry (which is at death’s door anyway).

I can only imagine how the conversation went in the boardroom at Upper Ground: some vile 26 year-old accountant type from Goldman Sachs who only ever watches Netflix has realised that a swanky apartment overlooking theThames would be worth millions.

So why not close the boring old studios and start cashing in? And anyway, he argues, ITV can always move the studio shows to other places like Fountain (closed), Teddington (closed) or Shepherd’s Bush (still closed). He probably got a promotion.

Just like when, a few years ago, the BBC fucked up TVC and decided to sell up for peanuts and move into its flagship New Broadcasting House (and… er… then back into White City again), this business decision stinks.

Shutting down TV studio complexes and sacking staff doesn’t help the actual business of making TV – which is the point of a TV channel, I think.

On the other hand, TVC is now home to £7m flats where once were grim TV offices. So you can’t really blame ITV – I mean, how cool would it be to ponce about in a posh penthouse where you can still smell Judy Finnigan’s perfume wafting through the air-con?

Or, perhaps, look out at the view in your cashmere dressing gown at the very spot where generations of researchers smoked fags? That is priceless and so worth wiping out a rich heritage of skills, jobs and shows for.

Or did the ITV accountants open the wrong envelope? Please can someone double-check.

Steven D Wright is managing director of Kerfuffle TV