Ex-BBC boss backs John Lloyd

A former BBC boss has backed comedy guru John Lloyd’s claims that uncreative commissioners are ruining TV.

Tom Archer, the corporation’s former controller of factual production, closely echoed the QI creator’s comments at the Chortle conference last week, when he bemoaned the rise of executives who have never made a programme in their lives.

According to the Guardian, Archer condemned the bureaucracy surrounding channel controllers, said commissioners had been elevated to ‘minor gods’ in TV when they were really an ‘uncreative crust’ on top of the business, and complained about the ‘pseudoscience’ of audience behaviour.

Focus groups and test audiences gave TV executives the illusion that there is a way to guarantee hits – but instead lead to dull, copycat programming, he claimed in a speech at the University of the West of England in Bristol.

Archer – who until recently earned £200,000 a year as head of the BBC’s factual department – said: ‘It’s quite a regular sight in TV Centre to see a BBC channel controller sat in a meeting with a dozen advisors and not a single one of them, sometimes even the channel controller, has never made a programme.’

Meanwhile further examples of broadcasters’ hubris have emerged.

John Pidgeon, a former head of BBC radio entertainment, said he once had a proposal for a Tommy Tiernan show turned down because commissioners could not understand the simple concept.

Writing on Facebook, Pidgeon – whose radio credits include Flight Of The Conchords and The Mighty Boosh – said he once pitched Tommy Tells A Story, a series in which the ‘sublime raconteur’, pictured would recount a different tale each episode.

But he said: ‘Turned down because the proposal - stretched out to a page - didn't give enough of an idea as to what it was about.’

Meanwhile Bill Dare, who produced shows such as Dead Ringers, revealed just how slow the BBC can be to even look at proposals.

He tweeted: ‘I once got a reply from someone at the BBC 7 years after submission, saying “lost your script, please resend”.’

Last week Lloyd, who also produced Blackadder, Spitting Image and Have I Got News For You, said: ‘I don't want to boast, but I've been doing this for 40 years and I've been involved in some pretty good things across a huge variety of genres, but I've still got to sit and listen to someone who’s have never done five minutes of stand-up, who’s never written a funny line who's never produced a sitcom. You've got to listen to their opinions...

‘There is no point, or need, for half a a dozen people or hierarchies or committees of people to sit around bothering the producer or the director or the stand-up comedian –  they know best; it’s their necks on the line.’

Published: 26 Jun 2013