Grade: Scottish TV suffering from shortage of talent MEDIA: REGIONS

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Jul 1, 2007 | by Steven Vass Media Correspondent

SCOTTISH television producers are not getting their share of network commissions because they are not talented enough, according to the heads of ITV and the BBC.

In a fiery exchange at the Ofcom conference on public service broadcasting in the nations and regions in Cardiff, ITV chief executive Michael Grade said Scottish producers were living in "dreamland" if they thought that the broadcaster should be made to increase commissions in the nations through statutory quotas. He was also highly critical of STV for not being creative enough, even though it is part of the ITV network.

Meanwhile Mark Thompson, the BBC director-general, called on the Scots to relax more with their national identity and said the reason that the proportion of network commissions from Scotland had fallen in the past two years was that the ideas had been too weak.

With heated debate almost inevitable after Ofcom figures recently showed that Scottish commissions had halved on the four main networks from 6-per cent to 3-per cent of the total in 2006, Grade faced down a stream of tough questions from delegates.

In response to complaints from STV director of television Bobby Hain about metrocentric commissioners ignoring Scotland, Grade said: "I'm sorry to say that the money will follow the talent." Hain responded: "So there's a lack of Scottish talent?" "Yes, " Grade replied. "It's your problem. It's not my problem. We are open for business. You can't expect us to dish out money like sweeties because it's your turn.

"We are not that rich in ideas that we can afford to turn down anything from anyone that we think has got half a chance of working." Pointing out that STV gets favoured access to commissioners as a member of the ITV network, he referred to a similar exchange with another senior SMG manager the week before. "She asked me 'What are you going to do about it?' I said, 'What are you going to do about it?'" Speaking afterwards, Hain told the Sunday Herald: "The suggestion that we haven't got the talent is as incorrect as it is patronising. There is a systemic problem here. The system does not recognise, nurture or develop talent." Although he stopped short of calling for quotas, he said Ofcom had to find a way to improve the situation. "It's not enough to rely on the BBC and Channel 4, " he said.

Grade had said the opposite during his session, saying that although it might be reasonable to expect the publicly funded broadcasters to intervene to redress the imbalance in commissioning, there was no such place for a purely commercial broadcaster like ITV.

In response to Stuart Cosgrove, director of nations and regions at Channel 4, who argued that his channel's requirement to make 30- per cent of programmes outside London had led to the production of Bafta-winning shows such as Shameless that might not otherwise have been made, Grade said: "The difference between you and me is that Channel 4 is a publicly owned corporation. If that's the duty of Channel 4 it seems perfectly appropriate." Mark Thompson struck a much more conciliatory tone with his speech about the BBC's efforts to break its old dependency on London, but he was equally tough on Scotland.

In contrast to Wales, which he praised for its burgeoning drama department, he said: "We have had a few years where we haven't had as many strong network ideas coming from Scotland as we would like. [BBC Scotland controller] Ken MacQuarrie would agree with that.

It's incredibly important that Scotland plays at the top of its game." He also spoke about how Scotland was too uptight about how it was portrayed, drawing on an example of where the Broadcasting Council for Scotland was unsure about Monarch Of The Glen even though it was a major hit in the UK and around the world. "If you are not sure whether you want hits, you won't have hits, " he said.

In reference to BBC Wales's carefree attitude to Welsh depictions in Doctor Who, he said: "The irony is that once you start relaxing about it, you can have fun with it - [Doctor Who] is fun and it's not trying to make some big political point."