C4 Programme Commissioning Woes - Printable Version

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RE: C4 Programme Commissioning Woes - JMT1985 - 21-01-2024

(21-01-2024, 01:27 PM)ACTV Wrote:  Channel 4 certainly should try more with Friday nights, it seems they have lost all interest in trying anything new on the night aside and is now just a constant loop of Gogglebox, The Last Leg and anything involving Jimmy Carr, a far cry from the late-90s when it was anchored by the likes of Friends, Frasier, South Park, TFI Friday, Father Ted and eventually by the 00s the Big Brother eviction show, and that's just scratching the surface. As has been proven over the last few weeks, if a programme is good enough, given a decent level of promotion and scheduled correctly, it will pay off.

Shows like Big Boys would certainly freshen up Friday nights either at 9 or 10pm, and maybe they could try out more new British comedy there. I've always thought Taskmaster might be worth a try to add into the Friday 9pm rotation with Gogglebox and Catsdown (ideally some other shows added in too.) Just relatively small steps like that would stop it from feeling endlessly stale and repetitive, and give it an actual buzz.

Altogether I cannot see any of this innovation coming under the current leadership of C4 who only seem to value Bake Off, Gogglebox and to a lesser extent MAFS and Naked Attraction. I think Katz's departure is long overdue now.

I agree, Friday nights used to be the most strongest night for Channel 4, just as you said the classic shows such as Father Ted, also we had during the 90s Whose Line Is It Anyway on a Friday night

That is a show I would like to see back on Channel 4, a proper British version. Considering the current American version seems to be nearing it's end as the CW channel want to axe it, and CW has been accused of never promoting it, Channel 4 rebooting it with a British version, with new British comedians, and maybe occasional appearance from Whose Line grandees such as Greg Proops would be great for Friday night at 10pm instead of regular Last Leg series.

Remember too Fridays was home to Graham Norton's talk show, and it seems Joe Lycett could easily be used a lot more, instead of The Last Leg at 10pm, which seems very tired now.

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RE: C4 Programme Commissioning Woes - orange - 21-01-2024

Friday nights used to be proper destination TV on 4 with comedies and Big Brother evictions creating a solid line-up, especially during Summer. It seems that all went when BB did - there’s never really been anything as strong as that since and it feels as though they’ve been looking towards an older audience as of late.

They’ve got a good platform there to try and emulate another good lineup of comedy again - Adult Swim feels a bit wasted on E4 and they could absolutely carve out a late night surreal comedy block with that - I’m shocked they haven’t done something like that yet to make their catalogue look a bit less painfully pedestrian.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they went for something like RuPauls Drag Race UK in the future too - it seems to be a better fit for C4 than BBC Three and it seems to be one of the only things propping BBC Three up while also struggling on there because of the limitations they have as a BBC show. Barely any queens are auditioning anymore because of a lack of actual monetary prizes and they’ve only just seemingly introduced some to the VS The World spin off because of that.

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RE: C4 Programme Commissioning Woes - Jon - 21-01-2024

(21-01-2024, 02:18 PM)orange Wrote:  Barely any queens are auditioning anymore because of a lack of actual monetary prizes and they’ve only just seemingly introduced some to the VS The World spin off because of that.

That seems a bit odd considering anyone making a living out of performing Drag, would get a massive profile boost for their act. And it seems probably more than any other reality shows these days, people end up with semi successful media careers. Surely there just becomes a point where the talent pool runs dry, the UK isn’t as a big the US and their aren’t going to be that many people performing drag regularly outside of a handful in select big cities.

I’m not sure what you mean by the last point. You mean they’ve introduced new drag queens to that show, instead of running a full series?

As for Big Brother it gave Channel lots of content across its channels and something to anchor the programming around. Apart from Gogglebox, Bake Off and Taskmaster, which are all weekly shows and in the case of the latter two can only really run for a few weeks of the year, there aren’t any big primetime TV brands that you can associate with the channel. And that’s been the case since Big Brother left the channel.

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RE: C4 Programme Commissioning Woes - Brekkie - 21-01-2024

The comedy block has vanished from E4 on Thursdays too - that had been a staple pretty much since they launched.

I do think both comedy and drama wise they do miss the 22 weeks of content US network shows used to provide which gave the schedules, on both C4 and E4, some structure and bought viewers back to the channel on a weekly basis and therefore to their original content too.

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RE: C4 Programme Commissioning Woes - orange - 21-01-2024

(21-01-2024, 02:47 PM)Jon Wrote:  That seems a bit odd considering anyone making a living out of performing Drag, would get a massive profile boost for their act. And it seems probably more than any other reality shows these days, people end up with semi successful media careers. Surely there just becomes a point where the talent pool runs dry, the UK isn’t as a big the US and their aren’t going to be that many people performing drag regularly outside of a handful in select big cities.

I’m not sure what you mean by the last point. You mean they’ve introduced new drag queens to that show, instead of running a full series?

It’s unfortunately not as big of a profile boost as you’d think anymore - the format is seemingly so oversaturated with shows now that it’s diluted the amount of impact you’d get from appearing. Drag Race is also a huge investment for the queens - creating the outfits and preparing for the show isn’t cheap unfortunately and the risk of doing all that just to get first boot and forgotten about isn’t a massive appeal. There’s still loads and loads of talent here - just little incentive.

For my last point I mean that they’re about to run the UK All Stars spin off where queens from previous series compete against queens from the international shows - this second series of that is just about to air and is the first UK series where there’s actually a prize fund for the queens - iirc.

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RE: C4 Programme Commissioning Woes - Allanbuzzy - 21-01-2024

I think Channel 4 are too worried about losing their viewer base so much that they feel the need to rely on these staples. It's definitely a far cry from the days when Channel 4 was experimental, trying new formats and making their digital channels feel unique to viewers of every taste.

Now, all the channels look the same or identical, airing constant repeats of Gogglebox and Naked Attraction. And any acquisitions that don't get the viewership with no promotions get shoved off to the yawn hours and/or barely acknowledged, such as Adult Swim as mentioned before. All 4 used to promote how good their animation offering was, and now most of that is on ITVX now (barring Adult Swim obviously).

Katz definitely needs to go. There needs to be a freshen up of C4's department, move certain shows around the schedule, and make C4 more adaptive with the streaming age, I don't think viewers are """binging""" Gogglebox marathons.

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RE: C4 Programme Commissioning Woes - Brekkie - 21-01-2024

C4 has always had popular shows propping up the schedules though which bought an audience to the more worthy stuff, some of which I suspect felt tired or overused too - though not to the extent it feels like with Gogglebox at the moment.

It's always been a balancing act for them between the worthy and the watched, but commissioning wise it does feel like the net isn't cast very wide now, which perhaps isn't a surprise with the commissioning freeze of the last year or two.

For me scheduling is possibly the bigger problem than commissioning - looking at the week ahead and it feels like the pieces are largely there, just not necessarily in the right order.

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RE: C4 Programme Commissioning Woes - ACTV - 21-01-2024

The increasing reliance on the same handful of shows (Gogglebox, Bake Off, MAFS, Naked Attraction, Last Leg, 24 Hours in A&E/Police Custody, Four in A Bed, Come Dine with Me and anything with Jimmy Carr in it) absolutely isn't helping, Both BBC channels, ITV1 and Channel 5 still manage to freshen up their 8pm and 9pm slots every few weeks/months whilst retaining some core shows, something Channel 4 does not seem to be able to get a grip of.

Everything on Channel 4 these days feels particularly samey and there really is not enough distinction. Their 8pm and 9pm slots are filled with all of these fly-on-the wall documentaries, travelogues, property and food shows that are practically the same show with different presenters, and are identical in style and tone to other channels’ offerings.

I do think Channel 4 are perhaps relying a little too much on Studio Lambert for programming, they are probably Lambert's biggest customer with Gogglebox, Four in A Bed, Naked Attraction and previously Rise and Fall and The Circle. Had they let ITV take Gogglebox that would have probably meant Rise and Fall would have never came about and C4 would likely be in a slightly better financial position.

I agree Channel 4 does to an extent already have the goods to be able to reinvigorate it's lineup but it is being scheduled in completely the wrong way. Big Boys for example feels wasted at 10pm on Sunday nights and is there really any demand for two hours of Jimmy Carr on Fridays? Programmes like Around the World in 80 Weights and a George Clarke travelogue in the US don't seem like particularly enticing 9pm pullers.

I think it might be a good idea to move some of those types of programmes over to More4 and perhaps try harder to skew Channel 4 to a younger audience - perhaps more emphasis comedy and drama, a bit like what E4 used to be until they launched E4 Extra and focused that channel more on reality TV, whilst still being able to make room for some of the big mainstream pullers.

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RE: C4 Programme Commissioning Woes - UTVLifer - 21-01-2024

It'll be interesting to see if The Last Leg still gets its usual nightly series during the Paralympics in August given it's already had its episode counts reduced from 10 to 8 in the last yea

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RE: C4 Programme Commissioning Woes - Brekkie - 21-01-2024

The Paris Paralympics really should be it's swansong, but it still rates despite almost universal agreement that the weekly show is a shadow of it's former self.

I do agree C4 should start targetting a bit younger again as it wouldn't feel like it's treading on E4's toes now. E4 itself needs to get out of the loop of Gogglebox and First Date repeats - after 11pm fine, but even if it's countering Love Island they should be doing better at 9pm than just running a franchise for a few weeks every few months and just padding in between.

I don't buy the narrative that Rise and Fall flopping is the reason for C4's woes - perhaps an easy scapegoat but even if so I'd rather they try and fail rather than just stick to the middle of the road.

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