indie survey apr-1

Talkback Thames (Fremantle) Hit Entertainment Kudos Film and TV (Shine) Tiger Aspect (Endemol) Shine TV (Shine) Company Pictures (All3Media) Twofour Avalon TV (Avalon) Optomen/One Potato Two Potato(All3Me dia)Princess Productions (Shine) Carnival Film & Tele vision (NBC) Hat Trick Productions Sunset + Vine (Ti nopolis) Lion TV (All3Media) Mentorn Media (Tino polis) Bentley Productions (All3Media) North One TV (All3Media) Objective Productions (All3Media) Left Bank Pictures Aardman Darlow Smithson (Endemol) RDF TV (Zodiak) Maverick Television (All3Media) Leopard Films Open Mike Productions The Foundation (Zodiak) Touchpaper (Zodiak) IWC (Zodiak) Pulse Films Input Media Rondo Media Big Talk Productions Parthenon Entertainment CPL Dragonfly (Shine) Red Production Company Atlantic Productions Spun Gold TV Pioneer Productions (Tinopolis) Studio Lambert (All3Media) So Television Fresh One Productions Cler kenwell Films Lime Pictures (All3Media) Mammoth Screen Nutopia Betty TV Raw TV Somethin’ Else Buffa lo Pictures Impossible Pictures Baby Cow Splash Media Icon Films October Films Keo Films The Com edy Unit (Zodiak) Windfall Films Outline Productions Blast! Films Tigress (Endemol) Antix Productions Zig Zag Fever Media Cactus (All3Media) Firecracker Films ETV Tern TV True North Productions DLT Entertainm entIndie survey £225 when sold separately

A Broadcast supplement

indies

compactmedia groupIn association with

Indies 2011

18 March 2011 | Broadcast Indie Survey | 3 www.broadcastnow.co.uk

CONTENTS

4 Introduction and league table

Standout ideas and new business models helped the best performers in a harsh economic environment

14 The top 30

New to the survey: the league tables of the top 30 ‘true’ indies and the top 30 subsidiaries of larger companies

16 Top owners and consolidators

As media giants seek growth, the consolidation of the super-indies is set to carry on in to 2011

18 Top suppliers

The large indie owners maintained and increased their dominance in programme supply to the BBC and ITV

26 Top specialists

Our genre league tables show children’s and fact ent specialists were among the growth areas in a year of decline for drama, entertainment and sport

30 Nations and regions

Efficiency and diversity paid dividends for regional indies as they increased their turnover

32 Peer poll

While familiar names fill the two top spots, several producers have shot into the top 10 for the first time after outstanding performances

Contents

In an ideas busi-ness, all it can take is one hit to propel you into the big league. Just ask Pineapple Dance Studios indie Pulse, Misfits producer

Clerkenwell Films or Firecracker Films, whose Cutting Edge documen-tary My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding and its subsequent series caught everyone off guard. It has been propelled to number three in our peer poll of indies, right behind powerhouses Kudos and Wall to Wall.

Our figures show that smaller budgets and fewer commissions were the norm. But despite this, the super-indies managed to grow their share of the market by 20% to £1.11bn.

Of course, a chart of 141 compa-nies, ranging from one-man bands to format factories with a global reach, only tells part of the picture. This year we have also pulled out the top 30 ‘true’ indies not aligned to any group and compiled a table of ‘owned’ sub-sidiaries of larger companies.

Prompted by the growing trend for UK indies to come under the wing of international broadcasters, we’ve broadened our definition of ‘super-indies’ to include the likes of NBC, which owns Carnival and Monkey Kingdom, and Time Warner, whose assets now include Shed. Super-indies are both direct rivals to these giants and, in some cases (notably All3-Media), a potential acquisition target.

News Corp’s recent takeover of Shine cemented our view that a true picture of UK indie ownership can only be reached when this wider view of the £1bn market is considered.

Finally, our genre analysis throws up some shocks: despite hits like Sherlock and Downton Abbey, drama was in the doldrums in 2010 thanks to the commissioning hiatus a year to 18 months previously, while the much-maligned children’s market continued its upswing – thanks as much to S4C as the BBC.

A big thank you to everyone who took part this year and special thanks to About Corporate Finance for assist-ing with the survey.

The power of a hit seriesNew faces rise to the top despite a squeeze on budgets

ROBIN PARKERSUPPLEMENT EDITOR

Supplement Editor Robin Parker Broadcast Editor Lisa Campbell Production Editor Dominic Needham Sub Editor Steve Sampson Group Art Director Peter Gingell Group Commercial Director, Media Alison Pitchford Group Advertising Manager Rebecca Jones Production Manager David Cumming Account Director Charlotte Bowskill Senior Account Manager Fiona Evans Account Manager Sonya Jacobs Acting Group Advertising Manager Amanda Pryde Contributors Alex Farber, Andy Fry, Jake Kanter, Balihar Khalsa, Catherine Neilan, Will Strauss, David Wood

33

08

More on these production companies and their commissions can be found at www.greenlight.broadcastnow.co.uk

With thanks to Compact Media Group for sponsoring this year’s survey. For further information visit www.compactcollections.com

While every care has been taken in compiling the tables, Broadcast relies on participants to supply accurate results and bears no responsibility for errors or ommissions

4 | Broadcast Indie Survey | 18 March 2011 www.broadcastnow.co.uk

Indies 2011

OVERVIEW LEAGUE TABLES

UK indies:the winners and losers

In a year of economic hardship and continuing dominance of the super-indies, standout ideas, key franchises and new business models thrived. David Wood looks at the figures

T alkback Thames may have lost its chief executive in 2010, but judging by the company’s per-

formance in this year’s Indie Survey, Lorraine Heggessey must have been doing something right. With revenues of £145m, up 4% on last year’s total, Talkback has wrestled back pole posi-tion from kids’ producer and distribu-tor Hit Entertainment, which in 2009 overtook Talkback to take the top spot.

Talkback and Hit weren’t the only producers to enjoy a stellar year. Shine’s Kudos comes in at number three, with turnover up nearly 32% to £54m, thanks to a string of successful drama franchises such as Spooks, Hustle and Law & Order: UK.

It was a mixed year for drama indies, however. Leading producers such as Lime and Carnival faced double-digit drops thanks to a commissioning hiatus forcing a drastic drop in hours (see Top 10 Specialists, page 26),

though Carnival was mostly hit by the loss of its US drama The Philanthropist. Touchpaper (Being Human, Single-Handed) deserves credit for nearly dou-bling turnover to £13.1m, and Clerken well Films makes a splash with £8.3m thanks to Misfits’ success.

Other in-form producers include Twofour, up from 13th last year to 8th on turnover of £33m (up 36%) and, thanks to NBC’s takeover of Carnival, now the best-performing ‘true’ indie after Hit. Shine-owned Princess is in 12th place with £25m revenues (up from 27th last year), All3Media-owned Optomen is 10th with £29.1m (up 28%) and fellow All3M indie Studio Lambert is one of the fastest-growing new indies, with a turnover of £26.1m (up from £3.8m in 2009), thanks to Undercover Boss.

Comparing like-for-like figures, overall turnover of the UK independent production sector was down from £1.92bn in 2009 to £1.74bn. The increasing influence of super-indies and broadcasters in the UK independ-ent production sector is underlined by

the fact that their share of the market was up nearly 20% to £1.11bn and that only three companies in the top 20 are independently owned. The total revenue of independently owned pro-duction companies in 2010 was £653.9m, which initially appears to be a sharp and worrying drop on the pre-vious year’s total of £1.01bn.

However, much of the drop is accounted for by the fact that signifi-cant turnovers have been omitted from the independents list. 19 Enter-tainment declined to submit figures because so much of what it does is US-based, while Talkback’s sizeable reve-nues have been reclassified under the consolidators table because of the company’s ownership by broadcaster Fremantle. That adds up to £264m.

Others too have shifted into the con-solidators table, including Avalon, Optomen (now part of All3), and Car-nival, now part of NBC.

Meanwhile, the demise of Power, Greenlit Rights and Steadfast took £50m out of the market.

2010 FALLING BUDGETS AND KEY CONCERNS

19%

Did your programme budgets fall in 2010?

44%

55% 30%

76%

21%

Less than 10% 10-20% 20-50%50% +

Budget pressure 31.0%

Falling commissions 9.0%

Investment hurdles 7.5%

Super-indie dominance 5.5%

Rights problems 5.5%

Financing problems 3.5%

Maintaining quality 3.0%

In-house too big 3.0%

Other 14.0%

No answer/no concern 18.0%

2%

The X Factor: success for Talkback Thames

1%

Key concerns for independent producers

REX

FEA

TUES

£1.74bnTotal turnover of UK production sector

in 2011

OVERVIEW LEAGUE TABLES


compactmedia group

In association with

Despite All3Media’s £40m acquisi-tion of Optomen in August, the rate of acquisitions has cooled markedly over the past two years, with activity subdued because of the modest multi-ples achievable in a market still trying to shake off its recessionary hangover.

Some believe the acquisition market will soon pick up and this year’s table gives some indication as to which companies might make the most desirable targets. Among these ‘true’ indies, Pulse Films saw the biggest growth, with a 243% rise in turnover to £12m (see table, page 14).

A new breed of indiePulse’s success underlines the emer-gence of a new breed of production business in our survey over the past couple of years: the diversified content company. These firms, which include Twofour, see TV as part of a wider range of content and IP-based businesses. In Pulse’s case, its activity spans the worlds of TV, fashion, music, films, AFP and cross-platform production.

MD Thomas Benski says: “Pulse was set up with diverse revenue streams and we have explicitly not relied solely on traditional broadcasters for growth. Pineapple Dance Studios [pic-tured, below] put us on the map but we also benefited from the fact that people like to discover new compa-nies. In a world of consolidating super-indies, we are a fresh name with a new approach.”

Other top performers include Mammoth Screen, Twofour, Big Talk, Open Mike, Icon and Left Bank.

Another indicator of success is the ratio of profitability to turnover. Many declined to reveal a profit figure, but of those that did, Hit Entertainment (£50m), followed by Parthenon (£1.9m), Bwark (£1.6m) and Baby Cow (£1.35m) all scored highly.

As one might expect from a market emerging from one of the worst reces-sions for decades, hours of original programming were down. Total hours dropped from 16,419 in 2009 to 14,355 in 2010 – a fall of more than 2,000 hours. It’s no surprise that repeats are taking up the shortfall, with hours up to more than 34,100 from last year’s total of just 30,000.

The good news is that the situation appears to be improving. Many indies ended 2010 on a much more upbeat

note than was the case 12 months pre-viously. There were plenty of signs that the commissioning drought that has hit the fortunes of independent production over the past two years may be coming to an end, with broad-casters beginning to spend more on drama as well as other genres.

Zodiak chief executive David Frank notes: “We have 49 production com-panies across the world, and the UK was one of the toughest markets. We found 2009 and 2010 tough, but in 2011, the good news is outweighing the bad. Our order book shows that it will be a year for growth – possibly double-digit. The improvement in broadcasters’ advertising revenues is a good barometer.”

DCD Media boss David Green adds: “There were no fireworks, but 2010 was better than 2009 and things are

steadily improving. But there is still less commissioning in

the UK and I suspect it’s not going to return to pre-2008 levels for many years.”

No surprise, then, that staffing levels at produc-

tion companies have fallen. The trend of prod-

ucers employing fewer full-time staff has continued, with indies employing a total of 4,434 staff in 2010 compared with 5,163 in 2009. Further evidence of the recession can be seen in the cautious approach to expansion, with just 13 out of a total of 155 companies taking part this year opening a new office in the UK or else-where. And while 46 indies have a digital arm, the total number of digital employees has fallen to 320 from the 2009 total of 494.

A rising number of producers are now making mobile content – 57 (36%) – while 37 indies are working in 3D production. The number of companies engaged in online produc-tion has also increased, up from 28% of the total in 2009 to 36% in 2010. The growth in on-demand viewing is also reflected in this year’s survey, with the number of indies report-ing on-demand revenues rising from 61 last year to 81 this year (51% of the total).

Other trends include the inexo-rable rise of in-house post-production, with the majority of indies (64%) now involved in some form of in-house post-production and 38% saying they

The survey is based on the responses of more than 300 inde-pendent producers and owners who completed an online ques-tionnaire in January. They needed to have had at least one hour of commissioned programming broadcast in the UK in 2010, and still be in business. Any omissions are therefore no longer trading, had a quiet 2010, or did not complete the survey.

Companies are ranked based on their 2010 turnover or the most recent full year for which figures are available. Where turnovers are equal, the company with the most hours of pro-duction is ranked higher.

Producers that are part of a super-indie or owned by a broad-caster or studio that opted not to break out the turnovers of their production subsidiaries are not listed in the league table, but their turnovers are included in the top owners’ table.

Individual broadcaster league tables of indies, ranked by vol-ume and spend, were supplied by the broadcasters themselves.

LEAGUE TABLES METHODOLOGY

plan to make investments in in-house post-production in the near future.

One issue concerns indie sector bosses more than any other. While 9% are worried about the lack of commis-sions and just 3% about their ability to finance programme-making, a whop-ping 31% cite decreasing budgets from broadcasters as cause for concern.

The good news is that the rate at which broadcasters are cutting budgets is slowing. In 2009, 39% of indies reported their budgets in 2009 were down by 10-20%. In 2010, only 21% reported budgets down by this amount, with 76% of indies reporting budget falls of less than 10%.

Cutting costsZodiak’s Frank advises that while budget cuts are an inevitable fact of life, they can also be an opportunity. “If you can find a way to deliver programmes at that lower cost by adapting ideas and pro-duction processes, then that gives you a competitive advantage,” he says. “If a broadcaster is going to pay 10% less, you have to see if you can make it for 10% less without reducing the quality.

“It’s a creative challenge as well. If you can come up with compelling ideas that can be made less expensively than other ideas, then you are delivering the same audiences to broadcasters at a much lower cost.

“It’s about making that mental adjustment. In that respect, these times are tough financially but intel-lectually interesting.”

Our survey found 73% of indies felt the recession had a negative impact on their business in 2010, with 62% saying it had affected the number of commis-sions, and 54% that it had hit profits.

2,064Drop in total hours produced by indies,

from 16,419 in 2009 to 14,355

in 2010

62%Say the recession has

hit the number of commissions

54%Say it has had an impact

on profitability

TOP INDEPENDENT COMPANIES 1-29


Indies 2011

Indie Overall turnover2010 (£m)

Overall turnover2009 (£m)

Change(%)

Pre-tax profit 2010 (£m)

Key shows Original hours 2010

Hours of repeats 2010

Full-time staff

Over The Rainbow: Talkback Thames Downton Abbey: Carnival Film & TV An Idiot Abroad: Mentorn Media

1 Talkback Thames (Fremantle) 145.00 139.00 4.32 - The X Factor; Britain’s Got Talent; The Appren-

tice; Over The Rainbow; QI; Celebrity Juice 437.00 - 108

2 Hit Entertainment 143.61 157.20 -8.60 49.92 Thomas & Friends; Bob The Builder; Fireman Sam; Angelina Ballerina: Next Steps - - 220

3 Kudos Film and TV (Shine) 54.00 41.00 31.71 - Spooks; Law & Order UK; Ashes to Ashes;

Lip Service; Hustle 42.50 - 42

4 Tiger Aspect (Endemol) 47.80 64.00 -25.31 - Secret Diary of A Call Girl; Benidorm; Me & My

Monsters; The Deep; Tinga Tinga Tales 132.00 5,186.00 69

5 Shine TV (Shine) 43.40 37.30 16.35 - Merlin; MasterChef; Don’t Stop Believing; The Magicians; Got To Dance 105.00 532.00 30

6 Lime Pictures (All3Media) 40.86 46.82 -12.72 - Hollyoaks; Hollyoaks Later; The Only Way Is

Essex; Ingenious; The Season 159.50 137.50 326

7 Company Pictures (All3Media) 40.00 39.70 0.76 - Shameless; Skins; Wild At Heart; George

Gently; The Silence 41.00 14.50 26

8 Twofour 33.00 24.30 35.80 - The Hotel Inspector; 100 Greatest Toys With Jonathan Ross; Night Of Heroes 101.00 - 264

9 Avalon TV (Avalon) 31.00 24.00 29.17 - Harry Hill’s TV Burp; Russell Howard’s Good News; Lee Nelson’s Well Good Show - - 70

10 Optomen/One Potato Two Potato (All3M) 29.10 22.70 28.19 - Great British Waste Menu; Heston’s Feasts;

Market Kitchen; Mary Queen Of Shops 226.00 1,000.00 57

11 Studio Lambert (All3Media) 26.10 3.80 586.84 - Undercover Boss; Three In A Bed; Four In A

Bed; The Fairy Jobmother; Seven Days 42.00 - 27

12 Princess Productions (Shine) 25.00 13.60 83.82 - Got To Dance; Must Be The Music; The Wright

Stuff; Something For The Weekend; T4 526.50 491.00 110

12 Carnival Film & Television (NBC) 25.00 36.50 -31.51 - Downton Abbey; Any Human Heart;

Whitechapel; Material Girl 22.00 880.00 12

14 Hat Trick Productions 24.80 19.60 26.53 - Have I Got News For You; Outnumbered; Dinner

Date; Facejacker 56.00 47.00 53

15 Sunset + Vine (Tinopolis) 24.00 - - - BBC Horse Racing; Mobil 1 The Grid 856.00 - -

15 Lion TV (All3Media) 24.00 21.30 12.68 - Pompeii – Life & Death in a Roman Town; Horrible Histories; Edwardian Farm; First Light 155.00 200.00 100

17 Mentorn Media (Tinopolis) 23.00 - - - Question Time; An Idiot Abroad; Ask The

Chancellors; Underage And Pregnant 173.50 0.00 50

17 Bentley Productions (All3Media) 23.00 22.28 3.25 - Midsomer Murders 16.00 194.00 7

19 North One TV (All3Media) 22.60 23.40 -3.42 - Fifth Gear; Gadget Show; The Unforgettables;

WRC; The Hospital 146.00 100.00 60

20 Objective Produc-tions (All3Media) 21.60 23.00 -6.09 - The Cube; Pete Versus Life; John Bishop’s Britain;

Peep Show; Derren Brown – Enigma 125.00 495.00 42

21 Left Bank Pictures 21.16 13.09 61.65 - Wallander; Married Single Other; Strike Back; Father And Son; DCI Banks 27.00 9.00 17

22 Aardman1 20.00 20.00 0.00 - Wallace & Gromit’s World Of Invention; Shaun The Sheep; Timmy Time 8.00 - 600

23 Darlow Smithson (Endemol) 19.60 15.80 24.05 - Stephen Hawking’s Universe; I Shouldn't Be

Alive; Concorde’s Last Flight 27.00 1,637.00 64

24 RDF TV (Zodiak) 19.44 28.09 -30.79 - The Secret Millionaire; Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents; Dickinson’s Real Deal 238.00 - 114

25 Maverick Television (All3Media) 16.03 13.20 21.44 - Embarrassing Bodies; How to Look Good Na-

ked; Children’s Hospital; Bizarre ER; Sectioned 107.00 192.00 50

26 Leopard Films 15.00 13.00 15.38 - The Day The Immigrants Left; Is Oral Sex Safe?; Missing; Househunters International 208.00 200.00 25

26 Open Mike Productions 15.00 9.18 63.40 - Apollo; Comedy Roadshow; Chatty Man; Stand

Up For The Week; Rich Hall's Dirty South 54.00 109.00 6

28 The Foundation (Zodiak) 14.13 9.77 44.63 - Waybuloo; Summer In Transylvania; Scorpion

Island; Dani’s House 45.00 - 13

29 Touchpaper (Zodiak) 13.10 6.82 92.08 - Being Human; Single-Handed 14.00 - 5

!1: provisional figures

Prepared with the assistance of About Corporate Finance, mergers and acquisitions experts in the global TV production sectorSee www.aboutcorpfin.com for more details


Indies 2011

TOP INDEPENDENT COMPANIES 30-58Indie Overall turnover

2010 (£m)Overall turnover

2009 (£m)Change

(%)Pre-tax profit 2010 (£m)



Full-time staff

Pineapple Dance Studios: Pulse Films Rev: Big Talk Welcome To Lagos: Keo Films

30 IWC (Zodiak) 12.46 13.22 -5.75 - Extreme Fishing; Location Location Location; Lost Kingdoms Of Africa; Genius Of Britain 88.00 - 97

31 Pulse Films 12.00 3.50 242.86 - Pineapple Dance Studios; Louie Spence Show-business; Take That – Look Back, Don’t Stare 35.00 280.00 38

32 Input Media 11.70 15.00 -22.00 0.05 UEFA Europa League Highlights; The FA Cup Preview; French Open Tennis 1,204.00 - 125

33 Rondo Media 11.40 10.30 10.68 - Rownd A Rownd; Sgorio; Dudley: Pryd O Ser 264.00 157.00 60

34 Big Talk Productions 10.53 6.07 73.48 - Rev; Him & Her 6.00 27.00 12

35 Parthenon Entertainment 10.50 9.90 6.06 1.90 Mystery Files; Wild Russia; Indian Tiger 40.00 100.00 48

36 CPL 10.20 - - - A League Of Their Own; All Star Mr & Mrs; Magic Numbers; Alex Read: The Fight Of His Life 47.00 200.00 9

37 Dragonfly (Shine) 110.00 9.00 11.11 - One Born Every Minute; The Family 14.00 - 20

37 Red Production Company 10.00 - - - Worried About The Boy; Single Father 5.50 0.00 8

39 Atlantic Productions 9.30 7.10 31.00 - David Attenborough’s First Life; Rome Un-wrapped; Flying Monsters 3D 27.00 45.00 33

40 Spun Gold TV 9.05 7.30 24.00 0.72 The Alan Titchmarsh Show; When Piers Met Lord Sugar; The Michael Ball Show 164.00 - 4

41 Pioneer Productions (Tinopolis) 9.00 15.00 -40.00 - Journey To The Edge Of The Universe; Buried

Alive – Chile Mine Rescue; Iceland Volcano 20.00 0.00 -

41 So Television2 9.00 8.00 12.50 0.90 The Graham Norton Show; Sorry, I’ve Got No Head 34.50 21.50 9

43 Fresh One Productions 8.50 5.50 54.55 - Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals; An African Journey

With Jonathan Dimbleby 40.00 - 8

44 Clerkenwell Films 8.30 - - - Misfits 7.00 6.00 5

45 Mammoth Screen 8.20 3.45 137.68 0.01 Joe Maddison’s War; Bouquet Of Barbed Wire; Amanda Holden’s Fantasy Lives; Margot 8.50 6.50 10

46 Nutopia 7.60 - - 0.54 America: The Story of Us; 9/11: State Of Emergency; The House That Made Me 16.50 0.00 10

47 Betty TV 7.50 7.00 7.14 - Fitter Than A Pensioner; Country House Res-cue; Promzillas; Wedding House 22.00 - 18

48 Raw TV 7.40 7.90 -6.33 - Neighbourhood Watched; Gold Rush Alaska; Battlefront; Sleeping Beauty; Banged Up Abroad 14.00 10.00 9

49 Somethin’ Else3 7.30 7.20 1.39 - Evo Music Rooms; SuperMe; Gardeners’ Question Time; 606; The Ronnie Wood Show 2,000.00 24.00 62

50 Buffalo Pictures 46.98 2.07 237.20 0.46 Doc Martin; Horsepower; Man To Manta 3.00 30.00 2

51 Impossible Pictures 6.60 11.605 -43.10 - Primeval; Buzz & Tell; Digging For Britain; Blitz Street; Making History 15.00 25.00 26

52 Baby Cow 66.56 6.70 -2.09 1.35 Ideal; Chekhov: Comedy Shorts; The Trip; Lizzie And Sarah; FHM Stand Up Hero 15.75 100.00 13

53 Splash Media 6.10 - - 0.30 Piers Morgan On… 18.00 170.00 7

54 Icon Films 5.62 3.45 62.90 - Headhunters Of World War II; Beast Hunter; A Million Snakebites; River Monsters 25.00 8.50 42

55 October Films 5.60 3.80 47.37 - Rude Tube; The Hunt For Britain's Sex Traf-fickers; Sun, Sea & A&E 46.00 70.00 22

55 Keo Films 65.60 4.60 21.74 0.65 Welcome To Lagos; 3 Hungry Boys; Amish: World’s Squarest Teenagers; River Cottage Everyday 26.00 - 32

57 The Comedy Unit (Zodiak) 5.30 2.58 105.43 - Rab C Nesbitt; Frankie Boyle’s Tramadol Nights;

Gary: Tank Commander; Burnistoun 27.50 12.00 10

58 Windfall Films 5.23 4.83 8.28 0.58 Inside Nature’s Giants; Animal Mega Moves; RI Lectures; Monster Moves; Lost Ships 15.00 - 22

!

compactmedia group

In association with

1: provisional figure; 2: turnover/profit to 31.07.10; 3: programming hours includes radio; 4: to 30.6.10; 5: estimated; 6: year to 31.03.10


Indies 2011



2009 (£m)Change




Full-time staff

Coppers: Blast! Films James May’s Man Lab: Plum Pictures Britain’s Next Top Model: Thumbs Up

59 Outline Productions 5.21 5.20 0.19 - Jo Frost: Extreme Parenting; The Secret Tourist; Fat Families; Fat Families Second Helpings 30.00 90.00 9

60 Blast! Films 5.18 4.93 5.07 0.11 Coppers; Lennon; On the Streets; Muslim Driv-ing School; Big School Lottery 17.50 4.50 10

61 Tigress (Endemol) 5.13 7.20 -28.75 - Everest: Beyond The Limit; Monty Halls’ Great Hebridean Escape 20.00 576.00 28

62 Antix Productions 5.08 5.62 -9.61 0.88 Most Haunted; Most Haunted Live; Ghosthunting With… 74.00 - 8

63 Zig Zag1 5.00 10.00 -50.00 - World Cup’s Most Shocking Moments; Back On The Job; The Truth Behind Zombies 39.00 75.00 12

63 Fever Media 5.00 4.00 25.00 0.20 Dancing On Wheels; Bill Bailey’s Birdwatching Bonanza 24.00 - 7

65 Cactus (All3Media) 4.90 12.70 -61.42 - Saturday Kitchen; TV Book Club; ITV Crime Series 101.00 15.00 12

66 Firecracker Films2 4.80 - - - My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding; Glamour Models Mum And Me; Wrong Turn: The Kati Kim Story 16.00 - 14

67 ETV 4.45 6.10 -27.05 - Gala TV; Push 2,920.00 5.00 75

68 Tern TV 4.40 5.00 -12.00 0.02 Beauty Of Maps; Beauty Of Diagrams; Delphi – Bellybutton Of The Ancient World 54.00 - 36

69 True North Productions 4.26 4.25 0.24 0.60 Animal 24:7; Stealing Shakespeare; Real Crime

– PC Sharon Beshenivsky; Britain’s Underworld 75.00 330.00 12

70 DLT Entertainment 4.15 5.05 -17.82 0.20 My Family 4.50 195.00 5

71 Darrall Macqueen 4.12 2.30 79.13 0.89 Pet Squad; Magic Baby; The Fluffy Club; Bear Behaving Badly 57.00 340.00 8

72 Bwark Productions 4.00 5.00 -20.00 1.60 The Inbetweeners; The Persuasionists 4.50 12.00 4

72 Monkey Kingdom (NBC) 4.00 6.90 -42.03 - Comedy Roast; Young, Dumb And Living Off

Mum; Newlyweds; Henry 8.0 - - 12

72 Liberty Bell (Avalon) 4.00 4.00 0.00 - Grouchy Young Men; Three Men Go To Ireland; Songbook; The Book Show - - 10

75 Kindle Entertainment3 3.95 7.05 -43.97 0.64 Some Dogs Bite; Jinx; Big And Small; My Spy

Family; Harry Potter – Behind the Magic 2.75 804.00 6

76 Electric Sky 3.90 3.74 4.28 - Britain’s Fattest Man; The World’s Fattest Man; First Love; Eating Art 106.00 261.00 8

76 Presentable (Zodiak) 3.90 2.91 34.02 - Only Connect; Late Night Poker; The Poker

Lounge; Oz And Hugh Raise The Bar 53.50 - 17

78 Green Inc Film & Television 3.86 2.85 35.44 - Ask Rhod Gilbert; The Many Faces Of Alison

Steadman; Four Live; The Daily Show; Sketchy 131.50 118.00 12

79 Wag TV 3.75 2.90 29.31 0.60 How Do They Do It?; Ancient X Files; Britain's Trillion Pound Horror Story; X Machines 30.00 50.00 12

80 Remedy Productions 3.50 3.70 -5.41 - Freshly Squeezed; Gonzo; Suck My Pop; NME Awards; Radio One Teen Awards 700.00 - 12

80 Blink Films 3.50 3.50 0.00 - The Miliband Of Brothers; Real Stories; Chinese Food In Minutes; How to Take Stunning Pictures 25.00 30.00 5

82 Plum Pictures4 3.50 3.20 9.37 - James May’s Man Lab; Secret Med With Trevor McDonald: E Numbers: An Edible Adventure 13.50 95.50 12

83 Telesgop Cyf 3.19 - - 0.15 Porthmon; Ffermio; Bro; Royal Welsh Show; Sgota; Sing Your Heart Out 82.00 136.00 30

84 Illumina Digital 3.05 - - 0.26 Better Learning With ICT; On Top Of The Digital World; Copykatz Beware 3.00 3.00 33

85 Thumbs Up Productions 3.00 - - - Britain’s Next Top Model; Kitchen Sink To

Catwalk; School Mum Makeover 45.00 100.00 5

86 Walsh Brothers 2.90 2.10 38.10 1.80 My Life; Karate Kids; Toy Soldiers; ToryBoy 11.00 7.00 5

1: Banijay until 24.09.10; 2: figures to 30.04.10; 3: figures to 31.03.10; 4: figures to 30.06.10


compactmedia group

In association with



2009 (£m)Change




Full-time staff

Sherlock: Hartswood Films Heir Hunters: Flame TV Shooting Stars: Pett Productions

87 Hartswood Films 2.84 - - -0.55 Sherlock 4.50 150.00 7

88 Freeform Productions

12.80 25.30 -47.17 - A Place In The Sun; Dream Lives For Sale; Home Or Away; The Gemma Factor 30.00 - 5

89 Quicksilver Media 2.60 3.00 -13.33 - Unreported World; Secret Iraq 14.50 - -

90 Gogglebox Entertainment 2.60 2.68 -2.99 - Impossible; Stand Out From The Crowd;

Plain Jane 12.00 24.00 5

90 CTVC 2.60 - - - Too Old To Be A Mum? 4.00 10.00 18

92 Pacific 2.56 1.87 36.90 - Nigella Kitchen; Baking Made Easy; Barefoot Contessa 9.50 142.00 7

93 Flame TV (Avalon) 2.50 2.40 4.17 - Heir Hunters; Saints & Scroungers; Don't Get Done, Get Dom 24.50 49.00 4

93 Impossible TV 2.50 1.20 108.33 - Gaspard & Lisa; Castle Farm 2.00 65.00 0

93 Summer Films 12.50 - - - My Shocking Story: Octoboy 1.00 28.00 5

96 Oxford Scientific Films 2.48 - - - Britain’s Witch Children; Fatal Attractions;

History Of The Safari 4.00 15.00 8

97 Pilot Film and TV 2.40 2.10 14.29 0.16 Globe Trekker; World Cafe; Planet Food; Metropolis; Bazaar 13.00 100.00 11

98 Magnum Media 2.30 - - - Chris Moyles’ Quiz Night; When Moyles Met The Radio 1 Breakfast DJs 15.00 7.00 2

99 Bullseye Productions (Zodiak) 2.20 7.22 -69.53 - The Living Cannibals; World’s Worst Weather;

Pricing The Priceless; Toughest Race On Earth 8.00 50.00 10

100 Illuminations 2.20 2.00 10.00 0.03 Hamlet; Macbeth; Art Of Faith 6.00 3.00 6

101 Rival Media 2.18 - - 0.15 Power Struggle; Mission Beach USA; What Shall We Do Today?; Diversity: The XD Challenge 9.50 50.00 6

102 Novel Entertainment 2.15 1.91 12.57 - Horrid Henry 10.50 152.00 5

103 True Vision 2.10 1.83 14.75 0.03 Zimbabwe’s Forgotten Children; Jobless; Lost Girls Of South Africa 9.00 18.00 8

104 Matchlight 2.10 - - - At Home With The Georgians; Unequal Opportunities With John Humphrys 7.00 7.00 13

104 Great Meadow Productions 2.10 2.29 -8.30 - When Harvey Met Bob 1.50 0.00 -

106 Topical Television (Avalon) 2.08 1.75 18.86 0.22 Real Rescues; One Show features 40.00 15.00 8

107 3DD Productions 2.00 1.80 11.11 0.01 Album Chart Show; Koko Pop; 360 Sessions; In Conversation; Discovering Lennon 50.00 150.00 4

107 Pett Productions 2.00 1.78 12.36 0.25 Shooting Stars; Angelos Epithemiou: Moving On 7.00 2.00 6

109 World’s End Television 1.80 1.80 0.00 - Katy Brand Vs; Mark Watson Kicks Off 9.00 9.00 5

110 Cicada Bellwether Productions 1.75 - - - Earth Wonders; Secrets Of The Tribe; Blame It

On The Boogie; The Man With The Golden Gavel 2.00 0.00 4

111 Skyworks 1.70 - - 0.37 South Africa Walks; German Wanderlust; Dan Snow’s Norman Walks 5.50 120.00 13

111 Reef Television 1.70 3.40 -50.00 - Dealers: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is 40 8.00 8

113 Glasshead3 1.58 1.83 -13.66 0.51 Stuttering School; Missing: Claudia Lawrence; BBC Markets 13.00 4.00 8

114 Minnow Films 1.56 - - 0.17 Scenes From A Teenage Killing; Cage Fighting Women; Four Sons versus Four Daughters 4.00 9.00 4

!1: 2009 figure; 2: 2008 figure; 3: turnover/profit to 31.03.10


Indies 2011



2009 (£m)Change




Full-time staff

Police Interceptors: Raw Cut

1: figures to 31.07.10; 2: figures for year to August 2009; 3: 2009 figure; 4: year to 31.09.09

The Taking Of Prince Harry: Juniper

115 Back2Back 1.50 1.20 25.00 0.31 The Hunks; Extraordinary Dogs; Responsible Business TV; Dom Joly And The Black Island 22.00 32.00 6

115 Raw Cut 1.50 2.20 -31.81 - Police Interceptors 16.00 750.00 8

115 Fulcrum 1.50 1.50 0.00 - Saxon Gold: Finding The Hoard; It Shouldn’t Happen At A Vets; Black Market Britain 3.00 3.00 7

115 Channel X/ Channel K1 1.50 - - 0.14 Jason Manford Live; DOA; Hung Out 2.00 20.00 8

119 Iambic Productions 1.46 1.10 32.73 0.54 Placido Domingo – My Favourite Roles; The Lost Concert 5.00 2.00 6

120 Century Films2 1.44 - - - Cannabis: Britain’s Secret Farms; Ambreen: The Girl Boxer; Young, Angry And White; Scams 3.50 - 5

121 Attaboy 1.31 8.70 -84.94 0.05 Wheeler Dealers 10.00 1,500.00 5

122 Juniper 1.30 1.20 8.33 - My Father, The Bomb And Me; The Trouble With The Pope; The Taking Of Prince Harry 57.50 3.50 8

122 Testimony Films 1.30 1.80 -27.78 - A Century Of Fatherhood; Hop Skip And Jump; Britain’s Secret Schindler 12.00 15.00 6

124 Giant Film & TV 1.05 1.16 -9.48 - The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Specials; Bull-run: New York To Texas; Lost: The End Is Nigh 18.50 52.50 10

125 Seventh Art Productions 1.00 1.20 -16.67 0.03 Chopin In Warsaw; Tim Marlow On…; The Mak-

ing Of Swallows And Amazons 50.00 500.00 9

125 Hardcash Productions 1.00 0.80 25.00 0.13 Britain’s Secret Slave; Undercover Social

Worker; Post Office Undercover 50.00 5.00 4

127 The Proudfoot Company 0.95 0.70 35.71 0.08 Close Up… 2.50 - 5

128 Lambent 0.84 1.10 -23.64 0.09 Teen Undertaker; One Under; Hansel And Gretel 3.00 - 5

129 Colonial Pictures 0.80 0.80 0.00 - Britain’s Greatest Ships; Auction; Dream Homes 25.00 160.00 5

129 Dartmouth Films 0.80 0.90 -11.11 0.00 The War You Don't See; The Battle For Barking; The Kids Britain Doesn’t Want 4.00 0.00 2

131 Red Planet Pictures

30.70 - - 0.063 The Nativity; Crash 9.00 3.00 5

132 Talent Television 40.64 1.84 -65.22 - Fred Dineage On The Krays; Damilola: Death Of A Ten Year Old; Fred Dineage Crime Stories 2.00 40.00 7

133 Rise Films 0.50 0.30 66.70 0.02 Rough Aunties; Cowboys In India; Road To Las Vegas 5.00 0.00 4

133 Quickfire Media 0.50 - - - Revealed: The Virgin Queen’s Fatal Affair; Secrets Of The Arabian Nights 2.00 2.00 2

135 Televisionary 0.47 1.25 -62.40 0.03 Ultimate Ulster 5.00 10.00 5

136 Caledonia TV Productions 0.40 - - -0.06 The Lighthouse Stevensons; The Father Of

Australia; Caileagan An Airm (Army Girls) 4.50 7.00 5

137 Tigerlily Films 0.39 0.50 -22.00 0.06 My BarMitzvah Diary; The Market; Alexis Arquette: She’s My Brother 3.00 3.00 5

138 Matchbox TV 0.35 - - 0.10 127 Hours: T4 Movie Special; Raavan World Premiere; Cemetery Junction: T4 Movie Special 6.00 18.00 2

139 Turn On Television 0.30 - - 0.03 When Love Turns Lethal; Conmen Case Files 5.00 50.00 2

140 UBC Media/Smooth Operations 0.18 - - -0.45 Cambridge Folk Festival 6.00 - 12

141 AMG Television 0.10 - - 0.01 Ma5da MX5 Racing; 750 Motorclub Racing; TVR Shallenge; BRSCC Racing 45.00 264.00 1


Indies 2011



2009 (£m)Change




Full-time staff

1: figures to 31.07.10; 2: figures for year to August 2009; 3: 2009 figure; 4: year to 31.09.09

compactmedia group

In association with

Space from 3,000 to 13,000sqftHD fully integrated

5.1 sound suiteFlexible and competitive rates

Audiences from 1 -1001Outstanding catering and hospitality

Undercover Social Worker: Hardcash Productions

115 Back2Back 1.50 1.20 25.00 0.31 The Hunks; Extraordinary Dogs; Responsible Business TV; Dom Joly And The Black Island 22.00 32.00 6

115 Raw Cut 1.50 2.20 -31.81 - Police Interceptors 16.00 750.00 8

115 Fulcrum 1.50 1.50 0.00 - Saxon Gold: Finding The Hoard; It Shouldn’t Happen At A Vets; Black Market Britain 3.00 3.00 7

115 Channel X/ Channel K1 1.50 - - 0.14 Jason Manford Live; DOA; Hung Out 2.00 20.00 8

119 Iambic Productions 1.46 1.10 32.73 0.54 Placido Domingo – My Favourite Roles; The Lost Concert 5.00 2.00 6

120 Century Films2 1.44 - - - Cannabis: Britain’s Secret Farms; Ambreen: The Girl Boxer; Young, Angry And White; Scams 3.50 - 5

121 Attaboy 1.31 8.70 -84.94 0.05 Wheeler Dealers 10.00 1,500.00 5

122 Juniper 1.30 1.20 8.33 - My Father, The Bomb And Me; The Trouble With The Pope; The Taking Of Prince Harry 57.50 3.50 8

122 Testimony Films 1.30 1.80 -27.78 - A Century Of Fatherhood; Hop Skip And Jump; Britain’s Secret Schindler 12.00 15.00 6

124 Giant Film & TV 1.05 1.16 -9.48 - The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Specials; Bull-run: New York To Texas; Lost: The End Is Nigh 18.50 52.50 10

125 Seventh Art Productions 1.00 1.20 -16.67 0.03 Chopin In Warsaw; Tim Marlow On…; The Mak-

ing Of Swallows And Amazons 50.00 500.00 9

125 Hardcash Productions 1.00 0.80 25.00 0.13 Britain’s Secret Slave; Undercover Social

Worker; Post Office Undercover 50.00 5.00 4

127 The Proudfoot Company 0.95 0.70 35.71 0.08 Close Up… 2.50 - 5

128 Lambent 0.84 1.10 -23.64 0.09 Teen Undertaker; One Under; Hansel And Gretel 3.00 - 5

129 Colonial Pictures 0.80 0.80 0.00 - Britain’s Greatest Ships; Auction; Dream Homes 25.00 160.00 5

129 Dartmouth Films 0.80 0.90 -11.11 0.00 The War You Don't See; The Battle For Barking; The Kids Britain Doesn’t Want 4.00 0.00 2

131 Red Planet Pictures

30.70 - - 0.063 The Nativity; Crash 9.00 3.00 5

132 Talent Television 40.64 1.84 -65.22 - Fred Dineage On The Krays; Damilola: Death Of A Ten Year Old; Fred Dineage Crime Stories 2.00 40.00 7

133 Rise Films 0.50 0.30 66.70 0.02 Rough Aunties; Cowboys In India; Road To Las Vegas 5.00 0.00 4

133 Quickfire Media 0.50 - - - Revealed: The Virgin Queen’s Fatal Affair; Secrets Of The Arabian Nights 2.00 2.00 2

135 Televisionary 0.47 1.25 -62.40 0.03 Ultimate Ulster 5.00 10.00 5

136 Caledonia TV Productions 0.40 - - -0.06 The Lighthouse Stevensons; The Father Of

Australia; Caileagan An Airm (Army Girls) 4.50 7.00 5

137 Tigerlily Films 0.39 0.50 -22.00 0.06 My BarMitzvah Diary; The Market; Alexis Arquette: She’s My Brother 3.00 3.00 5

138 Matchbox TV 0.35 - - 0.10 127 Hours: T4 Movie Special; Raavan World Premiere; Cemetery Junction: T4 Movie Special 6.00 18.00 2

139 Turn On Television 0.30 - - 0.03 When Love Turns Lethal; Conmen Case Files 5.00 50.00 2

140 UBC Media/Smooth Operations 0.18 - - -0.45 Cambridge Folk Festival 6.00 - 12

141 AMG Television 0.10 - - 0.01 Ma5da MX5 Racing; 750 Motorclub Racing; TVR Shallenge; BRSCC Racing 45.00 264.00 1


Indies 2011

The Hotel Inspector: Twofour The Day The Immigrants Left: Leopard Films Flying Monsters 3D: Atlantic Productions

‘TRUE’ INDIES TOP 30 PRODUCERS NOT OWNED BY A LARGER GROUPIndie Overall turnover


2009 (£m)Change




Full-time staff

1 Hit Entertainment 143.61 157.20 -8.60 49.92 Thomas & Friends; Bob The Builder; Fireman Sam; Angelina Ballerina: The Next Steps - - 220

2 Twofour 33.00 24.30 35.80 - The Hotel Inspector; 100 Greatest Toys With Jonathan Ross; Night Of Heroes; My Funniest Year 101.00 - 264

3 Avalon TV 31.00 24.00 29.17 - Harry Hill’s TV Burp; Russell Howard’s Good News; Lee Nelson’s Well Good Show - - 70

4 Hat Trick 24.80 19.60 26.53 - Have I Got News For You; Outnumbered; Dinner Date; Facejacker 56.00 47.00 53

5 Left Bank Pictures 21.16 13.09 61.65 - Wallander; Married Single Other; Strike Back; Father And Son; DCI Banks 27.00 9.00 17

6 Aardman 20.00 20.00 0.00 - Wallace & Gromit’s World Of Invention; Shaun The Sheep; Timmy Time 8.00 - 600

7 Leopard Films 15.00 13.00 15.38 - The Day The Immigrants Left; Is Oral Sex Safe?; Missing; Househunters International; Man Caves 208.00 200.00 25

7 Open Mike 15.00 9.18 63.40 - Live At The Apollo; Comedy Roadshow; Chatty Man; Stand Up For The Week; Rich Hall’s Dirty South 54.00 109.00 6

9 Pulse Films 12.00 3.50 242.86 - Pineapple Dance Studios; Louie Spence Show -business; Take That – Look Back, Don’t Stare 35.00 280.00 38

10 Input Media 11.70 15.00 -22.00 0.05 UEFA Europa League Highlights; The FA Cup Preview; French Open Tennis 1,204.00 - 125

11 Rondo Media 11.40 10.30 10.68 - Rownd A Rownd; The Indian Doctor; Sgorio; Dudley: Pryd O Ser 264.00 157.00 60

12 Big Talk Productions 10.53 6.07 73.48 - Rev; Him & Her 6.00 27.00 12

13 Parthenon Entertainment 10.50 9.90 6.06 1.90 Mystery Files; Wild Russia; Indian Tiger 40.00 100.00 48

14 CPL 10.20 - - - A League Of Their Own; All Star Mr & Mrs; Magic Numbers; Louis Walsh & Kian Egan’s Next Big Thing 47.00 200.00 9

15 Red Production Company 10.00 - - - Worried About The Boy; Single Father 5.50 0.00 8

16 Atlantic Productions 9.30 7.10 31.00 David Attenborough’s First Life; Rome Unwrapped; Flying Monsters 3D; Engineering The Impossible 27.00 45.00 33

17 Spun Gold TV 9.05 7.30 24.00 0.72 The Alan Titchmarsh Show; When Piers Met Lord Sugar; The Michael Ball Show 164.00 - 4

18 So Television 9.00 8.00 12.50 0.90 The Graham Norton Show; Pixelface 34.5 21.50 9

19 Fresh One 8.50 5.50 54.55 - Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals; Africa With Jonathan Dimbleby 40.00 - 8

20 Clerkenwell Films 8.30 - - - Misfits 7.00 6.00 5

21 Mammoth Screen 8.20 3.45 137.68 0.01 Joe Maddison’s War; Bouquet Of Barbed Wire; Amanda Holden’s Fantasy Lives; Margot; Dappers 8.50 6.50 10

22 Nutopia 7.60 - - 0.54 America: The Story of Us; 9/11: State of Emer-gency; The House That Made Me 16.50 0.00 10

23 Betty TV 7.50 7.00 7.14 - Fitter Than A Pensioner; Country House Rescue; Promzillas 22.00 - 18

24 Raw TV 7.40 7.90 -6.33 - Neighbourhood Watched’ Gold Rush Alaska; Battlefront; Sleeping Beauty; Banged Up Abroad 14.00 10.00 9

25 Somethin’ Else 7.30 7.20 1.39 - Evo Music Rooms; SuperMe; Gardeners’ Question Time; 606; The Ronnie Wood Show *2,000.00 24.00 62

26 Buffalo 6.98 2.07 237.20 0.46 Doc Martin; Islands Of Britain 3.00 30.00 2

27 Impossible Pictures 6.60 11.60 -43.10 - Primeval; Buzz & Tell; Digging For Britain; Blitz Street; Making History 15.00 25.00 26

28 Baby Cow 6.56 6.70 -2.09 1.35 Ideal; Chekhov: Comedy Shorts; The Trip; Lizzie And Sarah; FHM Stand Up Hero 15.75 100.00 13

29 Splash Media 6.10 - - 0.30 Piers Morgan On… 18.00 170.00 7

30 Icon Films 5.62 3.45 62.90 - Headhunters Of World War; Beast Hunter; A Million Snakebites; River Monsters 25.00 8.50 42

*includes radio hours


compactmedia group

In association with

Benidorm: Tiger Aspect Undercover Boss: Studio Lambert Being Human: Touchpaper

‘OWNED’ INDIES TOP 30 PRODUCERS OWNED BY A LARGER GROUP*Indie Overall turnover


2009 (£m)Change




Full-time staff

1 Talkback Thames (Fremantle) 145.00 139.00 4.32 - The X Factor; BGT; The Apprentice; Over The

Rainbow; QI; Celebrity Juice 437.00 - 108

2 Kudos Film and TV (Shine) 54.00 41.00 31.71 - Spooks; Law & Order UK; Ashes To Ashes; Lip

Service; Hustle 42.50 - 42

3 Tiger Aspect (Endemol) 47.80 64.00 -25.31 - Secret Diary Of A Call Girl; Benidorm; Me & My

Monsters; The Deep; Tinga Tinga Tales 132.00 5,186.00 69

4 Shine TV (Shine) 43.40 37.30 16.35 - Merlin, MasterChef; Don’t Stop Believing, The Magicians, Got To Dance 105.00 532.00 30

5 Lime Pictures (All3Media) 40.86 46.82 -12.72 - Hollyoaks; Hollyoaks Later; The Only Way Is Essex;

Ingenious; The Season; Hollyoaks Music Show 159.50 137.50 326

6 Company Pictures (All3Media) 40.00 39.70 0.76 - Shameless; Skins; Wild At Heart; George Gently;

The Silence 41.00 14.50 26

7 Optomen/One Potato Two Potato (All3M) 29.10 22.70 28.19 - Great British Waste Menu; Heston’s Feasts;

Market Kitchen; Mary Queen Of Shops 226.00 1,000.00 57

8 Studio Lambert (All3Media) 26.10 3.80 586.84 - Undercover Boss; Three In A Bed; Four In A Bed;

The Fairy Jobmother; Seven Days 42.00 - 27

9 Carnival Film & Television (NBC) 25.00 36.50 -31.51 - Downton Abbey; Any Human Heart; Whitechapel;

Material Girl 22.00 880.00 12

9 Princess Productions (Shine) 25.00 13.60 83.82 - Got To Dance; Must Be The Music; The Wright

Stuff; Something For The Weekend; T4 526.50 491.00 110

11 Sunset + Vine (Tinopolis) 24.00 - - - BBC Horse Racing; Mobil 1 The Grid 856.00 - -

11 Lion TV (All3Media) 24.00 21.30 12.68 - Pompeii – Life And Death In A Roman Town; Horrible Histories; Edwardian Farm; First Light 155.00 200.00 100

13 Mentorn Media (Tinopolis) 23.00 - - - Question Time; An Idiot Abroad; Ask The

Chancellors; Underage And Pregnant 173.50 0.00 50

13 Bentley Productions (All3Media) 23.00 22.28 3.25 - Midsomer Murders 16.00 194.00 7

15 North One TV (All3Media) 22.60 23.40 -3.42 - Fifth Gear; Gadget Show; The Unforgettables;

WRC; The Hospital 146.00 100.00 60

16 Objective Produc-tions (All3Media) 21.60 23.00 -6.09 - The Cube; Pete Versus Life; John Bishop’s Britain;

Peep Show; Derren Brown – Enigma Stage Tour 125.00 495.00 42

17 Darlow Smithson (Endemol) 19.60 15.80 24.05 - Stephen Hawking’s Universe; I Shouldn't Be Alive;

Concorde’s Last Flight 27.00 1,637.00 64

18 RDF TV (Zodiak) 19.44 28.09 -30.79 - The Secret Millionaire; Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents 238.00 - 114

19 Maverick Television (All3Media) 16.03 13.20 21.44 - Embarrassing Bodies, How To Look Good Naked,

Children’s Hospital; Bizarre ER; Sectioned 107.00 192.00 50

20 The Foundation (Zodiak) 14.13 9.77 44.63 - Waybuloo; Summer In Transylvania; Scorpion

Island; Dani’s House; Mister Maker Comes To Town 45.00 - 13

21 Touchpaper (Zodiak) 13.10 6.82 92.08 - Being Human; Single-Handed 14.00 - 5

22 IWC (Zodiak) 12.46 13.22 -5.75 - Extreme Fishing; Location Location Location; Lost Kingdoms Of Africa; Genius Of Britain 88.00 - 97

23 Dragonfly (Shine) 10.00 9.00 11.11 - One Born Every Minute; The Family 14.00 - 20

24 Pioneer Productions (Tinopolis) 9.00 15.00 -40.00 - Journey To The Edge Of The Universe; Buried Alive –

Chile Mine Rescue; Iceland Volcano 20.00 0.00 -

25 The Comedy Unit (Zodiak) 5.30 2.58 105.43 - Rab C Nesbitt; Frankie Boyle’s Tramadol Nights;

Gary: Tank Commander; Burnistoun 27.50 12.00 32

26 Tigress (Endemol) 5.13 7.20 -28.75 - The One Show; Everest: Beyond The Limit; Monty Hall’s Great Hebridean Escape; Maneaters 20.00 576.00 28

27 Cactus (All3Media) 4.90 12.70 -61.42 - Saturday Kitchen; TV Book Club; ITV crime series 101.00 15.00 12

28 Monkey Kingdom (NBC) 4.00 6.90 -42.03 - Young, Dumb And Living Off Mum; Comedy Roast - - 12

29 Presentable (Zodiak) 3.90 2.91 34.02 - Only Connect; Late Night Poker; The Poker Lounge;

Oz And Hugh Raise The Bar 53.50 - 17

30 Flame TV (Avalon) 2.50 2.40 4.17 - Heir Hunters; Saints And Scroungers; Don’t Get Done, Get Dom 24.50 49.00 4

*Not all owners chose to break down subsidiary data


Indies 2011

TOP OWNERS/CONSOLIDATORS

Super-indies:the big get bigger

Consolidation of the super-indies heated up last year, with Zodiak taking over RDF and Time Warner buying a stake in Shed as media giants looked for new revenues. David Wood reports

I f the pace of acquisition activity in independent production has cooled over the past couple of

years, the long-predicted consolidation of the consolidators has been heating up. And not without reason. In 2009, owners/consolidators UK turn over was worth £905m; in 2010, it rose to almost £1.12m, up £211m (23.3%).

With growth potential of that calibre in tough economic times, no wonder broadcasters and others are circling for a slice of the action. In the summer of 2010, Zodiak Entertainment bought RDF Media, while Time Warner took a controlling interest in Shed Media. Most recently, News Corporation kept it in the family with the £415m acquisi-tion of Shine. All3Media is widely expected to be the next big name to be bought by a major media company.

For broadcasters, the logic of indie ownership is simple: with little growth potential in their traditional markets of network broadcasting and advertising, ownership of intellectual property is seen as the way forward. It’s no surprise, insists Zodiak’s David Frank. “If I was a broadcaster, I would want to get into the content business because it’s more robust and sustain-able than broadcasting.”

All3Media tops the list of consolida-tors in the UK, with 2010 revenues of £240m, besting Endemol UK’s £237.6m. It’s some way to the next biggest: European broadcaster Fremantle, owner of Talkback Thames, posted revenues of £145m. Then comes Shine’s £133m.

Zodiak, whose subsidiary The Comedy Unit made Frankie

‘All3Media is widely expected to be the next big name to be bought by a major media company’

Boyle’s Tramadol Nights (pictured, below), heads our list of global super-indies, with a £418m turnover (the biggest global player, Endemol, declined to reveal its global turnover), followed by All3Media with £400m and Shine with £396m. The global list reveals how significant US pro-ducer Reveille is to Shine, making

up £129m of its £396m global turnover (see box).

Time Warner’s £56.9m UK turnover really belongs to Shed

Group alone as the figure pre-dates the acquisi-tion last year. This year we’ve included Avalon – which owns Flame, Liberty Bell, Topical and Tinder-box – and NBC,

owner of Carnival Films and Monkey Kingdom. Out goes Target Entertain-ment after its drama indie Greenlit Rights went into administration as part of the sale to Metrodome.

The 2011 picture for super-indies is rosier still. All3Media chief Steve Mor-rison has underlined that a complete change in economic circumstances in the production market will help All3 head towards double-digit turnover growth in 2011.

It’s a similar situation at Time Warners’ Shed Media. CEO Nick Southgate comments: “Our results will show top-line growth of maybe 15% because market conditions have improved dramatically since the middle of last year, with broadcasters such as ITV doing spectac ularly well off the back of an advertising recovery.”

The Gadget Show: All3Media-owned North One

£1.11bnValue of

owners/consolidators’ total UK turnover

in 2010

TOP OWNERS/CONSOLIDATORS


compactmedia group

In association with

Company UK turnover2010 (£m)

UK turnover2009 (£m)

Change(%)

Pre-tax profit(£m)

Amount from UK (%)

UK subsidiaries

1 All3Media 1240.00 224.10 7.10 - 60.00North One TV, Bentley Productions, Cactus TV, Optomen, One Potato Two Potato, Lion TV, Company Pictures, Lime Pictures, Maverick TV, Objective Productions, North One Sport, Studio Lambert, Illumina

2 Endemol 237.56 225.00 5.58 - - Darlow Smithson Productions, Initial, Remarkable Television, Tigress productions, Tiger Aspect Productions, Zeppotron

3 Fremantle 145.00 139.00 4.32 4.32 - Talkback Thames

4 Shine Group 133.00 100.96 31.74 - 34.00 Shine TV, Princess Productions, Kudos Film & Television, Dragonfly, Brown Eyed Boy

5 Zodiak Entertainment2 100.69 48.00 109.77 - 24.00RDF Television, RDF Television West, IWC Media, Touchpaper Television, Presentable, The Comedy Unit, The Foundation, Diverse, Bullseye Productions, Dangerous Films

6 Tinopolis 72.00 70.00 2.86 - - Mentorn Media, Sunset + Vine, Pioneer

7 Time Warner 356.90 - - - - Shed Productions, Shed Media Scotland, Wall to Wall, Ricochet, Twenty Twenty Television, Watershed, KOCO Drama

8 Avalon 39.00 29.00 34.48 - - Avalon, Flame, Liberty Bell, Topical Television, Tinderbox Television

9 NBC 33.50 - - - - Carnival, Monkey Kingdom

10 Ten Alps 25.30 23.10 9.52 1.24 98.00 Brook Lapping, Blakeway Productions, Below the Radar, Ten Alps Vision

11 Boomerang+ 21.41 19.76 8.35 0.71 - Boomerang+, Indus Films, Fflic, Alfresco, Apollo, Mwnci

12 DCD Media 11.60 - - - 38.00 Done and Dusted, September, Prospect, Prospect Cymru, West Park Pictures, Matchlight (joint venture)

TOP OWNERS/CONSOLIDATORS 1-12

SUPER-INDIES A GLOBAL VIEW

To ensure that we compared like with like, Broadcast this year ranked all owners/consoli-dators by UK turnover. Once you look at the glo-bal market, a different picture emerges. Clearly the UK is still a small part of the business for the likes of Time Warner and NBC, though this could change with future acquisitions.

But looking purely at the super-indie sector, and excepting Endemol’s reluctance to provide a global figure, Zodiak leads the way internation-ally with a turnover of £418.1m, just under a quarter of which comes from its UK operations, which have recently been swelled by its acquisi-tion of RDF Media.

All3Media posted global revenues of £400m in 2010 and its growing business in the US now accounts for almost 10% of this, thanks to the

likes of Studio Lambert’s Undercover Boss and the US version of Objective Produc-tions’ The Cube.

This puts it just ahead of Shine, which turned over £396m and, of these groups, has by far the biggest footprint in the US. Via subsidi-ary Reveille, America accounts for almost a third of its revenues, putting it on an equal footing with the UK.

Thanks to brand extensions such as

Who Do You Think You Are? (pictured), the Shed Group part of the Time Warner empire grew its global revenues from £81.9m in 2009 to £92.6m in 2010, with activity concentrated in the US and UK. The US is catching up in terms of turnover, pulling in £35.7m compared with the UK’s £56.9m.

DCD and Ten Alps, which also posted global revenues, had a more modest global presence, though it’s worth noting

that the US is a bigger mar-ket than the UK for DCD,

accounting for £13.1m of its £30.5m revenues. Ten Alps pulls in an extra £500,000 through its small

Asia subsidiary.

1: year to 31.08.10; 2: now incorporates RDF (2009 UK turnover £130.6m); 3: Shed Media figure for year to 31.12.09


Indies 2011

TOP SUPPLIERS

Big is best:small firms lose ground

Large indie owners such as Fremantle and All3Media were the big winners again this year, while the BBC and Channel 4 were once again voted the best and worst broadcasters

BBC1’s talent search Over The Rainbow brought its own pot of gold to Talkback Thames in 2010,

helping to make the Fremantle-owned producer the most valuable indie sup-plier to the corporation. What’s more, it was also the top supplier to rival ITV.

Indeed, with Hotsauce falling out of the top 10 following the demise of Jonathan Ross’ Friday night chat show, to be replaced by ITV Studios-owned Eggheads producer 12 Yard, the BBC’s top 10 suppliers by value list now contains not one indie that is not part of a bigger group.

Things aren’t much different at ITV, with only Left Bank – part-owned by BBC Worldwide – and Alan Titch-marsh Show producer Spun Gold flying the flag for the ‘true’ indie.

Over at Channel 4, it was down to Open Mike – leapfrogging Objective to become the broadcaster’s most valuable comedy supplier, thanks in part to the controversial Frankie Boyle’s Tramadol Nights – to demon-strate that it’s not just about Endemol and All3Media at Horseferry Road.

The vexed issue of terms of trade shows no signs of going away, with each of the five public service broad-casters singled out for criticism.

‘The BBC’s top 10 suppliers by value list now contains not one indie that is not part of a bigger group’

Indies called for greater transpar-ency, with some claiming instances of commissioning under one tariff, such as daytime or for a digital channel, and then premiering the show in peak or on a main channel, to save money or retain more rights.

There appears to be little alarm for Virgin suppliers now dealing with Sky – indeed, indies in general appear energised by the broadcaster’s com-missioning ambitions – but the other big change of ownership has met with greater opprobrium.

Desmond under fireRichard Desmond might bring some eccentric showmanship to Channel 5, but you’d be pushed to find a kind word about it in the survey responses. Not one indie named it as the best broadcaster to deal with, and its share of ‘worst broadcaster’ votes more than doubled to 16.9% (the BBC and C4 once again led the way, an inevitable by-product of dealing with more indies than others). “Hostile” and “difficult to negotiate with” are two of the kinder comments.

Finally, those indies engaging in digital content paint a gloomy picture of broadcasters’ efforts. Even C4,

generally thought of as at the forefront of this nascent sector, took some stick for its “changing briefs, unreasonable demands creatively and budgetarily, not negotiating in good faith and reneging on agreements”.

Indies were unsettled by “a lot of change” at the BBC, with one ques-tioning whether its team had “the right skillset”.

33%

Total Wipeout: Endemol Channel 4 Racing: Highflyer Productions Dinner Date: Hat Trick Productions

BEST BROADCASTER (% SHARE) 2011 2010 2009

BBC 41.4 46 29.1Channel 4 25.7 20 18.2Sky channels 13.1 3 6.4ITV 11.8 16 12.7Channel 5 0.0 4 8.2Others 9.2 11 25.4

WORST BROADCASTER (% SHARE) 2011 2010 2009

BBC 36.0 38 38.5Channel 4 18.2 20 13.2Channel 5 16.9 8 6.6ITV 5.4 14 14.3Sky channels 5.4 10 -Discovery 5.4 - -Other 12.3 10 27.4

Company Hours Key shows

1 IMG Media 416.9 Snooker; Darts; The Football League Show2 Endemol 143.0 Freak Like Me; Hotter Than My Daughter

3 Talkback Thames 130.4 Escape To The Country; Hospital Heroes

4 Lion Television 122.8 Victorian Pharmacy; Syrian School5 Mentorn 115.5 Cowboy Trap; Underage And Pregnant6 12 Yard Productions 101.2 Celebrity Eggheads; Who Dares Wins7 Leopard Films 93.5 Cash In The Attic; Filthy Rotten Scoundrels8 Sunset + Vine 91.0 Horse Racing9 Shine 82.1 Band For Britain; History Cold Case10 Indus Films 78.7 Snooker: Welsh Open; Bowls

TOP SUPPLIERS


compactmedia group

In association with

BBC THE BEST AND WORST OF BROADCASTERS

T he BBC worked with a whopping 305 indies last year, more than four times

as many as its nearest competitor, and nearly 30 more than 2009. The BBC won’t reveal the amount spent on indies over that time, and the proportion of spend relative to in-house, until the figures have been verified by Ofcom for its annual report, but a quick look at the top 10 suggests there may have been some changes.

Talkback Thames was the top supplier by spend, boosted by its first year producing an Andrew Lloyd Webber talent show, Over The Rainbow, on top of The Apprentice (pictured) and QI. It also jumped up the ranks for hours commissioned, rising from eighth in 2009 to third place, behind stal-warts IMG Media and Endemol.

Last year’s top dog by spend, Kudos, was in second place this year with returning series Ashes To Ashes, Hustle and Spooks. Tiger Aspect rose two places thanks to Blood And Oil, Grandma’s House and Me And My Monsters, but Shed, which first entered the top 10 last year, fell five places to seventh.

Despite this movement within the lead suppliers,

only one new indie – 12 Yard Pro-ductions – emerged in the value table. Quiz shows Eggheads and In It To Win It propelled it ahead of Lion and Mentorn. While it con-tinued to supply the most hours to the BBC, IMG remained out of the top 10 for spend.

But the BBC was yet again the most divisive of the broadcasters, with indies describing it as both the best and worst customer to deal with. They gave a thumbs up to its quick responses on com-missioning matters and overall transparency, while cash flow and budget terms were also seen as more attractive than other broad-casters. However, others com-plained of excessive bureaucracy, inefficiency, poor communica-tion, arrogance and greed.

Overall, however, the picture is slightly worse now than a year

ago: although the number of indies slating the BBC dropped from 38% to 36%, the number rating it the best broadcaster to work

with also fell, to 41% from 46% last year. As indicated in some of the com-ments (see box), it appears the BBC

may have to do its homework if it is to keep pace with Channel 4 and Sky.

Eggheads: 12 Yard

! BBC TOP SUPPLIERS (BY HOURS)

! BBC TOP SUPPLIERS (BY SPEND) Company Key shows

1 Talkback Thames The Apprentice; QI; Over The Rainbow2 Kudos Film and Television Ashes To Ashes; Hustle; Spooks

3 Shine Merlin; MasterChef; Most Annoying People

4 Tiger Aspect Blood And Oil; Grandma’s House; Me And My Monsters5 Endemol Total Wipeout; 101 Ways To Leave A Gameshow6 Wall to Wall New Tricks; Who Do You Think You Are?7 Shed Productions Waterloo Road; Garrow's Law8 12 Yard Productions Eggheads; In It To Win It9 Lion Television Edwardian Farm; Homes Under the Hammer10 Mentorn Question Time; The Big Questions; Motorway Cops

WHAT THE INDIES SAYPROS “Striving to make relations with indies work”

“By far the easiest and most straightforward to deal with”

“Despite long delays and lengthy decision-making, the resultant budgets are not totally unrealistic”

“Much more accessible than in the past”

CONS “Fundamentally they don’t really want nor need the independents”

“Still lots of inconsistency and red tape to wade through”

“Can at times seem inconsist-ent on what can and can’t be released for secondary UK sales”

“Still hard to fathom their wants and needs”

BROADCASTER RESPONSE

Jane McCloskeyHead of supplier management, commissioning

“We already have very strong relationships with indies. We want the BBC to go even further and become the best place in the industry to do business. The WoCC shows the indie community is already performing strongly and we want to ensure it continues to do so. Through the work we are doing with the Delivering Quality First work-streams, we are engaging closely with indies to see if there are other things we can do.”

Source: BBC


Indies 2011

TOP SUPPLIERS


1 Talkback Thames 201 Take Me Out; Britain’s Got Talent; The X Factor2 Spun Gold 156 Alan Titchmarsh Show; Michael Ball Show

3 RDF 101 Dickinson’s Real Deal; Secret Dealers

4 Endemol 54 Divided; Whole 19 Yards; Soccer Aid5 Prospect Pictures 40 Daily Cooks Challenge6 Hat Trick 29 Dinner Date6 Tiger Aspect 29 Benidorm; The Seasons; Ladies of Letters8 Can 22 Peter Andre – Next Chapter; Kerry Katona9 2WayTraffic 19 Who Wants To Be A Millionaire9 Bentley 18 Midsomer Murders

ITV FALLING SPEND

ITV spend on independent producers decreased for the second year in a row, falling

from £270-280m in 2009, to just £250-260m last year. The contin-ued impact of the recession was undoubtedly a factor as TV adver-tising revenues only made a tenta-tive recovery.

There was little change in its investment in independently pro-duced original content versus that produced in-house, the former accounting for 49% of spend – only slightly down on the previous year’s figure of 52%.

A total of 74 indies clinched commissions last year across ITV’s catalogue of channels. Again this was a slight decrease on 2009, when the broadcaster worked with 83 production companies.

Fremantle Media-owned Talk-back Thames was easily ITV’s biggest partner by spend and hours for the second year in a row. With a slate that includes Britain’s Got Talent and The X Factor, this is hardly sur-prising, even if The Bill was taken off air.

Endemol, which charted in second place in both cate-gories for 2009, slipped down the list, overtaken by The Alan Titch-marsh Show

(pictured) producer Spun Gold and RDF on top suppliers by hours. Midsomer Murders producer Bentley Productions leapfrogged Endemol in the spend table.

Drama specialist Left Bank Pic-tures was a new entrant, as was Downton Abbey and Whitechapel producer Carnival Films, while indie/agency Can Associates cemented its place in the ITV league table. The indies’ presence is indicative of ITV’s focus on drama and entertainment.

ITV was not considered the best or the worst broadcaster by the indie community. It was leap-frogged by the Sky channels in terms of popularity, while Channel 5 was considered a worse broad-caster to deal with, amid concerns over payment and terms.

Despite this, ITV’s respect for terms of trade remained a concern for indies, with some saying it

negotiates outside of the parameters laid down in the 2003 Communications Act.

Producers believe ITV chief executive Adam

Crozier’s aim to exploit content across all plat-forms needs work, as none thought it was the best broadcaster to deal with on non-linear or multi-platform projects.

Midsomer Murders: Bentley Productions

! ITV TOP SUPPLIERS (BY HOURS)

! ITV TOP SUPPLIERS (BY SPEND) Company Key shows

1 Talkback Thames Take Me Out; Britain’s Got Talent; The X Factor; The Bill2 Bentley Productions Midsomer Murders

3 Endemol Divided; Whole 19 Yards; Soccer Aid

4 Left Bank Pictures DCI Banks; Father & Son; Married Single Other5 Kudos Film & TV Law & Order: UK6 Spun Gold Alan Titchmarsh Show; Michael Ball Show7 Carnival Downton Abbey; Whitechapel8 Tiger Aspect Benidorm; The Seasons; Ladies Of Letters9 Company Pictures Wild At Heart10 Avalon Harry Hill’s TV Burp

WHAT THE INDIES SAYPROS “Commission-ing requirements well defined”

“A clarity of vision and appre-ciation of the commercial elements of programme producing”

“Quick responses to questions and good transparency”

“Collaborative in post- production”

CONS “Wants additional trans-missions or bundles repeat packages into the licence fee”

“Negotiates outside terms of trade”

“Sticks to terms of trade when it suits it”

“Increasingly less open to indies”

“Limited points of entry”


Peter FinchamDirector of television

“We are pleased that producers rate our commissioning operation highly in terms of transparency and quick decision-making. We want the best ideas, at the best prices, from the best suppliers. To that end, we will continue to talk to all producers about increased flexibility within our working rela-tionships to ensure we produce high-quality, popular programming that delivers maxi-mum efficiency within the schedule.”

Source: ITV


1 Endemol 777 Big Brother; Million Pound Drop2 Highflyer Productions 228 Channel Four Racing

3 Lime Pictures 145 Hollyoaks

4 Remedy Productions 74 Freshly Squeezed4 IWC Media 74 Iron Chef; Location Location Location6 RDF TV 67 Wogan’s Perfect Recall; Secret Millionaire7 Sunset + Vine 66 NFL8 Studio Lambert 59 Three/Four In A Bed; Ultimate Gap Year9 Maverick Television 49 Embarrassing Bodies; How To Look Good Naked9 Olga TV 41 The 5 O’Clock Show


compactmedia group

In association with

CHANNEL 4 CLEAR STRATEGY

C hannel 4’s main suppliers in terms of hours and spend remained relatively

similar to last year. Endemol was top of both lists, and even managed to increase the number of hours of programming it made for the broadcaster, from 713 to 777.

Big Brother – in its final year – plus the arrival of Million Pound Drop (pictured below) put Endemol ahead of the rest in terms of the amount of content supplied.

Highflyer and Lime remained in the same positions as last year, producing roughly the same amount of content. But, Olga, the indie behind The New Paul O’Grady Show, slipped to 10th place from fourth following the star’s move to ITV. In 2009, Olga made 132 hours of pro-grammes, but that fell to 41 in 2010.

In terms of spend, there were several new entrants on the list, including Dragon-fly Film and Television, whose ob docs The Family and One Born Every Minute are now a fixture of the C4 sched-ule. In terms of the exact number of indies C4 worked with in 2010 and its overall spend in the indie sector, it’s a matter of sitting

tight for now. The broadcaster is keeping the exact details under wraps until its annual report.

Comedy specialist Open Mike also featured on the most spend list, making it into fifth place as the broadcaster increased output in comedy.

Despite not being able to fully disclose financial information, C4 claims it spent less within the M25 in 2010 and increased its spending in all the regions.

Overall, C4 remained in second place for best and worst broad-caster – marginally reducing the share of people who felt it was the worst broadcaster from 20% to 18.2%. The familiar brickbats varied from finding it hard to get a response from commission-ers to a lack of understanding

of being a small indie, and being “cliquey”.

However, there was also praise, with feedback including a “clear strat-egy”, strength in multi-platform and a desire to

collaborate and support.In many ways, C4

remains in a similar posi-tion to 2009. That is likely to change in 2011 with no

more Big Brother and chief executive David Abraham having had time to bed down and make his mark.

One Born Every Minute: Dragonfly

! C4 TOP SUPPLIERS (BY HOURS)

!C4 TOP SUPPLIERS (BY SPEND) Company Key shows

1 Endemol Big Brother; Celebrity Big Brother; Deal Or No Deal2 Lime Pictures Hollyoaks

3 Company Pictures Shameless

4 IWC Media Iron Chef; Location Location Location5 Open Mike Productions Alan Carr; Stand Up For The Week6 RDF TV Wogan’s Perfect Recall; Secret Millionaire7 Objective Productions Peep Show; Pete vs Life; Derren Brown; Robert’s Web8 Studio Lambert Three/Four In A bed; Ultimate Gap Year; Seven Days9 Maverick Television Embarrassing Bodies; How To Look Good Naked10 Dragonfly The Family; One Born Every Minute

WHAT THE INDIES SAYPROS “Decisive and accessible”

“Most collaborative, truly supportive and excellent partnerships in compliance. Clear idea of strategy and fully understands multiplatform”“Efficient, fair, open”

“They’re simpler, pay appro-priate licence fees and are more supportive”

CONS “No understanding of what it is like to run a small independent”

“Smug, elitist, cliquey”“Completely London-centric and in thrall to indie favourites”

“They need to realise that the 4th best idea of a regular sup-plier is VERY unlikely to be better than the number one idea of a new supplier”


Stuart Cosgrove Director of creative diversity, C4

“Channel 4 is passionate about the creativ-ity of the independent sector. David Abraham used his keynote at Salford to underline his ambition to make C4 the best broadcaster to work with, to be more timely, respectful and clearer in our dealings. As Broadcast reported, our new chief creative officer Jay Hunt has outlined a plan of action that will make content and commissioning more responsive to a wider range of companies.”

Source: C4

TOP SUPPLIERS

TOP SUPPLIERS


Indies 2011

CHANNEL 5 THUMBS DOWN

C hannel 5’s change of ownership, following RTL’s sale of the busi-ness to Northern & Shell, failed

to win over the indie community as 17% named it the worst broadcaster to work with, twice as many as last year.

In a year that saw an almost wholesale change of commissioners, C5 also failed to be named ‘the best broadcaster to work with’ by a single indie, despite attracting a 4% share last year. Respondents claimed it was working outside of the terms of trade, with low budgets, and had issues over payments.

The number of hours of content it produced from 56 indies was also significantly down. Top supplier Princess Productions’ The Wright Stuff accounted for 337 hours – marginally up on last year’s 322 hours – but Sunset + Vine’s 809 hours of sport in 2009, including cricket and UEFA football highlights, dropped to 150 hours last year.

Along with North One, these are the only three indies still in the top 10 from last year, with Lucky Day, Talk-back, Town House, Chorion, True North and Windfall dropping out to make way for new suppliers. The Wright Stuff: Princess Productions

Source: Channel 5

WHAT THE INDIES SAY

“No sense of connection to indie community and no money to make

original programming”

“Unbelievably crass behaviour over not cash-flowing productions”

“You never know if you’ll get paid”

“No money, confusing deals”


Jeff FordDirector of programmes, Channel 5“After being badly hit by the reces-sion and a period of uncertainty before last year’s takeover, we’re in better shape than ever to reclaim our place as a priority both for the indie sector and for the peo-ple at home.”

! CHANNEL 5 TOP SUPPLIERS (BY HOURS) Company Hours Key shows

1 Princess Productions 337 The Wright Stuff2 Sunset + Vine 150 Europa Football; Cricket highlights3 Bigger Pics/Pint Size 47 Ice Road Truckers4 North One 39 The Gadget Show5 RDF Media 34 Emergency Bikers6 Tiger Aspect 27 Paul Merton in Europe; Justin Lee Collins7 Shine 25 Don’t Stop Believing8 IWC Media 21 Extreme Fishing With Robson Green9 Raw Cut 17 Police Interceptors10 Tigress 16 Nature Shocks; Austin Stevens’ Adventures

SKY GROUP INCREASING POPULARITY

In a year in which Sky made bold statements about upping its spend in entertainment, the

broadcaster backed its mission financially, spending around £75m via 58 indies.

This represents an uplift of £25m from its investment last year and a doubling in size of its supplier base, set to expand further with more comedy and drama commissions in 2011.

However, this year’s total folds in spend at Virgin, which spent

£17.7m in 2009 and became part of Sky last year.

Encouragingly, Sky has also become much more popular, with 13% of respondents naming it their favourite broadcaster, up from just 3% last year.

The extra investment has not resulted in more hours of content on-screen from the top 10 suppliers, with Crackit con-tinuing to be the chief supplier, producing 142 hours of Angela And Friends.A League Of Their Own: CPL

*Including former Virgin Channels Source: Sky Group

WHAT THE INDIES SAY

PROS “Clear direction as to what it wants creatively

and from a business point of view. Quick to respond and extremely helpful”

CONS “Gives slow responses on creative commissioning sign-off. Slow business affairs matters. Cash flow and budget terms not attractive”


Sophie Turner Laing Managing director, enter-tainment and news, Sky “The commissioning and pro-duction teams work hard to be straightforward and decisive. We will fight hard to have the right budget spend on the right shows on the right channel – every penny needs to deliver value for our customers.”

! SKY GROUP* TOP SUPPLIERS (BY HOURS) Company Hours Key shows

1 Crackit 142.5 Angela And Friends2 Antix 60.0 Most Haunted3 Liberty Bell 45.0 Hay On Sky; Book Show4 Twofour 36.5 Are You Smarter Than A 10 Year Old5 Shine/Princess 35.5 Got To Dance; Must be the Music6 Steadfast 30.0 Brit Cops7 Thumbs Up 28.0 Sell Me The Answer; Britain’s Next Top Model8 October Films 26.0 Sun, Sea And A&E9 CPL 19.0 A League Of Their Own10 Original 16.0 Deadly North Sea

TOP SUPPLIERS


Indies 2011

UKTV BROADENING SUPPLY

UKTV grew the number of indies it worked with from 16 to 21 last year as it began commissioning original content for history channel Yesterday for the first time.

While total commissioning budget across the broadcaster’s portfolio of 10 channels was slightly down in 2010, UKTV increased its average spend per hour by 26% year on year.

Optomen again secured the lion’s share of commissions, producing around 400 hours of content mainly for Good Food, up from the 275

hours it made for the broadcaster in 2009.

It was also responsible for the four-part Ration Book Britain, which marked Yesterday’s first series commission.

Cactus, previously UKTV’s second-largest supplier, also fell out of the top 10, following the demise of Richard & Judy show for Watch.

North One moved to second place with its coverage of the World Rally Championships for Dave, but is unlikely to feature so highly in the 2011 table, following ESPN’s swoop to snap up the rights to the motorsport.

Carpool: RDF

Source: UKTV

WHAT THE INDIES SAY

“Unrealistic about what they should get for their money”

“Long commissioning processes and sign-offs, and difficult to negotiate with their legal department”


Jane Rogerson Director of commissioning, UKTV“We’re concentrating our commis-sioning effort on delivering bigger shows with bigger impact. We’re also now commissioning on the entertainment channels in peak time with budgets to match. We’re always keen to broaden our supply base.”

! UKTV TOP SUPPLIERS (BY HOURS) Company Hours Key shows

1 Optomen 400.0 Market Kitchen; Ration Book Britain2 North One 38.0 World Rally3 Twofour 18.5 Ty’s Homes For The Brave4 Talkback Thames 16.0 Love The Place You’re In; R Corbett’s Supper Club5 RDF 15.0 Carpool; Monster Munchies5 Tiger Aspect 15.0 Argumental; Fry And Laurie Reunited7 Denham 12.5 Atul’s Spice Kitchen; Rhodes Across Italy8 October 8.5 My Flat Pack Home9 UMTV 6.0 Red Bull X-Fighters10 Lion TV 5.0 Scream if You Know The Answer

DISCOVERY ALL CHANGE

Darlow Smithson leapt to the top of Discovery’s sup-plier list, with 46 hours of

content including Stephen Hawk-ing’s Universe, while former chief indie Ricochet, which produced It’s Me Or The Dog, fell out of the top 10 completely.

Isis Media, Tigress, Icon Films and Mandrill were edged out by Bullseye and Dangerous – which made Unstoppable With James Cracknell – plus Raw, Icon

and True North. But Darlow clearly led the pack, with twice as many hours of orders as the second-placed Icon, as Discovery spread its business among 65 indies.

Not all were happy with the broadcaster; one indie labelled it “very controlling, with low over-heads and production fees”.

And it also achieved a 5% share of respondents naming it the worst broadcaster to work with.Bear Grylls: Born Survivor: Diverse

Source: Discovery

WHAT THE INDIES SAY

PRO “They pay well and reward success”

CON “Very controlling, no rights, failure to accept EP costs in budgets, low overheads and production fees”


Lee Bartlett Executive vice-president, global production management, business and legal affairs, Discovery“Discovery UK has signifi-cantly increased its invest-ment in production and devel-opment over the past two years, which is clear evidence of its commitment to creative production communities.”

! DISCOVERY TOP SUPPLIERS (BY HOURS) Company Hours Key shows

1 Darlow Smithson 46.0 I Shouldn't Be Alive; Medical Anomalies2 Icon Films 17.0 River Monsters; Tribal Fishing2 Raw TV 17.0 Gold Rush Alaska; Get Out Alive4 Diverse 16.0 Bear Grylls: Born Survivor5 Bullseye 12.5 Olympic Park: Machines And Heroes6 Pioneer 12.0 Haiti's Killer Quake7 True North 11.0 Britain’s Toughest Cops; The Cumbrian Murders7 Wag TV 11.0 How Do They Do It9 Attaboy TV 10.0 Wheelers Dealers10 Dangerous 9.0 George Cross Heroes; Race Across America


Indies 2011

GENRE LEAGUE TABLES

Drama, entertainment, factual and sports specialists all saw their output fall in 2010, but it was a better year for producers of children’s and factual entertainment. Will Strauss reports

Fact ent and kids beat drop

DRAMA IN DECLINE

Oh dear. Where to start? When the BBC’s controller of drama John Yorke revealed in January 2010 that the UK had lost 120 hours of drama programming in the past five years, he described it as a “seismic blow to the industry”.

He certainly wasn’t exaggerat-ing, if the results of this survey are anything to do by.

Here goes. The total number of drama hours produced by UK indies polled here in 2010 was down to 369, a drop of

! TOP 10 DRAMA PRODUCERS Company Hours (‘10) Hours (‘09) Key shows

1 Lime Pictures 140.5 146 Hollyoaks2 Company 41.0 45 Shameless; Skins; Wild At Heart3 Kudos 35.0 38 Spooks; Ashes To Ashes; Law & Order4 Talkback Thames 32.0 79 The Bill5 Left Bank 24.0 - Wallander; Married Single Other6 Carnival 22.0 - Downton Abbey; Any Human Heart7 Bentley 16.0 16 Midsomer Murders8 Tiger Aspect 15.0 18 Secret Diary of A Call Girl9 Touchpaper 14.0 15 Being Human10 Shine TV 10.0 - Merlin

Skins: Company Pictures

236 hours on 2009. Even allowing for closures, a bit of consolidation and some changes in the way the research data is provided, there is still only one response: ouch!

With drama’s long lead times, this shows the blow that the com-missioning budget cuts witnessed around 2008-09 have dealt to TV’s most expensive drama.

Every single one of the compa-nies that feature in the top 10 in 2009 and 2010 has made less drama. This includes Lime Pic-tures, which, despite a slight drop, retains top spot thanks to Hollyoaks.

Last year’s number two, Talk-back, saw the biggest fall in hours, with its output being more than halved from 79 to 32 hours follow-ing the demise of The Bill. As a result, it slips to number four in the chart and is overtaken by Company and Kudos.

There are three absentees from the top 10 year on year: Shed, which has its drama output included within its respective group’s results; Power, which appointed administrators; and Boomerang, which now channels drama through its subsidiary Apollo, which sits outside of the top 10 with 8.5 hours.

In come Carnival, Shine and Broadcast’s indie of the year, Left Bank Pictures. The latter only managed 3.5 hours of output in 2009, but 12 months and 24 hours of drama later, the company has become the fifth-biggest supplier in the country, with the likes of Wallander, Strike Back and DCI Banks.

Along with success-ful launches such as Carnivals’ Downton Abbey and Hartswood’s Sherlock, Left Bank’s hits are shining light among much drama gloom.

ENTERTAINMENT CHALLENGING TIMES

Like several sectors in this year’s survey, the number of combined entertainment hours broadcast in 2010 was down on 2009 – by more than 1,000 hours in fact, from 7,441 to 6,285.

The big drops can be seen at Initial, X Factor (pictured below) producer Talkback and, most obvi-ously, Remedy Productions, which has more than halved its entertain-ment output year on year.

The combined top 10 has also fallen (6,911 in 2009 vs 5,891 in 2010) but, as with last year’s survey, the biggest suppliers make up a good portion of the market – nearly 93%.

The table is dominated by two companies: the ‘non-traditional’ indie ETV, which is the biggest supplier by a country mile thanks to Gala TV’s eight hours of live programming each night; and Remarkable TV, maker of Deal Or No Deal and Big Brother.

Both retain their posi-tions at numbers one

and two respectively, although Remark-able TV’s success does not receive

! TOP 10 ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCERS Company Hours (‘10) Hours (‘09) Key shows

1 ETV 2,920.0 2,641 Gala TV2 Remarkable 1,546.0 1,791 Deal Or No Deal; Big Brother3 Remedy 700.0 1,500 Freshly Squeezed; Gonzo4 Princess 195.5 191 Got To Dance; Must Be The Music; T45 Talkback Thames 162.0 243 Britian's Got Talent; The X Factor6 Boomerang 111.0 - Gofod; Only Men Aloud7 Objective 75.0 - The Cube; Derren Brown specials8 Rondo Media 71.0 - Dudley: Pryd O Ser9 Initial 61.0 189 Total Wipeout10 3DD 50.0 - Album Chart Show

GENRE LEAGUE TABLES


compactmedia group

In association with

FACTUAL ENTERTAINMENT GROWTH ZONE

Readers who turned to the drama and factual sections of this report first could be forgiven for think-ing that the independent TV pro-duction sector in the UK was stuffed, but they’d be wrong.

Factual entertainment is one of several growth areas. It’s a remarkable turnaround consider-ing last year’s survey revealed that total hours were down 50% on the previous year.

In 2010, the top 10 fact ent suppliers jointly produced 1,140 hours of TV. In 2009, the figure was 1,054. The total number of fact ent hours, according to those surveyed, was 1,940. Again, this was up from 2009, when it was 1,626.

Princess Produc-tions still leads the way, thanks in part to The Wright Stuff, and made pretty much the same amount of programming as it did the previous year. The rest of the table, however, includes

companies that have pumped out more fact ent content.

Remarkable TV is the biggest riser, moving from number five and just 67 hours in 2009 to number two, thanks to 234 hours that included Gok’s Fashion Fix (pictured). With no Big Brother, it will be interesting to see how things look in a year’s time.

Meanwhile, Leopard and Thumbs Up also increased their fact ent hours in 2010, while Tiger Aspect came from nowhere to reach number 10 in the table, with 42.5 hours that included My Pet Shame.

Correcting what looks like an anomaly from last year, Cactus TV is a new entry for Saturday

Kitchen. Meanwhile, Brighton-based Electric

Sky, producer of Brit-ain’s Fattest Man, doubled its overall output, adding 57 hours of fact ent to become the UK’s sixth-biggest sup-plier in the genre.

universal acclaim, with one sage survey respondent submitting the following analysis: “If football is a game played by 22 men kicking a ball, and then the Germans win, then independent production is a game played by 150 companies pitching their ideas, and then Endemol wins.”

As with the top two, there is little change in the rest of the top five entertainment suppliers, with only Talkback and Princess swap-ping places. Further down, significant reductions in the enter-tainment hours they make see Tiger Aspect, Shine, Lucky Day and Twofour make way for Boo-merang, Objective, Rondo Media and 3DD.

However, a drop in overall hours aside, as befits the makers of shiny-floor shows, the entertain-ment producers are a bright and positive bunch. More than 70% ended the year more confident about the future of the indie sector than they were a year ago.

FACTUAL TIGHT BUDGETS

It’s all change in the factual top 10 this year. Optomen leads the way, as it did in 2009, but the chart has seven new entries, with Darlow Smithson and Boomerang the only other companies to stay the distance.

Some big names have dropped out, including Tiger Aspect, Remarkable and True North, which all either concentrated on – or diversified into – other genres.

The other big change is in the UK’s overall factual output. The combined number of hours of factual programming made by all the indies surveyed fell by 38% from 1,322 to 821. Even market leader Optomen produced nearly 100 fewer hours than it did the previous year.

The top 10 combined was worth one hour shy of 500 hours in 2010. In 2009, the same number of

companies made 735 hours. It’s a marked difference. Even the thresh-old for making the top 10 dropped from 27 hours in 2009 (Wall To Wall) to just 21 hours this year (Shine). As a result, five of this year’s biggest factual suppliers would not have made last year’s top 10.

It’s clear that some of these hours have simply moved into other tables in the survey due to the consolidation of the market

and the reticence of some super-indies to reveal exactly what their subsidiaries are up to.

But there was also a factual famine of sorts in 2010. Some indies cite “fewer serious factual commissions from the public service broadcasters” as a logical reason for that drop, while others point to declining budgets as the reason for not pursuing opportu-nities in factual last year.

! TOP 10 FACTUAL PRODUCERS

Company Hours (‘10) Hours (‘09) Key shows

1 Optomen 226.0 322 Mary Queen Of Shops

2 Boomerang 55.0 118 Royal Welsh Agricultural Show

3 Parthenon 35.0 - Mystery Files; Wild Russia; Indian Tiger4 RDF TV 33.0 - The Secret Millionaire5 Tern 31.0 - Beauty Of Maps/Books6 Colonial 25.0 - Britain’s Greatest Ships6 Darlow 25.0 34 Steven Hawking’s Universe8 Flame 24.5 - Heir Hunters; Saints And Scroungers9 KEO 24.0 - Welcome To Lagos10 Shine TV 21.0 - The Naked Office; Band For Britain

! TOP 10 FACTUAL ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCERS Company Hours (‘10) Hours (‘09) Key shows

1 Princess 322.5 322 The Wright Stuff2 Remarkable 234.0 67 Gok’s Fashion Fix3 Leopard Films 190.0 180 Cash In The Attic4 Cactus TV 83.0 - Saturday Kitchen; TV Book Club5 Antix 74.0 101 Screaming Banshees6 Electric Sky 57.0 - Britain’s Fattest Man7 North One 48.0 57 Fifth Gear; The Gadget Show8 Thumbs Up 45.0 36 Britain’s Next Top Model9 Shine TV 33.0 - MasterChef10 Tiger Aspect 42.5 - My Pet Shame; Cook Yourself Thin

Mary Queen Of Shops: Optomen

!

GENRE LEAGUE TABLES


compactmedia group

In association with

CHILDREN’S ON THE UP

It may be the last table in this section, but children’s TV is def-initely not the least. Along with factual entertainment, it’s an area of growth for UK indies.

Combined kids’ TV hours are up year on year. The 19 compa-nies that responded in 2010 made a combined 513 hours of programming for children. In 2009, the 25 surveyed companies made just 442. That’s an average of 27 hours vs 17 hours each.

Much of the rise is thanks to Boomerang, which made 241 hours last year, a manifold increase on the 33 it made in 2009, helped by two big three-year tenders from S4C for pre-school and older children’s content. The company has risen from fourth to become the UK’s biggest supplier of children’s shows.

Last year’s runner up, Hit Entertainment, is conspicuous by its absence after being unable to break down its figures, but Rondo Media and Bear Behaving Badly (pictured) producer

Darrall Macqueen did their best to help the charge ,with 19 and 17 extra hours respectively.

The 2009 top kids’ supplier The Foundation – responsible for Waybuloo – has fallen to third after making 23 fewer hours, allowing Darrall Macqueen to squeeze into second place.

All in all, 2010 was consid-ered to be a better year for kids TV producers – 76% agreed that it was an improvement on 2009, for example.

But challenges still abound, such as a lack of tax

breaks in England, falling budgets and an over-reli-

ance on the BBC. “The parlous

state of UK children’s TV remains a huge concern,” said one respondent. “Channel 5 is now re-commis-

sioning, which is fantas-tic, but only the BBC seems

to be investing in kids’ TV.”Gripes aside, with 70% gener-

ating income from video-on-demand and more than 90% selling their shows internation-ally, things are somewhat rosier in the children’s TV garden.

SPORT BUDGET CONCERNS

This year’s sporting league table is once again skewed by the absence of IMG, which declined to provide figures. But plenty did, and between them they made 1,484 hours of sport and sport-related programming. In 2009, that number was significantly more

though, at 2,614. The drop comes almost exclusively from Input Media, which made 1,076 fewer hours in 2010.

Anyone searching for the where-abouts of those hours should look no further than the demise of

Setanta Sports. In 2009, Input Media’s figures would have included six months of work from the now defunct broadcaster.

However, despite that, Input Media is still the biggest producer of sport content in Broadcast’s survey, and its underlying business is up by about a fifth. Sunset+Vine remains steady at number two, but its hours are also down.

Things look very positive, in terms of hours, for the Welsh indies in the top 10. Rondo Media has leapt from fifth to third, overtaking North One on the way, while Indus has moved up one place to fourth.

Alongside its regular flagship Sgorio football shows for S4C, Rondo added 50 hours to a pro-gramming slate that now includes live Champions League, Europa League, FA Cup, Welsh Cup and Welsh Premier League matches.

Indus, now owned by Boomerang and best known for the Bruce Parry-

fronted BBC2 series Amazon, added 27 hours of sport.

As there are only a handful of indies producing sport program-ming in the UK, it is possible to make bold assumptions about this sector based purely on the survey.

Hence Broadcast can confidently claim that 100% of sports prod-ucers were negatively impacted by the recession, and maintaining on-screen quality amid budget cuts is a major concern for nearly everyone.

‘The drop comes almost exclusively from Input Media, which made 1,076 fewer hours in 2010’

! TOP 10 SPORT PRODUCERS Company Hours (‘10) Hours (‘09) Key shows

1 Input Media 1,204.0 2,280 FA Cup/French Open tennis previews2 Sunset+Vine 856.0 902 BBC Horseracing; Mobil 1 The Grid3 Rondo Media 121.0 71 Sgorio4 Indus 102.0 75 Welsh Open Snooker; Golffio5 North One 78.0 81 World Rally Championships6 AMG 45.0 - Ma5da MX5 Cup7 Boomerang 27.5 47 That Paralympic Show; Freesports On 48 Apollo 22.5 24 Rasus9 Presentable 20.0 10 Full Tilt Poker; Late Night Poker10 World’s End 6.0 - Mark Watson Kicks Off

! TOP 10 CHILDREN’S PRODUCERS Company Hours (‘10) Hours (‘09) Key shows

1 Boomerang 241 33 My Dad In Prison; Stwnsh; Cyw2 Darrall Macqueen 57 40 Bear Behaving Badly3 The Foundation 45 68 Waybuloo; Mister Maker4 Rondo Media 43 24 Rownd A Rownd5 Initial 37 21 I Can Cook6 September 15 - Richard Hammond’s Blast Lab7 Tiger Aspect 14 - Charlie And Lola; Tinga Tinga Tales8 So 13 - Sorry, I’ve Got No Head9 Shine TV 11 - Junior MasterChef, My Genius Idea10 Kudos 7.5 - M.I. High

FA Cup Final: Input Media


Indies 2011

NATIONS AND REGIONS

New ways of working reaped rewards for the regional indies in 2010, with turnover and headcounts increasing, while programming hours stayed the same. Will Strauss reports

For out-of-London indies, 2010 was about being more efficient and diverse than in previous

years. Neither adjective sounds sexy, but with the impact of the recession still fresh in the memory, improved ways of working and strategically wider development slates were vital, generating more money from roughly the same amount of output with slightly more staff.

The hard figures tell the story, nuances in the data gathering process not withstanding. In 2009, the total combined turnover of the regional indies surveyed by Broadcast was £252m. In 2010, however, comparing the same number of companies, that figure went up by £10m. At the same time, staff numbers were up year on year, from about 1,800 in 2009 to around 1,940 last year, and the number of hours of programming on-air remained steady, at around the 2,100 mark.

There was considerable revenue growth in the combined incomes of the 10 highest-earning out-of-London indies, which took home £190m, up 4.5% from £182m in 2009.

Statistics like this could be dismissed for not comparing like-for-like, but these figures do stand up to comparison as nine of the top 10* are the same com-panies as last year. The exception is Ragdoll, which chose not to submit data this year and was replaced by Red Pro-duction Company in Manchester, which had an almost identical turnover figure.

The majority of the growth in the top 10 came from three companies: Maid-stone-based Waybuloo producer The

‘Our in-house staff are trained to multi-task so they can be in the field, in the edit or around the production desk’Laura Marshall, Icon Films

Foundation (up 45%), Birmingham’s Maverick Television (up 21%) and Ply-mouth’s Twofour, which is up 36% year on year despite a drop in overall pro-gramming output of 90-odd hours.

Twofour Broadcast chief executive Melanie Leach says those ups and downs are almost entirely a result of making higher-budget but lower- volume primetime shows, such as Channel 5’s returning format The Hotel Inspector.

“We built a solid foundation in daytime and we wouldn’t want to turn our backs on that,” she says. “But as we’ve grown, we’ve wanted to make sure we’ve had a broad mix of work across the schedule. The Holy Grail for us is to do primetime and daytime.”

Leach says Twofour will continue to focus on securing more of those returnable formats going forward but also look to make inroads into fixed-rig shows, the first of which will be Class-mates (working title) for Channel 4. “This opens up yet another new area for us,” she says.

Diversification, as pinpointed by Leach, is a trend that is in fashion. However, unlike the 2009 survey, where it meant a push towards multi-platform or international sales, many nations and regions indies in 2010 sought new opportunities closer to their traditional broadcast roots.

Leeds factual indie True North had its best year since its launch in 2002, thanks in part to a wider-reaching development slate. “The way we have made ourselves safe and secure is by broadening ourselves in two areas: the genres we work in and the broad-casters we work with,” says chief exec-utive Glyn Middleton.

This means that history, property, daytime and even kids’ shows such as CBBC’s Dick And Dom Go Wild have been added to True North’s usual diet of ob docs and current affairs programmes, while Nat Geo, The

History Channel and Discovery also now commission its shows. “You can’t put all your eggs into one basket just in case your favourite commissioning editors at C5, ITV or BBC all go away,” says Middleton.

The fastest-growing out-of-London indie in the top 10 is Icon Films in Bristol, at number 11 in the table, up from 17th last year. Turnover at the factual firm is up 63% on the back of major hits such as River Monsters (ITV, Animal Planet US) and The Headhunt-ers Of WWII (C4, Nat Geo, WNET) plus inserts for The One Show (BBC).

Managing director Laura Marshall puts the success down to a con-

scious diversification strat-egy, the quality of people it works with and the city of Bristol, which she regards as a centre of excellence. “In the past, we were probably best

known for natural history,” says Marshall. “But we’ve

taken our skills and our story-telling and diversified into adventure, travel, other sciences, history, and also looked at daytime in addition to primetime.”

One impact of that strategy has been to more than double its hours of programming, up from 11.5 in 2009 to 25 in 2010. But headcount has stayed the same. “Our in-house staff are trained to multi-task so they can be in the field, in the edit or around the pro-duction desk,” she says.

On average, out-of-London produc-ers made slightly less telly in 2010 than they did in 2009. Taking the total hours and dividing them by the number of firms surveyed reveals that each company made 54 hours, down from 55 in 2009 and 60 the year before that. Conversely, the top 10 saw an increase of 51 hours (4%) to 1,247 hours combined. But with revenue climbing, it’s unlikely that many indie bosses in either camp will be complaining. *Boomerang’s group figures retained for comparison purposes.

Revenues up, hours steady

WHAT’S BOTHERING REGIONAL INDIES

“BBC can still get bogged down in editorial issues

and not communicate clearly enough in terms of responding to ideas”

“Wheels still turn slow at the BBC”

“Channel 4 and ITV should do more to commission from the nations”

“BBC is full of paperwork and box ticking”

“C4 is smug, elitist and cliquey”

£190mCombined revenue of

the 10 largest out-of-London indies,

up 4.5%

NATIONS AND REGIONS


compactmedia group

In association with

Hollyoaks: Lime Pictures Wallace And Gromit: Aardman The Indian Doctor: Rondo Media

Comapany Locations Turnover2010 (£m)

Turnover2009 (£m)

Change(%)

Pre-tax profit(£m)

Key shows Hours of progs 2010

Full-time staff

1 Lime Pictures (All3Media) Liverpool 40.86 46.82 -12.72 – Hollyoaks; Hollyoaks Later; Ingenious 159.50 326

2 Twofour Plymouth 33.00 24.30 35.80 – The Hotel Inspector; Night Of Heroes 101.00 264

3 Boomerang1 Cardiff 21.41 19.76 -0.18 0.75 Freesports On 4; Martha Jac A Sianco 22.00 140

4 Aardman Bristol 20.00 20.00 0.00 1.00 Wallace & Gromit’s World Of Invention 8.00 3600

5 Maverick Television (All3Media) Birmingham 16.03 13.20 21.4 – Embarrassing Bodies; Children's Hospital 107.00 50

6 The Foundation (Zodiak) Maidstone, Kent 14.13 9.77 44.63 – Waybuloo; Summer In Transylvania 45.00 13

7 IWC (Zodiak) Glasgow 12.46 13.22 -5.75 – Extreme Fishing; Location Location Location 88.00 97

8 Rondo Media Cardiff 11.40 10.30 10.68 – Rownd A Rownd; The Indian Doctor 264.00 60

9 Parthenon Entertainment Chorleywood, Bristol 10.50 9.90 6.06 1.90 Mystery Files; Wild Russia; Indian Tiger 40.00 48

10 Red Productions Company Manchester 10.00 - – – Worried About The Boy; Single Father 5.50 8

11 Icon Films Bristol 5.62 3.45 62.90 – Headhunters Of World War II; Beast Hunter 25.00 42

12 The Comedy Unit (Zodiak) Glasgow 5.30 2.58 105.00 – Rab C Nesbitt; F Boyle’s Tramadol Nights 27.50 10

13 Tigress (Endemol UK) Bristol 5.16 7.20 -28.82 – The One Show; Nature Shock 20.00 28

14 Antix Productions Stockport 5.08 5.62 – 0.88 Most Haunted 74.00 8

15 Tern TV Glasgow, Belfast 4.40 5.00 – 0.02 Beauty Of Maps; Beauty Of Diagrams 54.00 36

16 True North Productions Leeds 4.26 4.25 0.24 0.60 Animal 24:7; Stealing Shakespeare 75.00 12

17 Presentable (Zodiak) Cardiff 3.90 2.91 33.93 – Only Connect, Late Night Poker 53.50 17

17 Electric Sky Brighton 3.90 3.74 4.28 – Britain’s Fattest Man; TLC; First Love 106.00 8

19 Green Inc Belfast, Dublin 3.86 2.85 35.37 – Ask Rhod Gilbert; Four Live; The Daily Show 131.50 12

20 Telesgop Cyf Swansea 3.19 - – 0.15 Porthmon; Ffermio; Bro; Royal Welsh Show 82.00 30

21 Freeform2 Manchester 2.80 2.80 0.00 – A Place In The Sun; Dream Lives For Sale 30.00 5

22 Quicksilver Media Oxford 2.60 3.00 -13.33 – Unreported World; Secret Iraq 14.50 –

23 Impossible TV Brighton 2.50 1.20 108.00 – Gaspard & Lisa; Castle Farm 2.00 0

24 Novel Entertainment Oxford 2.15 1.91 0.13 – Horrid Henry 10.5 5

25 Matchlight (DCD) Glasgow 2.10 - – – At Home With The Georgians 7.00 13

26 Topical Television (Avalon) Southampton 2.08 1.75 18.86 0.21 Real Rescues; One Show features 40.00 8

27 Pett Productions Surrey 2.00 1.78 12.08 0.24 Shooting Stars 7.00 6

28 Back2Back Brighton 1.50 1.20 25.00 0.30 The Hunks; Extraordinary Dogs 22.00 6

29 Iambic Productions Bristol 1.46 1.10 32.27 0.54 Placido Domingo – My Favourite Roles 5.00 6

30 Testimony Films Bristol 1.30 1.80 -27.78 0.02 A Century of Fatherhood; Hop Skip And Jump 12.00 6

31 Seventh Art Productions Brighton 1.00 1.20 -16.67 0.03 Chopin In Warsaw; The Guitar Whisperer 50.00 9

32 Lambent Brighton 0.84 1.10 -24.09 0.09 Teen Undertaker; One Under 3.00 5

33 Colonial Pictures Jersey 0.80 0.80 0.00 – Britain’s Greatest Ships; Auction 25.00 5

34 Red Planet Pictures Ampthill (Bedford) 0.70 1.22 -42.59 0.06 The Nativity; Crash 9.00 5

35 Talent Television Eastleigh 0.64 1.84 -65.00 – Damiloa: Death Of A Ten Year Old 2.00 40

36 Quickfire media Bristol 0.50 - – – Revealed: The Virgin Queen’s Fatal Affair 2.00 2

37 Televisionary Devon 0.47 1.25 -62.80 0.03 Ultimate Ulster 5.00 5

38 Matchbox TV Sevenoaks, Kent 0.35 - – 0.10 127 Hours; Raavan World Premiere 6.00 2

39 Turn On Television Manchester 0.30 - – 0.03 When Love Turns Lethal; Conmen Case Files 5.00 2

40 AMG Television Marple, Cheshire 0.10 - – 0.01 Ma5da MX5 Racing; 750 Motorclub racing 45.00 1

TOP REGIONAL INDIES 1-40

1: group figure; 2: 2009 submission; 3: includes film staff


Indies 2011

PEER POLL

Kudos and Wall To Wall held the top two spots in the table again this year, but strong performances from some of their peers saw several enter the top 10 for the first time

New kids on the indie block

BEST OF THE RESTBaby Cow “Great talent, great comedy”

Optomen “Event TV, brilliantly produced”

Darrall Macqueen “Any kids’ indie that does 10 years+ deserves respect”

Twofour “Brilliant at diversifying creatively and commercially, yet remaining fiercely independent”

Love Productions “Formats that make you green with envy”

Keo Films “Not resting on its laurels”

Minnow “The ideas come first”

Renegade “Fabulous simplicity in formats”

Blast! Films “Exceptional documentaries and dramas”

The Foundation “Gets huge ideas off the ground through multinational funding”

Century Films “Keeps putting quality first”

Pulse Films “Breakout year for an innovative company”

Company Votes

1 Kudos 26

2 Wall to Wall 21

3 Firecracker 15

4 Maverick 14

4 Company 14

6 Raw 11

7 Objective 9

7 Darlow Smithson 9

9 Betty 8

10 Shine 7

10 True Vision 7

10 Left Bank 7

KUDOS FILM & TV WALL TO WALL

Drama specialist Kudos has once again beaten everyone to first place, notching up 26 points – a clear lead of five votes ahead of its nearest rival. Virtually all of the nominees noted the Shine-owned indie’s consistency in producing high-quality drama.

“Its films are compelling and made with integrity,” said one, while another simply dubbed its output as “classy”. “Producing great work consistently,” was a third’s verdict.

Once again, range is also central to its success, with a roster of programmes as varied as BBC3 lesbian drama Lip Service and Christmas offering The Nativity, a co-pro with writer Tony Jordan’s Red Planet Pictures and Canada’s Temple Street Productions.

As revealed in our latest free-lancer survey, Kudos also rates highly with those who work for it, being ranked as one of the top five companies to work for.

Consistency is no doubt central to the sheer number of long-stand-ing series it now has. Although Ashes To Ashes took its final bow in 2010, BBC1’s glossy Spooks is still going strong, having just been

commissioned for its 10th series, while Hustle’s seventh series aired in recent weeks.

And the indie shows little sign of slowing down: included among Danny Cohen’s first raft of drama commissions as BBC1 controller is eight-part contemporary spy series Morton, due out in 2012.

Meanwhile, ITV has ordered a high-concept, six-part drama called Eternal Law, about angels who are sent to earth to help a community and gain a better understanding of the human con-dition. And Kudos is also set to make The Hour, a glossy 1950s drama à la Mad Men, starring Dominic West and Romola Garai, for BBC2.

No doubt this will offset the recent decision to move Outcasts out of its peaktime slot on BBC1 after the sci-fi series was greeted with poor ratings and audience appreciation.

News Corp’s recent takeover of Shine Group will undoubtedly have an impact on Kudos, but sources close to the company indi-cate it will free up more time and money to invest in development – clearly its eye is on keeping the crown for a third year running.

It’s been an eventful year for Wall To Wall, with its parent company Shed Media snapped up by US studio Time Warner in a deal worth £100m.

The indie is ranked highly due to its range of strongly per-forming shows, including long-running BBC1 fact-ent series Who Do You Think You Are? and drama New Tricks, as well as its drive to keep improving.

It has sought to bolster its output this year with a second genealogy-related show, this time for ITV1, in the shape of Long Lost Family, and diversified into communities with BBC1 series Turn Back Time – The High Street.

The new shows have met with approval, with execs labelling the indie a reliable producer of “high-quality, intelligent formats”. But it has also won approval for the way assets are exploited. “Well-made but commercially viable pro-grammes,” said one peer, with another remarking how “smart at business” Wall To Wall is.

This is set to continue as it taps into Warner’s US formats and seeks to exploit its own formats internationally.

Richard Thomson, appointed managing director following Clare Hungate’s promotion to chief operating officer for Shed, promises to grow the business “in both production and commer-cial terms”.

Ashes To Ashes

Turn Back Time – The High Street

1 2! CREAM OF THE CROP

PEER POLL


compactmedia group

In association with

FIRECRACKER FILMS RAW TV

Firecracker has stormed its way into the top 10 best-rated indies among its peers, taking third place when last year it was nowhere to be seen. Producers’ praise for the company heavily focused on the factual content it has created over the past year.

The success of Cutting Edge documentary My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding paved the way for 2011 hit series Big Fat Gypsy Weddings. The single doc and series, lifting the lid on the trav-eller community, exemplify what respondents described as “noisy programmes that are memorable and well made” and a “popular twist on docs that make their mark”.

Firecracker’s peers were not only impressed by the quality of the programme, but by its ability to straddle the UK and US – indeed, one

producer rated the company “because the founder [Mark Soldinger] lives on the beach in LA”. The jet-set lifestyle, mixed with its access to unique situations and people, appears to have earned the indie the all-round thumbs up.

Another newcomer to the top 10, Raw Televi-sion’s entry in sixth place in the poll is a sign of the work the indie has done in the US. As a novice in the peer poll, Raw managed to score a respectable 11 points.

Discovery Channel series Gold Rush has attracted hit ratings and was the main show highlighted by Raw’s peers. One producer praised its “cracking US-style shows from the UK”, while another said it deserved credit “for having a successful US business”.

The comments also reflected a feeling that the indie has the ability to create quality. Founded in 2001, it was described by one pro-ducer as a “sharp newcomer” that stands proud, a medium-sized business punching above its weight on several levels.My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding

Gold Rush

Fresh from winning a Broadcast Award for Best Popular Factual show with Embarrassing Bodies, Maverick has found itself cata-pulted into the peer poll. It is testament to the efforts that have gone on at the forward-thinking indie on both its pro-gramming and multiplatform support, for shows such as Channel 4’s The Model Agency and BBC2’s The Buying Game.

There is a tremendous amount of good-will towards Maverick, with peers recognis-ing not just its “tenacious ambition across platforms and great content”, but the posi-

tive image it projects, too. One pointed to its “strong company

culture”, while another hailed “a hard-working company with a great managing director.”

Maverick has acquired the knack of delivering simple, well-executed factual and fact-ent shows in a way that engages

viewers, and then driving that interest with strong digital support.

With strong returning series such as Embarrassing Bodies, How To Look Good Naked and 10 Years Younger, Maverick has a stable slate from which to continue to build and impress.

COMPANY PICTURES

Company Pictures has continued to carefully nurture its four core brands – Shameless, Skins, Wild At Heart and Inspector George Gently – while winning new work. Fresh projects include E4’s Beaver Falls, which will follow

three British university graduates who have landed jobs at an American summer camp.

Rivals voted for Company for its innovation, with one saying it is “always inventive” and capable of combining “commercial and creative success”. In addition, the indie founded by George Faber and Charles Pattinson was praised for the “outstanding quality” of its work.

Consistency is also king at Company and it has secured another 22-part run of Shameless from Channel 4 and will make four more feature-length episodes of George Gently for BBC1.

Elsewhere, the soon-to-air two-part adaptation of Women In Love for BBC4 shows it is not just the returnable brands that Company is focused on.Shameless

OBJECTIVE PRODUCTIONS

“Distinctive stand-out shows,” is the type of comment Objective Productions attracted in feedback from its peers. Despite slipping a posi-tion in the polls, producers have a high regard for the All3Media-owned indie. “Always pro-ducing stand-out funny and entertaining shows” describes Objective’s unique approach.

Shows from Channel 4 stalwart Peep Show to new BBC1 Saturday night show John Bishop’s Britain remain at the heart of its output, but it is now branching out – and this has been noted.

Producers cited new shows, such as The Cube, as transferring the Objective character to a different audience and slot. One producer’s view was simply “good varied output”. Fresh Meat is one of the indie’s latest projects – and knowing Objective, there will be plenty more to come.

John Bishop’s Britain !

3 6

4 =

4 =

7=

MAVERICK TV


Indies 2011

PEER POLL

DARLOW SMITHSON TRUE VISION

Factual specialist Darlow Smithson is a new entry in the top 10, thanks to commercial and critical successes both in its traditional ground of documentaries – with the ambitious Stephen Hawking’s Universe and Concorde’s Last Flight – and the populist drama series U Be Dead. It also courted controversy with its provocative climate change single What The Green Move-ment Got Wrong.

Peers applauded its “high-quality, daring programmes”, with one saying it was “pushing the boundaries journalistically and in filmic terms on all of its projects”.

However, the majority of its revenues come from outside the UK, and it is continuing to win commissions overseas at a pace. Last autumn, it won a brace of commissions from

US cable network TLC. Meanwhile, the movie 127 Hours, which executive chairman John Smithson helped to get off the ground by securing the rights to the true-life story, won Bafta and Oscar nominations.

Consistent high-quality programming is the primary reason for True Vision being propelled into the top 10, despite not featuring in last year’s survey. Under the tagline ‘films that make a dif-ference’ the indie produced a string of docs for Dispatches, Storyville and True Stories, while co-founder Brian Woods spent time championing independent film-makers in confronting the BBC’s compliance procedures head-on.

Its powerful story Children Of Gaza, which followed four youngsters after the conflict with Israel in January 2009, drew more than 100 messages of praise from viewers alone. Mean-while, peers praised True Vision not just for the fact that it “makes films that matter”, such as Storyville film Zimbabwe’s Forgotten Children, but with several citing its “consistent brilliance”.Stephen Hawking’s Universe

Zimbabwe’s Forgotten Children

BETTY TV

Betty is yet another absentee from last year’s poll, ranking above the likes of Shine, True Vision and Left Bank. The producer behind programmes such as Wedding House and Country House Rescue has attracted praise and respect from its rivals and managed to score a respectable eight points.

The stand-out com-ments for the indie included it managing to stay “on the ball

and energetic”, and doing a good job of rep-resenting medium-sized companies.

This year it has created The Joy of Teen Sex and Beauty & The Beast: The Ugly Face of Prejudice, tackling difficult subjects and attracting a lot

of attention as a result. Over the past year, its 22

hours of programming entered the spotlight and created a buzz around both the indie and the content it was producing, helped by the hiring of former Channel 4 commissioner Walter Iuzzolino as creative

director.

SHINE TV

After a year in which Shine TV built on long-standing series such as Merlin and MasterChef, it has managed to remain in the top 10, but has fallen two places to joint tenth. Peers rated Shine highly, with one saying “I’d hate to be a

drama indie with them out there”. Others applauded its “ambitious and varied output” and its flagship show’s global success, with another rival noting: “The speed at which it has turned MasterChef into a huge interna-tional brand is extraordinary.”

The Biggest Loser is another successful format launched in 2010, and its second outing built to strong ratings last month. Shine has also ven-tured into other entertainment formats with new BBC1 Saturday night show The Magicians.

It is not all gains, however. In October, Channel 5 withheld £1m in payment for talent show Don’t Stop Believing, though this was resolved in the end. As with Kudos, all eyes are on how the indie will develop now that News Corp has bought out Shine Group.The Biggest Loser

LEFT BANK PICTURES

Despite dropping six places in the poll, 2010 was a big year for drama specialist Left Bank Pictures. The indie launched and won recommissions for ITV1 with DCI Banks and Sky 1 with Strike Back, and secured the Broadcast Award for Best Inde-pendent Production Company.

This spring, star-studded Mad Dogs helped spearhead the rebrand of BSkyB’s portfolio of channels and launched with nearly 1 million viewers on Sky 1. Key to this success was Left Bank’s “amazing ambition”, according to one peer, while another noted that the company produces a “rich seam of consistently high-quality drama”.

But it has not all gone Left Bank’s way, with Married Single Other getting the ITV axe and BBC1 pulling the plug on Zen, which so far hasn’t been picked up by a rival broadcaster.

Strike Back

7= 10=

9

10=

10=

A Broadcast supplement

indies

indie survey apr-1

Documents