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"4.50pm: Welcome to live coverage of the controller session with Zai Bennett, controller of ITV2, ITV3, ITV4 and acquisitions. The moderator is Sam Delaney, editor of heat. 4.51pm: We start of with a clipreel of ITV digital&amp;#039;s most prominent shows from the last year. 4.58pm: A very long clipreel. What is Bennett most proud of? Call Girl. &amp;quot;It shifted perception of the channel - people took it more seriously. Added to that, Celebrity Juice is one of my favourites. It couldn&amp;#039;t play on any other channel. It&amp;#039;s a bit silly and a bit fun.&amp;quot; 4.59pm: His wide remit: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s nice and diverse, isn&amp;#039;t it?&amp;quot; He adds that he&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;not especially&amp;quot; hands-on with CITV. 5.00pm: ITV2&amp;#039;s growth: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s principally a celebrity-led entertainment channel, and we&amp;#039;ve built and built by bringing faces to the channel. It&amp;#039;s a family of talent. There&amp;#039;s a sense of fun about the tone and feel of the channel.&amp;quot; 5.01pm: Has it peaked? &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s still growing. It&amp;#039;s going to get harder and harder, but have we peaked? No. Currently ITV2 is the most successful multichannel station in the UK. 5.02pm: New reality series The Only Way Of Essex will get a lot of promo on ITV1. 5.03pm: Bennett says there won&amp;#039;t be new original scripted comedy on ITV2 for a while until the economy picks up. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve restricted the genre mix a little bit over the last year, although we&amp;#039;ve kept going with Secret Diary.&amp;quot; 5.04pm: On Trinity: &amp;quot;It did really well, half a million as an average. But that&amp;#039;s not quite enough to bring it back. It&amp;#039;s a terribly expensive show - \u00A33 or \u00A34 million out of what is overall a small budget.&amp;quot; 5.05pm: Was money the reason Katie Price went to Living? &amp;quot;She decided to go to Living. We wish her all the best. She had a great six years on ITV2. She was made an offer that she couldn&amp;#039;t refuse.&amp;quot; 5.06pm: &amp;quot;Peter Andre is still very much on ITV2 and his series does very well, if not better when you look at the forensics of the figures.&amp;quot; 5.08pm: Dannii Minogue series &amp;quot;did really well&amp;quot;. He says the Jedward show &amp;quot;is hilarious - they&amp;#039;re like toddlers&amp;quot;. 5.10pm: Bennett &amp;quot;doubts very much&amp;quot; that The Saturdays&amp;#039; reality show will go on for a long time, &amp;quot;because they&amp;#039;re posters&amp;quot;. 5.12pm: Chat changes to ITV4. He says the James Corden World Cup show was &amp;quot;an ITV1 show that operated across two channels, in the same way as Xtra Factor&amp;quot;. 5.14pm: More commissions for ITV4 in the future? &amp;quot;ITV4 is absolutely a place we want to commission more for. We&amp;#039;ve steadily been doing that and this autumn you&amp;#039;ll finally see the fruits of our labour. It&amp;#039;s a similar strategy to ITV2 but for men.&amp;quot; As well as a Richard Bacon chatshow, they&amp;#039;re doing a Jean Claude Van Damme obdoc. 5.19pm: Bennett confirms there will be no more commissioning on ITV3, aside from Ladies of Letters and things like the Crime Thriller Awards. &amp;quot;ITV4 is more where we&amp;#039;re working on right now,&amp;quot; he says. 5.24pm: Acquisitions chat. He says there&amp;#039;s no quota on commissions vs acquisitions. &amp;quot;Most of the new big shows [from the LA screenings] have now found homes. We chose not to buy at those levels because we could spend our money better.&amp;quot; 5.26pm: Which is the most successful acquisition? Bennett says Vampire Diaries. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s got a really good 16-34 profile.&amp;quot; He confirms they picked up nothing at all from this year&amp;#039;s LA Screenings. 5.27pm: Clips of upcoming programmes, including the Essex documentary and the new obdoc with The Saturdays. 5.32pm: On the Essex programme: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s in the vein of The Hills or The City. It&amp;#039;s real people, real lives. We are not scripted at all. We will construct it like a soap. The main location will be Faces nightclub, it&amp;#039;s going to be very glamorous.&amp;quot; 5.33pm: Confirmation that Secret Diary will be back early 2011 and they are looking at a new drama for Autumn 2011. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve got a few conversations going on with producers, trying to find the idea we&amp;#039;re excited about.&amp;quot; 5.35pm: Dramas on ITV2 will cost around \u00A3400k, \u00A3500k an hour; factual around \u00A3100k. 5.36pm: Questions from the audience. How do you decide on which talent to follow in obdocs? &amp;quot;I try to read an excellent magazine called heat. There&amp;#039;s a bar\u2026 I always used to say it&amp;#039;s Girls Aloud and above. We look for people who have a public persona, a certain amount of press already.&amp;quot; He says The Saturdays show was on the cards for 18 months but he waited to do it until they had a big enough profile. 5.40pm: Bennett says Katy Perry &amp;quot;is a target for us currently&amp;quot;. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s brilliant, a bullseye person. We are talking to her management about various shows. I very much doubt it would be an observational documentary.&amp;quot; 5.42pm: With that, the session is over. We&amp;#039;re back tomorrow morning with more! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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