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"3.30pm: Next controller session promises to be an interesting one. It&amp;#039;s Jeff Ford, who&amp;#039;s just been appointed as the new controller for Channel Five, taking over from Richard Woolfe. Jeremy Vine is the moderator. 3.33pm: On the big announcement: &amp;quot;The great thing about Dawn is she likes to keep people informed. She called a meeting of the entire staff, just laid it out as it was, that we were being bought by Northen &amp;amp; Shell and a lot of the directors would be leaving. I only found out two days prior to that. It&amp;#039;s a very exciting time for me but also the worst time, losing so many friends and colleagues.&amp;quot; 3.34pm: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s been a hard time for Five. We lost a hell a lot of our programme budget as well. We were under a hell of a lot of pressure to survive. Even against that background, last year the family of channels grew. Even out of all that change, we did perform miracles.&amp;quot; 3.35pm: &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s a lot of room now in the offices,&amp;quot; he jokes. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s a lot of meeting rooms to spare, because Richard needed two or three.&amp;quot; 3.36pm: &amp;quot;Richard Desmond is a character. I&amp;#039;d never met him before. The first time we did was the night of the announcement. He&amp;#039;s so enthusiastic about having this channel, and he really wants to make it work.&amp;quot; 3.38pm: &amp;quot;The things important to me at Five are the people. It really is important. People know, going through this difficult time, it isn&amp;#039;t easy for me.&amp;quot; 3.39pm: Why did he choose you to stay? &amp;quot;Boyish good lucks. I think he did a bit of research on what I&amp;#039;ve done in the past. I&amp;#039;ve chosen a few good shows and I can negotiate a bit too. I&amp;#039;ve been in TV since 1977, which is quite some time. I started right at the bottom and worked my way up.&amp;quot; 3.40pm: &amp;quot;What I don&amp;#039;t know, I&amp;#039;m going to learn. I&amp;#039;m going to go out and meet a lot of the independents. It&amp;#039;s great to be able to say we&amp;#039;re here and we&amp;#039;re spending money.&amp;quot; 3.42pm: \u00A320m comes costcutting from headcount, the Covent Garden office. &amp;quot;The money will go on to the programme budget. More money will be seen on screen.&amp;quot; 3.43pm: Is he expecting Desmond to meddle? &amp;quot;Does he come up with lots of suggestions and ideas? Of course he does. He owns the station. That&amp;#039;s not just Richard Desmond. RTL took a very big interest in our shows.&amp;quot; 3.44pm: &amp;quot;My job is to ensure he&amp;#039;s making the right decisions, or helping me make the right decisions. If you can just turn him around, he gets it.&amp;quot; 3.45pm: &amp;quot;Dawn never liked dogs, so Crufts was never an option.&amp;quot; Best line of the Festival so far. 3.46pm: &amp;quot;In the week and a half that I&amp;#039;ve been in charge&amp;quot; - cue laughter - &amp;quot;he&amp;#039;s never [interfered with the news].&amp;quot; 3.47pm: Worried about the influence of The Express journalism? &amp;quot;No, I don&amp;#039;t. The news we have at the moment is very independent and will continue to have its own voice. If he does start influencing in a way we&amp;#039;d feel uncomfortable, then I might consider &amp;#039;is that the path I want to go down?&amp;#039; But I don&amp;#039;t think that&amp;#039;s the way it&amp;#039;s going to go.&amp;quot; 3.48pm: Much laughter. Peppa Pig will now be made in the same studio as Wobbling Whoppers 3 and Northern Exposer. &amp;quot;We did do some erotic thrillers in the past, very good ones, but we&amp;#039;re not going to be doing that any more.&amp;quot; 3.50pm: Clipreel of Five programmes from last year. Controversial perhaps, but am I alone in really liking Live From Studio Five? 3.53pm: It wasn&amp;#039;t in the clipreel, alas. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re commissioning a bit more.&amp;quot; Confirms 12 episodes of Hotel Inspector for 2011. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s quite hard for me now to say what we&amp;#039;re going to do.&amp;quot; 3.54pm: Anything they&amp;#039;re losing? &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve got to play to our strengths. Huge brands in those shows and we&amp;#039;re going to expand them further. We also want to get some synergies with the newspapers and publications. We&amp;#039;re already doing shows like Simon Cowell, Where Did it All Go Right?&amp;quot; 3.55pm: &amp;quot;What we do do very well are those travelogues, which are our highest raters.&amp;quot; Pressed further on the synergy - is it right to promote the mags? &amp;quot;It depends what Ofcom say, that&amp;#039;s the first port of call, but we would be quite stupid if we didn&amp;#039;t take advantage of one of the biggest brands of the world, OK for instance. Now we&amp;#039;ve also got Live From Studio Five, we&amp;#039;d be stupid if we didn&amp;#039;t take advantage of that.&amp;quot; 3.56pm: &amp;quot;LFSF is a work-in-progress and we want to move that to the next level. It works better as a half hour.&amp;quot; 3.57pm: &amp;quot;If we start going downmarket, that&amp;#039;s the opposite to what we should be doing.&amp;quot; Does Five get too many knocks? &amp;quot;Naked Jungle was obviously one of our highlights. Have we shot ourselves in the foot on the odd occasion? Yes, but everyone keeps reminding us of that. That&amp;#039;s part of our history and growing up and the budgets we had. We want to aim higher, not lower.&amp;quot; 3.58pm: Question about Fiver and Five USA. &amp;quot;USA is now a 1% channel, will have its best month ever. It is what it is. It&amp;#039;s Five and it&amp;#039;s USA. We were just Five US at one point and that A made a hell of a lot of difference. I think something like 17m viewers turn to it every month.&amp;quot; 3.59pm: Voxpops. &amp;quot;Good all-rounder&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;aimed at old people&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;film&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;funny&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;maybe for the younger people&amp;quot;. 4.01pm: Michael Grade calls for a &amp;quot;complete makeover&amp;quot; of Five, accusing it of trying to be &amp;quot;a cool version of BBC One and a poor version of ITV1&amp;quot;. 4.02pm: &amp;quot;That was all quite positive,&amp;quot; notes Ford. &amp;quot;Another fact, sorry. 43m watched us in July in some form. We get a lot of shows that get over 2m viewers. We beat Channel 4 at 9pm one third of the time and ITV1 one fifth of the time.&amp;quot; 4.06pm: As a small boy, Ford wanted to do acquisitions (hey, me too!). &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d been obsessed by television - I was one of those kids who got the Radio Times at Christmas and circle the shows I wanted to watch. I recognised the fact that some of these shows were American... I realised somebody must have bought these shows and decided they were going to be on BBC One. I thought &amp;#039;that&amp;#039;s a job I&amp;#039;d like to do&amp;#039; - at the age of seven.&amp;quot; 4.07pm: At 18, he went to the BBC and worked as a vaults boy, archiving and distributing tapes. &amp;quot;I worked my way up at the BBC, went into the acquisitions department&amp;quot; then received more knockbacks, going to Anglia in Norwich in the late 80s. Replaced a dead guy at Yorkshire, then variously stole other people&amp;#039;s jobs at Carlton and Central, eventually getting a job as an ITV film buyer. 4.10pm: &amp;quot;Buying programmes, you do it throughout the year.&amp;quot; He talks about the LA Screenings - mentions FlashForward, which was a &amp;quot;huge hit for us&amp;quot;. He says it&amp;#039;s a &amp;quot;pity&amp;quot; it wasn&amp;#039;t renewed. &amp;quot;The thing that really excites me the most is the schedule, and creating the schedule that appeals to the viewer.&amp;quot; 4.12pm: Acquisition ambitions: &amp;quot;We didn&amp;#039;t buy anything new at the LA Screenings. The programmes weren&amp;#039;t that good this year. We did buy seasons three and four of The Mentalist.&amp;quot; 4.13pm: Clipreel of upcoming programmes. 4.15pm: &amp;quot;We haven&amp;#039;t had a huge amount of money to be able to commission new shows. The Autumn, yeah, is a bit similar to before but it&amp;#039;s okay, because we&amp;#039;ve got a lot of good shows.&amp;quot; 4.17pm: On Justin Lee Collins: &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s back to what he does best, in new series Turning Japanese, where he&amp;#039;s with people in an unsual situation and reacting them.&amp;quot; 4.18pm: Audience questions. Will 5 buy Big Brother? &amp;quot;Richard did say, when he took over, that he was looking at X Factor, Big Brother, TOTP and Panorama.&amp;quot; 4.19pm: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s just one of the shows... we&amp;#039;re talking to many, many people. Loads of things we&amp;#039;re discussing. That&amp;#039;s one of the things that&amp;#039;s on many, many lists.&amp;quot; As for TOTP: &amp;quot;I think all of those shows, it&amp;#039;s about the ambition. It&amp;#039;s just saying &amp;#039;we&amp;#039;re here, we&amp;#039;re going to be big, brash and we want big, big programmes.&amp;quot; 4.20pm: &amp;quot;X Factor and Coronation Street, you&amp;#039;re never going to get, but [his comments] are about ambition and scale.&amp;quot; Ford doesn&amp;#039;t think they&amp;#039;re going to do a full-year current affairs programme. 4.21pm: Natasha Kaplinksy: &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;ll be coming back.&amp;quot; 4.22pm: Are Neighbours and Home &amp;amp; Away safe? &amp;quot;Yes. Of course they are.&amp;quot; 4.23pm: Any PPV services Five could launch? &amp;quot;Not with the Channel Five brand. There aren&amp;#039;t any plans yet.&amp;quot; Ford reveals that he&amp;#039;s going away to LA with Desmond for a week next week &amp;quot;because he wants to meet all the studios&amp;quot;. 4.24pm: &amp;quot;Too early&amp;quot; to say what kind of shows he&amp;#039;s looking for. &amp;quot;It hasn&amp;#039;t been thought through absolutely yet.&amp;quot; 4.25pm: Ford says he knows what he wants to do but hasn&amp;#039;t spoken to all of the controllers and commissioners yet so won&amp;#039;t reveal his plans. 4.26pm: Very convoluted question from a woman about The Hollywood Reporter about how they can now effectively create celebrities in the mags that they can then exploit on Five. It was more of a statement, to be fair. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not just about Big Brother,&amp;quot; Ford says, &amp;quot;we can do stuff in the magazines....&amp;quot; BIG HINT? 4.27pm: Someone pushing for more guidance on important genres at Five. &amp;quot;For me, we need to build on the stuff we&amp;#039;ve got, so fact and factent is a good place to start. Entertainment has to be there every week.&amp;quot; 4.29pm: What is the budget exactly? &amp;quot;I can&amp;#039;t give you the full number, but it is tens of millions of pounds more. They work in a different way to RTL, where you had to work to get a pound out of them.&amp;quot; 4.32pm: That&amp;#039;s all for this session, but join me again in fifteen minutes for the next session: controller of ITV, Peter Fincham. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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