Holiday news

With one episode of The White Queen to go, Danny Cohen might be thinking it could have played better when nights are darker..

Not so sunny

How do you make a second series even better ? Try not to get cancelled. The crew making "What Happens in Kavos" have been flown home from Corfu, after production notes were found in a restaurant, photocopied and distributed by British holiday workers fed up with the programme's methods.

Here's the launch announcement from Channel 4... .

Series Two will delve deeper into the lives of these young holiday making Brits who want hardcore hedonism on a budget. Once again, there'll be round-the-clock access to the bars and clubs that line the strip, the infamous booze cruises and to the health professionals who pick up the pieces when things go horribly wrong. Like last time the material will be peppered with intimate and revelatory interviews with the holiday makers, young workers and the locals. 

The series has been commissioned by Head of Factual Entertainment, Liam Humphreys and Commissioning Editor, Tina Flintoff. The production company is Dragonfly and the Executive Producer is Tamara Abood, Dragonfly's Head of Factual Entertainment. Filming will be during the summer of 2013 and the series is set to go out in 2014. 

Simon Dickson, Managing Director at Dragonfly said: "A lot of late nights went in to producing 'What Happened In Kavos' so everyone at Dragonfly was delighted when it performed so well. The C4 Fact Ent team were great to work with, they really encouraged us to bring a fresh perspective to the well-worn territory of ' young Brits on holiday. Together, we've created a show that we think manages to be simultaneously eye-popping and classy". 

Commissioning Editor Tina Flintoff said; "I'm delighted we're commissioning a second series of What Happens in Kavos.... The show has caught the imagination of our core audience of 16-34 year olds and has generated an interesting debate about the lives and loves of young Brits who seem to be seeking more extreme ways to keep themselves entertained than ever before''.

And here's the document that pulled everything. Click to go large.

Dragonfly is part of the Shine Group, chaired by Elisabeth Murdoch. Tamara Abood was hired by Dragonfly in September last year. MD Sanjay Singhal said "She has solid journalistic credibility and a fantastic instinct for attention-grabbing television. I’m very excited about the prospect of working with her.”

There may be more to come: Channel 4 and Dragonfly seems to be working on a similar offering from Sunny Beach, Bulgaria. Again, click to go large. Are you celebrating the end of your exams by busting out your bikini ? [sic]

More help ?

For completists, Mayday on BBC1 ended its five night run at 9pm with a slight surge, to an average of 4.64 million (19.9% share). Previous episodes scored, in order, 6.23m; 4.30m; 4.32m; 4.38m.

But will there be a Mayday 2 for production team Kudos? There were enough loose ends left, and tons of tree shots that can be re-used, to reduce costs and disturb Dorking less...

Thin wedge

The BBC Trust is winding up for its biennial review of the WoCC (which is not something you fwo at a wabbit). It is the Window of Creative Competition, a competition which the BBC is "losing". 50% of BBC tv output (outside of news)  is guaranteed to BBC production teams; 25% must go to independent production companies, and both sides battle for the remaining 25%.  If you'll bear with me, latest figures show the indies taking 83% of that battle ground.

By now, waistcoated Assistant Heads of Governance have ferried Terms of Engagement on the Marmaduke Hussey Crusted Cushion of Inquiry to a Chosen Accountancy firm, and The Data of Percentages is being assembled - by asking the BBC and typing down the answers.

A useful list has also appeared, in response to a Freedom of Information Inquiry - a list of BBC trading companies.  So, as the indies circle George Entwistle's BBC and in-house production, we can be reminded that one wing of the BBC is essentially, for the time being, an indie.

BBC Worldwide owns 25% of Nira Park and Kenton Allen's Big Talk Productions (latest commission - a Mitchell and Webb series for BBC2 starting in 2013).  BBC Worldwide owns 12% (down from 25% in August) of Left Bank Pictures, which made the Branagh take on Wallander, and the Italian cop series Zen. BBC Worldwide, through a holding company called Mini Milk, owns a 25% slice of Plain Vanilla, Dominic Minghella's drama production company, which brought you Robin Hood and now brings Doc Martin to ITV. Complicated, huh ?

Quota quotes

Twitchy times ahead if you are a tv programme maker at the BBC. Unholy alliances are ranged against you. The big indies want to maintain growth in a recession, and used the Edinburgh TV Festival for the traditional, but shameless call for a further increase in the indie quota, which they now prefer to phrase as "a reduction in the protected levels of BBC production".

This sits well with some BBC Controllers, who see indies as cheaper, sharper, more directable - and more likely to buy them lunch. It sits well with a new cadre of BBC Executive Producers, who sit on top of these indies, giving them the benefit of their wisdom without financial or critical risk to their career path inside Auntie. It sits well with some BBC senior managers, as a way out of the DQF conundrums. Fewer BBC producers in tv and radio creates exponential savings - in HR, IT and training support, in care and career development, and in simple office space. It helps close White City, as well as Television Centre. It sits well with Tory MPs. Staff, unions, etc are nothing but trouble.

So far, the only voice raised in their defence is that of Pat Younge, Chief Creative Officer of BBC Vision,  "The attack isn't unexpected. I don't think in-house is the big threat to the BBC. I think we've got our challenges and I'm glad it's George [Entwistle] not me who's got to deal with them, but we'll get through. But this fixation on 'in-house is the problem' - there's no evidence that we're even more expensive [than independent productions].....I want to see George put creativity back at the heart of the BBC. Sometimes it feels like making programmes is an inconvenient obstacle to running the BBC."

You'll notice this makes no reference to scale or size. For tv and radio production across the UK, the reality is that the BBC and indies now have a shared interest in increasing casualisation of the industry....

Filled

Woo, the pace of executive life. We though someone with an ad background might be in line to run monster-indie All3Media. Just turned out not to be BBC Audio and Music boss Tim Davie.

The job has gone to one of his Cambridge contemporaries, Farah Ramzan Golant, CBE, who was at Emmanuel while Tim tore up the running tracks of Selwyn. She's been with agency AMV BBDO for 22 years.

End 'em all

The BBC has belatedly decided to call an end to the talent-free humiliation show that has been Total Wipeout, an excruciating legacy of the Jay Hunt regime at BBC1; even now, when I fail to avoid the trails showing people in designer life-jackets bouncing off inflated balls into chlorinated pools, I'm reminded that it would not have looked out of place on The Fast Show's Chanel 9.

But the spirit of creative competition between BBC Vision Productions and the vibrant UK indie market is on the case, vying to deliver a new Saturday tea-time offering to set the nation talking.  Or does Endemol have some hold over the BBC ?

"A TV source said today that Endemol already have an idea for a replacement for the Wipeout series" Mail.

"Endemol is understood to be working on a new format for the BBC to replace it"  Guardian.

 "It is understood show producers Endemol are in talks for a new replacement show to fill the Saturday night slot" BBC News.

• Endemol also brought you "Don't Scare The Hare".

Moving movie news

There will have been tensions at Radio 5 Live following the decision to put the Simon Mayo/Mark Kermode movie review show out to independent production. It's hard to know who owns the concept - it was, after all, a feature of Simon's show on Radio 1, before moving over to 5 Live in 2001. Now it runs at two hours every Friday - and whilst the raw material is pretty much in Kermode's head, there's a list of editors and producers that have supported and developed it over the ten years with the network, adding guests, outside broadcasts, podcasts and cameras along the way.

Now, thanks to quotas, it's heading to Steve Ackerman's Somethin' Else, based in Old Street, with the promise that there will be more digital spin-offs.  Nicky Birch and Paul Bennun were part of the pitch.  In 2009, Somethin' Else won a three year deal to produce the football phone-in 606 - and helped Robbie Savage win a Rising Star award at the Sonys last month.