Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

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Thank you.

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I joined the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ last May – I've been there nearly a year – but it's still a novelty for me to be introduced as the controller of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE. If you work in television, it's one of those iconic jobs that you never think you'll be asked to do until, to your surprise, you are.

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For those of you who don't know me, before last May I'd worked all my career in the independent sector, running TalkBack Productions, a company I co-owned with the comedians Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones.

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We sold TalkBack in June 2000 to Pearson Television, but I went on running it and later took over the old Thames Television which I merged with Talkback to create talkbackTHAMES.

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A year ago, I was preparing to leave talkbackTHAMES for what I felt was a well-earned rest after nearly twenty years of continual service. My idea was to spend some time with my family and have a long hard think before considering what to do next. I had, if you like, booked in my own mid-life crisis.

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But it never came. Before I was even out of the door Jana Bennett, Director of Television at the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ, asked me if I would become the new controller of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE. I thought long and hard about it, for about ten seconds, and said yes. So here am I today.

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The process of announcing my arrival was bizarre and instructive. I was on a family holiday in Egypt from which, to the understandable annoyance of my wife, I had to return for a press conference.

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The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ put me up in a hotel in west London – a sort of safe house – and were determined to keep my identity secret before producing me like a rabbit out of a hat.

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It all went wrong though. About eight thirty the previous evening the media guardian got hold of the story. My phone started ringing. Text messages and emails started arriving. The secret was out.

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I quickly realised that being controller of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE is, compared to my previous existence, being in a very public place. When it comes to Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE, everybody's got a view, everyone's got an opinion.

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You can't hide your mistakes. The job has been compared in the past to the job of England football manager, though – it has to be said - with a less varied sex life.

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The question I was asked most often when I arrived was, why? Why have you taken on this job? People seemed surprised that I wanted to do it. For my part, I was surprised that they were surprised.

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I'd always been drawn to the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ, and for reasons that, if you come from the commercial sector, can seem oddly old-fashioned. I loved the fact that its raison d'etre wasn't about making money. I loved the fact that it seemed to have an almost miraculous ability to adapt and thrive as the world changed around it.

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Above all, I loved its programmes, and the very concept of public service television. I first applied and was turned down for a job at the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ in 1983. As an independent producer, I'd been prowling its corridors – and believe me, there are a lot of corridors – for many years. There was a sense to me of arriving at my natural home.

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If all this makes the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ sounds cosy and comforting let me assure you, it isn't. As a relative newcomer, still blinking in the unaccustomed light of Television Centre, I'm forever struck by what a remarkable institution it is.

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For one thing, it exists in a state of constant and remorseless self-analysis. You're kept on your toes by continually asking yourself the questions; what are we doing? Why are we doing it? Is this the right direction to go in? What's the public value?

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And it's a question you can't answer on your own – with the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ, everyone's a stakeholder, everyone's got a view.

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Only a month ago the government published a white paper about the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ's future and the Secretary of State, Tessa Jowell, attempted to define the purposes of the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ, not for the first time, nor for the last.

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She wants the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ to deliver consistent quality and value for money. She wants it to form a consensual relationship with the wider industry. And to use her words, she wants to see the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ 'continue to take fun seriously, ensuring that quality entertainment is ingrained into its services'.

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If it's right – as it surely is – to debate the purpose of the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ, it's equally right to debate the purpose of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE.

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To many of us here, Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE is in a sense the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ's senior service. It's been around longer than most, the licence payer invest more in it than in pretty much anything else, it attracts the biggest audiences. If it was a building, it would appear to be built on solid foundations.

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And yet, so fast-flowing are the currents of change in television that some people will question whether linear channels of the conventional variety, Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE, ITV1, Channel 4, Five, Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Two, have a future at all.

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Last week, for the second time ever, the accumulated audience for multi-channel viewing – that's all the people who are watching channels other than the five main terrestrials – exceeded the audience of either Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE or ITV1 during peak-time.

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A sobering moment if you hanker for the disappearing world of terrestrial monopoly, though if you believe in the virtues of consumer choice, one perhaps more to be celebrated than mourned.

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Also on the horizon is the advent of on-demand, a world in which we can construct our own schedules by recording programmes digitally and playing them out at the time of our choosing.

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This world is rushing towards us. It's exciting, it's new, and it's easy to get intoxicated by it. It's a world in which our televisions are going to merge with our computers, our computers are going to hook up to our mobile phones, and in which content – the new word for what we once called programmes – will seep through devices and platforms like water flooding through a ceiling.

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Eventually, some people say, the pressure will be too much and everything will come crashing down.

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All this is persuasive and plausible. Most of it will happen. In television, we love talking about the digital future. Our familiar viewing habits – a quick glance at the Radio Times and a decision to be made between four or five channels, plus an unsuccessful attempt to record a show that happens to be going out at the same time as the one you really want to watch – are already history.

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All the same, I believe that Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE, and the other channels we've grown up with over the last forty or fifty years, will survive and thrive in this world. Partly this is about the very thing that apparently threatens us – consumer choice.

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It's a paradox that in a world of infinite choice, infinite choice isn't really what you want. You want some guidance. And that's what a channel provides. To use an analogy, if you walked into a restaurant and the maitre'd offered to cook you anything you wanted, your first question would be 'what do you recommend'?

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A channel recommends. It places in front of you a bill of fare.

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In the world of four hundred channels, of instant access to content, it's our job to recommend what we think the viewers will want to see.

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And this is where, although technologically the world evolves fast, at the level of basic tastes and appetites for programmes, the pace of change is very different.

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It's there, of course – thirty years ago you couldn't say that there was an audience taste for something like Big Brother, because quite simply there wasn't anything like Big Brother – but it's evolutionary. Most of what we like, we've liked for years.

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And what do we like? We like to be taken on a journey. In some cases, quite literally – the awards this afternoon are being presented by Michael Palin, who has been taking Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE audiences on journeys for many years and I hope will continue to do so for many years to come.

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We like to be told a story. We like to be surprised, enchanted, disturbed, provoked, amused. That, to adapt a current Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ marketing line, is what television does.

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Above all, and in the broadest sense of the word, we want to be entertained. That's why, when I heard that Tessa Jowell had put entertainment right at the top of her list of things the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ should be doing, I wanted to sit right down and send her a Valentines Card. 'The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ must learn to take fun seriously', she says. We do.

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I was at a Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Creative Futures day recently when somebody asked the Director General, Mark Thompson, about the place of entertainment in today's Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ. 'One thing I'm sure of' he said, 'if we don't entertain the audience, they won't keep paying the licence fee.'

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I agree. I nodded my head. He glanced in my direction, perhaps because among its huge range of services the responsibility to entertain sits most squarely on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE's shoulders.

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Not that entertainment in any sense needs to imply shallowness of purpose. Quite the opposite – entertainment with depth and purpose is arguably the Holy Grail of television. It's certainly what Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE should stand for.

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Occasionally, on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE, all the qualities that we're looking for come together at once in a programme or series that stands testament to what the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ is for. It happened last autumn with our dramatisation of Dickens' Bleak House. It has happened more recently with Planet Earth.

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Planet Earth was hailed as the successor to The Blue Planet but achieved that rare feat in a sequel of surpassing the original. It's an interesting fact – or at least at interests me.

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I've never been a great fan of people who quote statistics in a speech, so I'll keep this to a minimum – that although audiences for a mainstream terrestrial channel like Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE are 15% lower than they were when The Blue Planet was broadcast in 2001, Planet Earth managed to attract an audience 16% higher in absolute terms.

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Adjust that figure for the growth of multi-channel and Planet Earth is the more successful series by a margin of 30%. A remarkable achievement which, as controller of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE, leaves you feeling indebted to the producers, directors and cameramen who made the series. And indeed to those penguins, polar bears and snow leopards who populated it.

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What this reveals, I think, is that the audience's appetite for big, mainstream television events, television that informs as it entertains, television that pushes back boundaries, is alive and well. Never been healthier, in fact.

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These days it can sometimes appear as if the mainstream is being pecked away at on all sides by the niche, the cult, the personal. We live in an iPod age where each of us can fashion our consumption of media to our own tastes, and can flatter ourselves that our taste is unique.

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Well up to a point.

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Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE will always aim for big audiences – it's committed to the mainstream. And I believe the viewers want to be part of an audience more than ever.

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This summer we'll be covering one of the great sporting events on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE, The World Cup. I'm old enough to remember the 1966 World Cup final, which I watched on a black and white television on holiday in Norfolk.

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On the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ, I'm sure. I dare say it was being covered by ITV as well but it would have been unthinkable in my family not to watch it on the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ. Unpatriotic, somehow. It might have even have reduced England's chances of winning.

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This year's World Cup Final will take place in a world where there aren't two channels to choose from but several hundred. But will its impact be any lessened in any way? Not at all. I suspect it will be bigger than ever. It certainly will be if England win.

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Not everything on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE can be Planet Earth or the World Cup, but what we aim to do, across a huge range of genres, is find those programmes that have a broad, mainstream appeal. We like big audiences, and we like family audiences.

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It's a commonly held view that family viewing is dying out, that the family is dispersed to different corners of the house, that at any one moment the fifteen year old in one bedroom is watching something different from the thirteen year old in another, while mum and dad are watching something different again in the sitting room.

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It's actually something of a misconception.

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If you'll forgive me one more time from returning to the murky world of statistics, here's one from a recent piece of research that struck me as remarkable. I wonder if you can guess what percentage of homes, at any one time, have more than one television playing. 25%? 30? 50? No. It's 3%.

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We like watching television together.

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When we plan Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE's schedules, and commission its programming, we're looking for those things that will bring people together, that they can enjoy and share. I'm sure you're familiar with the successful return last year of Dr.Who.

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It's running on Saturday evenings at the moment. It's imaginative, inventive and sometimes quite scary. Though that only seems to affect me – my children breeze through it.

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This autumn, in the same spirit, we're bringing back another of those iconic brands, Robin Hood. Our Robin Hood won't much resemble the old black-and-white series of the sixties, and nor will you mistake it for the eighties version Robin of Sherwood.

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Those Spandau Ballet hairstyles will have gone, for a start. But in Robin Hood you have a story, and a world, that's worth revisiting for each generation.

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At the other end of the spectrum we're broadcasting an ambitious dramatisation of Jane Eyre. It's shooting now in Derbyshire. I was recently shown some early scenes – they looked ravishing.

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As with Bleak House, this is Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE doing something that's in our DNA, something that the viewers almost demand of us – producing timeless, but modern, versions of the classics.

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Both these series, by the way, introduce completely new faces to Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE: newcomer Ruth Wilson, who plays Jane Eyre, and Jonas Armstrong as Robin Hood. Refreshing the family of talent on the channel, and avoiding the obvious route of playing safe with familiar faces.

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At another end of the spectrum still is long-running popular drama. This is incredibly important to Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE. We've been running for the past six weeks or so an ambitious series on Thursday nights, Waterloo Rood, set in a modern comprehensive school. It's proved controversial.

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Some people say it reflects life in modern comprehensives with uncanny accuracy – and that's a scandal. Others say it misrepresents life in comprehensives completely – and that's a scandal too.

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To me, it's strong, uncompromising popular drama and just what Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE should be doing. We're following it in a couple of weeks with another series in the same slot, New Street Law, set in the chambers of two competing and very different law firms. Watch out for that.

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Programming that reflects modern society, has something to say, but wants to reach a wide audience to say it. That's pure Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE.

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This autumn we're premiering a new film by Dominic Savage which takes as its theme inequality in society today. The starting point for this project was a discussion about marking the fortieth anniversary of the legendary sixties drama Cathy Come Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ.

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It was suggested to me, a bit hesitantly, that Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE might like to feature a documentary on the same subject. The reason I say hesitantly is that if you were only running Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE for ratings you mightn't think that a documentary on homelessness was what you were looking for.

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My reaction was to say let's not worry about that - let's get ambitious, let's make a film, let's make something that matters. Dominic Savage came in and argued that if the discussion of homelessness was a taboo subject in the sixties, then its equivalent today might be inequality.

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We live in a world where nobody notices the inequality that surrounds us. It's a national debate waiting to be kick-started. I thought that was a compelling argument. Now Colin Firth's on board to play the lead and it will be one of the most important features of our autumn schedule.

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In entertainment, we've got some big things coming up too. You may have seen some publicity recently about a series we're launching in a month or so, How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?

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This is the show that aims to find the actress who will play the part of Maria in Andrew Lloyd Webber's West End production of The Sound Of Music.

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There's something special about The Sound of Music, something truly mainstream, something that appeals across all ages and social divides.

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I'm whistling the tunes already. A bit later in the summer, we're bringing the world of show-jumping back to Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE with a series that surrounds Sport Relief, the sporting equivalent of Comic Relief.

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In this series, celebrities who can ride a horse – but that's about it – compete against each other in the demanding sport of show-jumping. It'll be different, and fun, and unpredictable. We're calling it Only Fools On Horses.

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We love big live events at Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE. Also this summer we're creating a unique and magical show in conjunction with the Royal Household as part of The Queen's 80th birthday celebrations – the Children's Party at the Palace. For the first time ever, Harry Potter will meet Beatrix Potter.

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And in July we're devoting a Saturday night to what we're calling Dancing In The Streets. This is an attempt – and I do hope some of you will actively join in – to get the nation dancing together as never before.

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It's the culmination of a week of events called Big Dance happening throughout the country which is organised by the Arts Council and the Greater London Authority.

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Celebrities, dance experts, parents, kids and grand-parents all dancing live in special events throughout the country. I don't think anybody's tried anything quite like it before.

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One of the keys aspects of Dancing In The Streets is that it's a nationwide event. The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ has never been more conscious of the role we play in our national life, and of our responsibility to reflect the variety and range of the U.K. in whatever way we can.

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With this in mind I'm trying an experiment this summer – for a month we're going to rest our usual early evening 7.00 shows and create a new, live magazine programme that runs until 7.30 and which aims to reflect the diversity of the U.K. in all senses.

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It'll be a show that creates a very modern, interactive relationship with the audience. At a time of evening when it can sometimes seem as if an unbroken diet of soaps is all that's on offer, it'll be something different and distinctive.

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Comedy is another key ingredient in the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE mix. There's no genre that excites more comment, expectation, and sometimes disappointment.

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It's been said and I agree that comedy reaches parts that other genres just don't reach, that if due to some technological meltdown you were obliged to wipe from television's hard drive all but a few classic masterpieces the majority of what would be left would be comedies.

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But it's a tough challenge in the modern age. Audiences aren't what they were. I was watching a Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE series recently, Comedy Connections, which tells the story of some of the classic series from the past.

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The subject of this particular episode was To The Manor Born. The actress Penelope Keith, who was being interviewed, said nonchalantly that on average their audiences in those days were about 22 million. And in the episode where she and Peter Bowles finally got married, half the population – 27 million people – tuned in. Wow!

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Nowadays a successful sit com might get five or six million viewers. But does that make it any less important to us? Not for a minute.

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Is comedy's cultural impact, if that doesn't sound too pretentious a phrase, in any way diminished? I don't think so. Look at Little Britain. Look at The Office. Programmes that shape our view of the modern world.

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There was a time when if you wanted to watch a comedy on the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ, it was inevitably on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE. Nowadays our output is spread across a portfolio of channels – Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ TWO, Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ THREE, even Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ FOUR which has made an extraordinary impact in the past year with its outstanding series The Thick Of It.

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As controller of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE, you might think that I'd be threatened by this. On the contrary, I'm delighted. The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ's comedy output is rich and varied, and our commitment to it as strong as ever.

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But there's no doubt that it does bring challenges to the mainstream. In comedy more than any other genre, a lot of talent doesn't want to march down the middle of the road, but prefers life at the edges. Audiences affect this to. People like to discover comedy for themselves, and less mainstream channels are the perfect place to do so.

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My reaction to this is simple – keep trying, and try harder. This year we're piloting more comedies for Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE than we have for a long time, some with talent familiar to the channel, some with new faces.

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Some sitcoms, some sketch shows. In addition, this autumn we're broadcasting a comedy drama playhouse season, six new films, from six different writers, with six different casts.

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Not everything we're doing will succeed. That's just the way it is. On Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE, when you're aiming for big audiences, you need the right to fail. Anyone who tells you they'll get it right every time is a liar.

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One of my favourite of our new comedies is by Jennifer Saunders, who wrote and starred in Absolutely Fabulous. She's created something that I think is very special in Jam and Jerusalem, a series set in the world of village groups in a small town in Devon. It's very modern, but oddly traditional.

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It's got a wonderful cast, and it's beautifully written. I hope it will be a hit. I think it will be. But I can't guarantee it. That's up to the audience.

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I'm a very strong believer, as I hope you can tell, in Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE. I think it should aim high. But I don't think it should play safe. I've mostly talked about things that are coming up during the rest of this year, but we've got long term plans as well, and some of them, I hope, might surprise you.

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One project I've put into development is an ambitious dramatisation of the story of the Passion, to be played across Easter Week, in peak-time. It's not East Enders but I believe a big audience could come to it. Remember Jesus of Nazareth? A major television event, not confined to a slot for religious programmes - a big story, and big box office.

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I don't yet know whether the Passion will happen, but it's an example of something that I believe that the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ, and in particular Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE, should do. Because it can. And I don't think anybody else will. That's the sort of thing we should remain committed to; it's what our viewers expect of us.

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Many thanks for listening, and thank you again for inviting me. And I hope you enjoy watching the programmes I've been talking about as much as we're enjoying planning and making them.