The Space Precinct Legacy

The cinema billed it as “the story of the most ambitious television series ever made”. Outside, the hoarding lit up the night sky: Space Precinct Legacy. 

I can’t believe that anyone actually remembers Space Precinct, the 1994 sci-fi series I co-produced with Gerry Anderson, let alone that it has any legacy, other than grey hairs on my head and a big red loss on the books of our backers.

A news deal for the North

On Friday I spent the day pitching what I thought were some pretty revolutionary ideas for transforming the content of our local ITV news coverage. It’s a privilege to have been invited to join the consortium of The Journal’s owners and its partners Ten Alps and The Press Association in their bid to win the independently funded news consortium pilot for the North East. I’ve watched the local news here since the first day of Tyne Tees Television and, frankly, I don’t think much has changed in those fifty years. Now we have a chance to do something about it.

This experiment, to be paid for by an unspent part of the BBC licence fee (because what could be more relevant to public service broadcasting than improving our vitally important regional service?) is an opportunity to try out something completely new: England’s first local multi-media news.

There are three million licence payers in our region who currently receive not a single locally produced network programme, so it’s only fair that we should be given the best regional news service. And, as Sir John Hall correctly pointed out in a public meeting on Friday afternoon, over the years we’ve allowed ITV to strip us of virtually all our much-loved local programmes. Now, with the aid of a substantial newspaper resource and a layered multi-platform approach, we could begin to turn the tide.

But first we had to convince the panel, led by former Radio Authority chairman Richard Hooper. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting them: they are not only extremely experienced, but are clearly committed to giving our region something special.

Certainly it’s been a more pleasant experience putting this bid together than the last time I tried for a regional television franchise. That was back in the nineties, when I put my company Mentorn up against the might of Greg Dyke’s London Weekend Television.

We didn’t win, despite fielding a team that included film producers Working Title and media giant Polygram. Greg dubbed us the Groucho Bid, because we planned the whole thing in a tiny room in the London club, toiling for two months with little sleep to produce a document hundreds of pages long. Our final task, 24 hours before the deadline, was the most important: a compulsory 8-page summary, outlining all our plans. It was the first thing the judges would read.

With addled brains, surrounded by a phalanx of lawyers verifying every word, we set about the task. At 1am, one hour before our print deadline, I typed in the last sentence. Everyone in the room applauded and a junior lawyer offered to go and make us all a cup of tea. On his way out he squeezed past the line of chairs and tripped over the cable connected to my laptop. The plug came out; the screen went blank.

We watched frozen as the machine rebooted. Not one word of the summary had been saved. It had taken 24 hours to write and needed to be at the printers within the hour or we’d be disqualified. The young lawyer burst into tears.

In desperation I rang the MD of Polygram to tell him the grim news. He was at a post-premiere party – you could hear champagne corks popping in the background. But this is where, even through an alcoholic haze, the class of a top executive really shows.

“The rules say it must be exactly 8 pages and contain a summary of our entire bid, but does it specify how many words on each page?” “Er, not exactly.”

So, over the phone, he calmly dictated a list of bullet points, each to be typed in large print across the document. It took him just ten minutes to fill 8 pages – and he listed every key fact.

When he finished he wished me goodnight, adding, “This time please don’t forget to save it.”

Tying the Knot

The tickets for our wedding arrived this morning. Not for the event itself – it’s a strictly invitation-only affair – but for the flights taking my entire family, including my 88 year old Mother and baby Izzy, to Los Angeles for the ceremony in August.

To be honest, Joanna and I weren’t planning to risk the stability of our relationship by tying the knot. Having lived together in loved-up harmony for the past five or so years, neither of us wanted to break the equilibrium by exchanging vows. We are already very good at ‘love’ and ‘honour’ and I’ve long resigned myself to ‘obey’; but our friends convinced us that, apart from the arrival of Izzy, there was the “till death do us part” issue: namely, inheritance tax. Apparently wives are exempt from this final grasp of the taxman, whereas live-in partners bear the full burden.

So the invitations are at the printers and the caterer booked. This is the first of my four weddings that I won’t be paying for, thanks to the very kind generosity of my wonderful future in-laws, who are throwing it at their house in Laguna Beach. We’re both looking forward to what will be a joyous informal celebration with friends and family.

It’ll be a sharp contrast to my previous three ceremonies. Last week I found a photograph of my first wife and me at our Tibetan wedding on top of a mountain in the Himalayas with white silk scarves round our necks sitting tanked up with rice beer next to a picture of the Dalai Lama. Exactly one year later we legalized the event in Wandsworth Registry Office. The registrar sounded exactly like Alan Whicker, with a slow nasal drawl, pausing portentously between each syllable: “Do you soh-lem-ly sweeaar?” he whined, reducing us and our half dozen witnesses to helpless giggles.

Then there was the state occasion. Greg Dyke wrote about it in his autobiography. It started out as a quiet country wedding. 350 guests and a quarter of a million pounds later, the firework display nearly set fire to the village. We even had a bishop. The congregation was full of soap stars and celebrity chefs. One well-known actress sat down in her pew next to her agent. “How many photographs did they take of you?” he whispered. “Two or three”, she said. “Get back outside and go round again,” he hissed. And she did. Marco Pierre White cooked the wedding breakfast as a present.

My final wedding will be at sunset overlooking the sea in Jo’s parents’ back garden, with only family and friends, including my divorce lawyer. In fact he and his wife are joining us on our honeymoon. Not because he’s anticipating starting work straight after the wedding (which he pretty much did last time), but because my last divorce was drawn out over so many years, he and I have become very good friends. Maybe his wedding gift will be a pre-nuptial agreement.

Knowing that Jo wouldn’t receive her protection against tax until after the ceremony, last week I decided to protect her position by redrafting my Will. My lawyer gave me a nasty shock. Apparently in the almost certain event I die before her, the new Mrs Gutteridge won’t be entitled to the inheritance tax waiver. Despite forsaking the Californian sunshine forever for the interminable Northumbrian winters and bearing a British child, the taxman insists her legal domicile will always be America. That means that when I go, Izzy’s family home might have to be sold to pay the tax. For the first time in my life I have found a reason to vote Tory: that is, unless Mr Cameron reneges on his promise to increase the IHT allowance.

Mind you, we’re still getting married anyway – we’ve already got the plane tickets.

Protest Marches

I do like a good demonstration. It’s fun to walk down the middle of a road with a banner and a few thousand companions, chanting at empty buildings.

The French are very good at protesting. Just about anything gets them marching: too many British sheep, the cost of diesel, the state of the national airline – there’s scarcely a month goes by without a good Gallic riot. And once the police have squirted a few hoses, the Government usually does whatever the protesters were demanding.

By contrast, the G20 demonstration in London at the weekend was so very British. All brass bands and middle class organic farmers with a nice vegetable lasagna waiting for them in the Aga back home. They marched with their children carrying banners handmade on the wicker table in the conservatory. “What do we want?”. “Jobs! No More Poverty! The End of Climate Change! And, er, Save the Penguins!” “When Do We Want It?” “Now!” It was more street party than political rally.

A few weeks ago I went back to my alma mater York University with Greg Dyke, who’s now the university’s Chancellor. We were reminiscing about our own student protest back in 1972. Those were the days: a decent march over a single issue (the Bloody Sunday massacre), a few arrests, then a sit-in in the Vice-Chancellor’s office – which we were now sitting in with a glass of rather good white wine. We regretted missing out on 1968, when Europe really knew how to demonstrate. I suspect that by Wednesday a few thousand European anarchists will have flown into London to show us Brits how to spice things up.

Meanwhile I’m pleased to report my own little protest is gaining momentum. A fortnight ago I wrote about the lack of network television production in the region. Then last Friday Peter Salmon, the new Director of BBC North, popped up to Newcastle to announce that Tracy Beaker is coming here: 13 episodes of the children’s series will be made on the Tyne.

It’s a really good start, and, having met Peter, I’m convinced he wants to help us. However one series is just a drop in the ocean, just as 3 months every 7 years is scarcely victory for the campaign to bring the Lindisfarne Gospels to their rightful home. We should be marching down the A1 Western Bypass over that one. In fact, for maximum impact, we could combine it with our A1 dualising campaign. “What do we want?” “The Lindisfarne Gospels!” “When do we want them?” “As soon as we’ve built the visitor complex and got a decent road up to Holy Island!”

There are quite a few things in Newcastle I’d get out on the streets for. The streets themselves, for instance. I could imagine putting a brick through the window of the man who invented those absurd “No-Car” lanes. Unnecessary, ineffective and downright dangerous, they force you to weave in and out of the taxis, keeping your eyes on the instructions in the tarmac, ignoring stray pedestrians and other vehicles in the process. If Newcastle actually has a traffic planner, I can imagine him sitting in his office with a map and a pin thinking, What can I slow down this week? Sitting in his in-tray is a request for a road sign at one of our busiest junctions, between the A1 and the A696 road to the airport. He’s left the request sitting there for over two years now, presumably because he doesn’t want to spoil the fun of watching all those tourists going round in circles looking for the way out of the roundabout.

So, What do we want? “The Lindisfarne Gospels, More Regional Television, a New Road Sign, the End of No-Car Lanes, and No More Global Warning! Please.”

No Win Situation

When I joined the BBC as a news trainee in 1973, the first thing our instructor said to us six wet behind the ears young hopefuls was, “I expect one of you to become Director-General in a few years’ time”. I’m sure our newly graduated arrogance caused us to smirk with ambition, and indeed one of us, Tony Hall, nearly pipped Greg Dyke to the top spot a few years back. Today I couldn’t imagine a worse assignment.

Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, Mark Thompson decided not to broadcast an appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee calling for donations to its Gaza relief fund, and now all hell has broken loose. His logic is that putting out the advert would undermine public confidence in the impartiality of the BBC. The result has been an outcry, with politicians, journalists, and even the BBC’s own staff, calling the decision weak, a serious error, or just plain wrong. Ben Bradshaw, the Health Minister, who used to be a reporter on Radio 4’s The World At One, said “This is a humanitarian catastrophe and I am afraid the reasons given by the BBC are completely feeble”. Even Phil Harding, the former BBC Controller of Policy (or, as we used to call him, Head of the Thought Police), who actually wrote the BBC’s editorial guidelines, says that although it’s a tough call, Thompson misjudged this one. I have to say, I agree.

Israel is, and always has been, the BBC’s hot potato. Constantly accused of bias on both sides, the BBC actually admitted it got it wrong (together with most of the world’s media) in 2005 over its overemotional (and consequently pro-Palestinian) coverage of the Israel attacks on Lebanon. That’s why this time it’s determined to get it right. The BBC says that by broadcasting the DEC appeal it might be seen to be backing Palestinians rather than Israelis as victims of the Gaza conflict. Consequently it’s now being accused of bias in favour of Israel. The Director-General can do no right.

The BBC’s mistake is that suggesting that broadcasting what is palpably a humanitarian, not a political appeal, might in some way confuse its viewers. This is condescending to the extreme. Does he serious believe that you and I will mistake it as some kind of pro-Hamas rant? This is an appeal by an umbrella group of 13 British humanitarian aid organisations, from Oxfam to Save the Children, to help children and innocent civilians whom, everyone agrees, are enduring the most appalling conditions. The money isn’t for the rebuilding of Gaza: that will presumably be funded by the Syrians and Iranians, who supplied the rockets that Hamas have been firing into undefended Israeli towns for the last six years. Whether or not Israel used disproportionate force against a civilian population, or Hamas used those civilians as human shields, is utterly irrelevant. Urgent aid is needed now, and these organisations need our cash as soon as they can get it.

The DEC was set up in 1963 to respond to extreme humanitarian emergency overseas. That such an emergency now exists is fact: it’s even accepted by the Israelis themselves, which is why organisations like Labour Friends of Israel are calling for the broadcast to go ahead. The scale of suffering is greater than anyone first thought; meanwhile the BBC insults the intelligence of its own viewers by suggesting they cannot distinguish between fact and propaganda.

As the Archbishop of York said at the weekend, this is not a row about impartiality, but about humanity. By the way, if you do want to donate, DEC’s phone number is 0370 60 60 900.

Up Close and a Bit Too Personal

“The scenery needs ironing”, I said as I watched the playback in our edit suite in Newcastle. “Look, there are creases all over the curtain – and you can see footmarks on the floor at the back”.

This week for the first time I saw the world in high definition. We’ve just shot the pilot episode of Loveland, our new Cilla Black dating show, and because Sky One broadcasts in “Hi-Def”, we’ve had to film the whole thing in this shiny new format. The problem is, it’s a brand new system, and it’s not easy to get right. It’s a bit like putting on a new pair of glasses – somehow the world doesn’t look quite the same.

I don’t want to burden you with my problems, or blind you with science (largely because I haven’t got beyond the beginner’s class myself), but in conventional television, all black is, well, black. So when you build scenery for an entertainment show you pull a black cloth, called a cyclorama, round the back of the studio, paint the floor black, and when the lights are on, all the paraphernalia of the production process is instantly hidden.

We’ve relied on this trick for years. Put some lights on in front of a black background, and through the camera lens even the smallest studio looks enormous; like smoke and mirrors, the scenery sort of floats in space, a technique that’s part of the magic of television entertainment. Watch the X-Factor and you’ll see what I mean. Film the same studio in high definition, and you’ll see every cable and flaw – even the stitching in the black cloth. Thankfully Cilla still looks radiant, whatever format we film her in.

Yesterday three separate brochures were stuffed through my front door offering bargains on “Hi-Def Ready” television sets. This is, of course, the real reason why high definition has been developed: to make us buy more televisions (and also, presumably, to contribute to the credit crunch by adding to the burden on our credit cards). Now we’ve all gone widescreen and digital, do we really need this extra accessory?

Allow me to offer a word of professional caution to anyone thinking of buying one of these. Don’t imagine that it’ll give you a “better” picture. New technology may produce a sharper, more revealing image, but it isn’t necessarily the right picture, and it may well not be what the director intended you to see. Take feature films: some new televisions offer something called “100MHz”, which means they produce images twice as fast as a normal television. That’s not always a good thing, because it’s twice as fast as the television station is broadcasting the pictures, so the television set has to “invent” every other frame you see. As a result, it can turn a beautifully crafted, Oscar-winning multi million dollar feature film, shot at 24 frames per second, into something which looks like cheap video*.

However Hi-Def is great for some subjects. Sport, for example. I’m writing this with half an eye on glamour model Nell McAndrew running as Wonderwoman in the Great North Run; later this afternoon I’ll be trying to read Joe Kinnear’s lips as he rants at the players during Newcastle’s match against Everton. Both experiences would be transformed by Hi-Def technology. Reality programmes look freakily real, and wildlife programmes come alive: you can see every drop of blood as the lion gets its gazelle.

And speaking of bloodletting, I can’t wait for the Newsnight studio to start using high definition. If there’s one subject that deserves closer scrutiny, it’s politics. There’ll be no hiding place for Peter Mandelson when Paxo starts attacking. However thick they pile on his studio makeup, the Hi-Def cameras will expose every piece of spin, every back-track, every nasty little innuendo, right up close in the whites of his eyes.

[* Here's a more detailed explanation for those who don't believe me:

TVs run at 50MHz, but television is "filmed" at 25 frames per second. So there are two "fields" per frame. Each field is half a picture - odd lines in one field, even lines in the next. Because of the speed of the process, the human brain combines the two fields into one picture, which changes 25 times per second. However, sometimes you can notice a slight flickering out of the corner of your eye (when you see a tv screen from the side, for example). Having a TV at 100MHz gets rid of that because it combines the two fields (i.e. odd and even lines) into one picture, or scan. The downside of this is that with a moving picture, you can get jagged lines on the screen. You notice it a lot when there are closing credits running from right to left across the bottom of the screen. The odd and even images don't line up because the scrolling credits are moving too fast. Some TVs get over this with a kind of "Advanced" mode, which gets the TV to predict what the picture is going to do. This sorts out the credits problem, and makes pans more smooth - though sometimes the tv predicts the movement incorrectly and it can make it all look very weird.

But in a feature film, which was originally shot at 24 frames per second (I know, it should be 25, but it's always been 24 - movies on telly are speeded up ever so slightly to allow for the extra frame), when the TV predicts the frames, or when it smooths out the pans, this isn't the image the director and cinematographer intended. It effectively makes film look like video. Yuk.

My solution: disable the 100MHz facility!]

The Hard Sell

Warning. Those of you prone to jealousy should turn away. As I write, I’m trying to stay cool as the California sun beats down on my computer. Remember warm air? We last experienced it in Northumberland in April 2007. For an hour or two.

I’m over here talking to broadcasters about one of the ideas we’ve been developing in our Byker office over the last few months. I’m pleased to say it’s getting a pretty good reception. When I say “good”, it means that they’ve politely sat through the DVD I’ve played them, rather than brusquely cutting me off with “Not for us, Tom. Anything else?” It means they quite like it, not that I can go out and buy a mansion in Beverly Hills. There’s a long, precarious path from pitching to production, about as arduous as the route to the pitching stage from the first glimmer of an idea.

At least this week’s experience is going more smoothly than my first terrifying pitch in the US years ago. Gerry Anderson (yes, Mr Thunderbird) and I wanted to make a sci-fi drama series called Space Precinct. Trouble was, it was going to cost around $36 million dollars and we didn’t have any money. So when a man rang me and asked if I’d like to go to New Orleans to take part in a “pitching seminar” at a convention of broadcasters I leapt at the chance of exciting a few buyers with our idea. As I walked towards the conference theatre, I heard a low roar not unlike a hundred thousand Romans preparing for the entry of the gladiators. The vast room was packed. What I hadn’t appreciated was that this was a pitching contest, a sport akin to bear baiting.

Four of us were given five minutes each to present our ideas, and then we were to be cross-examined, X-Factor style, by a group of judges each of whom made Simon Cowell look like a pussy cat. I was last to go. The previous entrant, a sweet French documentary producer called Natalie with a perfectly decent if rather Gallic idea, was already in tears. The other two sat red-faced and depressed, head in hands, two years’ development work torn apart in just ten minutes.

Chief inquisitor was Greg “Mr Nasty” Dyke, who was then head of London Weekend Television. Now Greg and I have a bit of a history. We were at university together and, I’m pleased to say, we are still quite good friends. But our relationship had hit a bit of a rocky patch after I’d competed against his company for the London television licence. Even though he won the bid, it took him years to forgive me. So that day he decided to take sweet revenge.

I played the showreel, which had cost months of preparation and not a little cash. Greg went straight for the jugular. “I can’t think of a network in Europe that would take it”. The other judges took his lead. My show was dead in the water.

Just then, an extraordinary thing happened. From the middle of the audience a man in an expensive suit stood up. “My name is Kloiber. I represent RTL 2”. It was Germany’s most important buyer.

“I would like to buy this series”.

There was a stunned silence. Then laughter. Surely he was joking? But with a wonderful Germanic wave of the hand, Herr Kloiber continued. “I would like to offer $100,000 per episode for a seven year licence”. Then wild applause, and a man from Tokyo stood up and made an offer for Japan. Within five minutes I had raised enough money to get the show into production.

Ah, such sweet memories, I think the sun has gone to my head. That’s the sort of thing that can happen in America. But for a show conceived in Byker?

Well, let’s see.