Interview: Janice Hadlow, BBC4 (Evening Standard)
By David Rowan
IT IS customary for new channel controllers to celebrate winning "the best job in television". But Janice Hadlow, the new boss at BBC4, genuinely seems to believe it.
Hadlow, the quietly thoughtful head of Channel 4's specialist factual department, was clearly uneasy being thrust into the limelight at yesterday's press conference announcing her appointment. But afterwards, away from the crowd, she can barely contain her glee at joining the two-year-old digital channel known as much for its highbrow programming as its sometimes minuscule ratings.
"I do honestly think I've got the dream job," she says. BBC4, she adds, is less a television channel than "a forcing house for creativity, a place where the most innovative and exciting things can happen".
And it will be her privilege to bring to the channel "authoritative new faces, new names, new ideas".
Hadlow, a 46-year-old mother-oftwo, is queen of television history.
She gave Niall Ferguson his break, paid David Starkey a reported £75,000 an hour, and commissioned Simon Schama to front BBC2's A History of Britain. But with a strong arts background too, the BBC is counting on her to boost the channel's reputation for serious publicservice broadcasting in the run-up to charter renewal. To start with, she says, expect a few ambitious new landmark series "that deliver on authority and reach".
BBC4 could certainly do with greater reach. Its audience share grew by half last year, but that represented a rise from just 0.22 per cent to 0.33 per cent. And although The Alan Clark Diaries brought in almost a million viewers in January, the ratings for some other programmes barely hit five figures.
Will this limited audience frustrate her? "I don't think so at all," Hadlow responds swiftly. "The way we measure viewers' response shouldn't be just about numbers.
Sometimes it's about the way people watch. You do know that the viewers you have on BBC4 are so committed." Well, the BBC seems to think that numbers matter. "They matter in other parts of the BBC portfolio, such as 1 and 2, but there are some territories in the corporation where they're not what count first and foremost. Look, nobody in television wants to feel they're not attracting the maximum number of people they can. But you can do that within a different framework if the gene pool for your sort of programme is different. It's about maximising pleasure, impact and satisfaction."
This reasoning sounds a rather neat way for Hadlow to pre-empt the inevitable "Is anyone watching?" headlines. But she insists that BBC4's remit is to "do something different". Her choice is not, she says, between ratings and public service. "Many programmes manage to achieve both. It is quite possible to have public-service values in shows which nonetheless attract huge audiences." Another question is whether Hadlow, who commutes from Oxford, has the budget she needs. Last year, BBC4 spent £41 million, whereas BBC2 went through £367 million.
John Hurt, star of The Alan Clark Diaries, spoke out last December against the "ludicrous" cost-cutting that a non-digital channel's production would have been spared. "He did say that," Hadlow says carefully, "but as a viewer I saw no evidence. I don't personally think it would have gained from having had four or five times the budget." The big-bucks mentality can inhibit creativity, she suggests rather conveniently - "narrowing the opportunities that we give to our audiences because we self-censor".
BESIDES, she does not see her remit as to make the next Pompeii. "Our task is to cast our net as widely as we can among people who have something to say. That need not cost the Earth." Good news, then, for prospective media dons: Hadlow continues to believe that academics "touched by charisma" are an underused televisual resource. "I don't just mean historians, but writers with stimulating things to say about the arts, ideas, science, literature. Think of people like Michael Ignatieff, with whom I worked closely when on The Late Show, and who has gone on to become a major figure in American cultural life." Hadlow says that Schama, Starkey and Ferguson have "changed the way we think about history".
Critics argue that the result is to turn a serious-discipline on a presenter's ego, but Hadlow is unmoved. "I've made programmes about the Georgian underworld, the Plague in 17th-century Britain," she says. "Nor is it true that television's only interested in 'Nazis and Egyptians'." The boom in historical fiction convinces her the genre will remain popular.
She is something of the history woman herself. After attending the local comprehensive in Swanley, north Kent, she took a first in history at the University of London and began studying for a PhD on 19thcentury politics. "I thought I would write the great riposte to EP Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class," she recalls, mocking her own naive ambition. "I was just curious about why there had never been a revolution here, so I looked at how strong conservatism was in the years after the French Revolution."
She abandoned the project after three years, but not before reading "a fantastic book which appeared absolutely to reinforce what I thought, but for the first time put a human face on the French suffering". The book was Citizens, by Simon Schama, and as Hadlow puts it: "It changed my life. I thought, hmm, I'd like to meet this guy." That took another decade. She took a job in the House of Commons research department for six years, serving as "a hand-cranked internet" to give MPs instant facts.
The job boosted her confidence "in a way that attending an über-public school might have done for other people. When I started, I was just a very quiet north-Kent girl who didn't say boo to a goose." She won a place as a BBC radio trainee and worked on Woman's Hour, as Victor Lewis-Smith's researcher "booking dwarf-throwers" for Midweek, and on BBC2's The Late Show, where she rose to become editor. As joint head of the BBC's history department from 1995, she commissioned Reputations and Schama's A History of Britain.
Four years later she joined Channel 4, where at one stage she was responsible concurrently for science, religion, arts, performance, history and education.
HADLOW was in the running for the BBC2 controller ' s job before Roly Keating, her predecessor at BBC4, moved in last month. Is her new job simply her consolation prize? "Absolutely not," she says. "I've already got a big job. And while I can occasionally imagine a situation when the controller of BBC4 might look wistfully at BBC2's programmes or its impact, the controller of 2 will look at the freedom, creativity and excitement offered by 4 with equal wistfulness." She knows Keating well, she points out, which will enhance the channels' relationship.
Still, a large minority cannot watch the BBC's digital channels.
What of those - from Lord Bragg to Sir Jonathan Miller - who argue that BBC4 merely allows the corporation to "ghettoise" serious programming in its quest for ratings? "That's just not borne out by the evidence," Hadlow replies, sounding the corporation woman already. "The idea that you've seen a diminution of high-end programmes on the BBC is not true." Besides, she adds, there are always new ways to express " seriousness". "And BBC4 is just one more creative voice."
(Evening Standard, June 16 2004)
IT IS customary for new channel controllers to celebrate winning "the best job in television". But Janice Hadlow, the new boss at BBC4, genuinely seems to believe it.
Hadlow, the quietly thoughtful head of Channel 4's specialist factual department, was clearly uneasy being thrust into the limelight at yesterday's press conference announcing her appointment. But afterwards, away from the crowd, she can barely contain her glee at joining the two-year-old digital channel known as much for its highbrow programming as its sometimes minuscule ratings.
"I do honestly think I've got the dream job," she says. BBC4, she adds, is less a television channel than "a forcing house for creativity, a place where the most innovative and exciting things can happen".
And it will be her privilege to bring to the channel "authoritative new faces, new names, new ideas".
Hadlow, a 46-year-old mother-oftwo, is queen of television history.
She gave Niall Ferguson his break, paid David Starkey a reported £75,000 an hour, and commissioned Simon Schama to front BBC2's A History of Britain. But with a strong arts background too, the BBC is counting on her to boost the channel's reputation for serious publicservice broadcasting in the run-up to charter renewal. To start with, she says, expect a few ambitious new landmark series "that deliver on authority and reach".
BBC4 could certainly do with greater reach. Its audience share grew by half last year, but that represented a rise from just 0.22 per cent to 0.33 per cent. And although The Alan Clark Diaries brought in almost a million viewers in January, the ratings for some other programmes barely hit five figures.
Will this limited audience frustrate her? "I don't think so at all," Hadlow responds swiftly. "The way we measure viewers' response shouldn't be just about numbers.
Sometimes it's about the way people watch. You do know that the viewers you have on BBC4 are so committed." Well, the BBC seems to think that numbers matter. "They matter in other parts of the BBC portfolio, such as 1 and 2, but there are some territories in the corporation where they're not what count first and foremost. Look, nobody in television wants to feel they're not attracting the maximum number of people they can. But you can do that within a different framework if the gene pool for your sort of programme is different. It's about maximising pleasure, impact and satisfaction."
This reasoning sounds a rather neat way for Hadlow to pre-empt the inevitable "Is anyone watching?" headlines. But she insists that BBC4's remit is to "do something different". Her choice is not, she says, between ratings and public service. "Many programmes manage to achieve both. It is quite possible to have public-service values in shows which nonetheless attract huge audiences." Another question is whether Hadlow, who commutes from Oxford, has the budget she needs. Last year, BBC4 spent £41 million, whereas BBC2 went through £367 million.
John Hurt, star of The Alan Clark Diaries, spoke out last December against the "ludicrous" cost-cutting that a non-digital channel's production would have been spared. "He did say that," Hadlow says carefully, "but as a viewer I saw no evidence. I don't personally think it would have gained from having had four or five times the budget." The big-bucks mentality can inhibit creativity, she suggests rather conveniently - "narrowing the opportunities that we give to our audiences because we self-censor".
BESIDES, she does not see her remit as to make the next Pompeii. "Our task is to cast our net as widely as we can among people who have something to say. That need not cost the Earth." Good news, then, for prospective media dons: Hadlow continues to believe that academics "touched by charisma" are an underused televisual resource. "I don't just mean historians, but writers with stimulating things to say about the arts, ideas, science, literature. Think of people like Michael Ignatieff, with whom I worked closely when on The Late Show, and who has gone on to become a major figure in American cultural life." Hadlow says that Schama, Starkey and Ferguson have "changed the way we think about history".
Critics argue that the result is to turn a serious-discipline on a presenter's ego, but Hadlow is unmoved. "I've made programmes about the Georgian underworld, the Plague in 17th-century Britain," she says. "Nor is it true that television's only interested in 'Nazis and Egyptians'." The boom in historical fiction convinces her the genre will remain popular.
She is something of the history woman herself. After attending the local comprehensive in Swanley, north Kent, she took a first in history at the University of London and began studying for a PhD on 19thcentury politics. "I thought I would write the great riposte to EP Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class," she recalls, mocking her own naive ambition. "I was just curious about why there had never been a revolution here, so I looked at how strong conservatism was in the years after the French Revolution."
She abandoned the project after three years, but not before reading "a fantastic book which appeared absolutely to reinforce what I thought, but for the first time put a human face on the French suffering". The book was Citizens, by Simon Schama, and as Hadlow puts it: "It changed my life. I thought, hmm, I'd like to meet this guy." That took another decade. She took a job in the House of Commons research department for six years, serving as "a hand-cranked internet" to give MPs instant facts.
The job boosted her confidence "in a way that attending an über-public school might have done for other people. When I started, I was just a very quiet north-Kent girl who didn't say boo to a goose." She won a place as a BBC radio trainee and worked on Woman's Hour, as Victor Lewis-Smith's researcher "booking dwarf-throwers" for Midweek, and on BBC2's The Late Show, where she rose to become editor. As joint head of the BBC's history department from 1995, she commissioned Reputations and Schama's A History of Britain.
Four years later she joined Channel 4, where at one stage she was responsible concurrently for science, religion, arts, performance, history and education.
HADLOW was in the running for the BBC2 controller ' s job before Roly Keating, her predecessor at BBC4, moved in last month. Is her new job simply her consolation prize? "Absolutely not," she says. "I've already got a big job. And while I can occasionally imagine a situation when the controller of BBC4 might look wistfully at BBC2's programmes or its impact, the controller of 2 will look at the freedom, creativity and excitement offered by 4 with equal wistfulness." She knows Keating well, she points out, which will enhance the channels' relationship.
Still, a large minority cannot watch the BBC's digital channels.
What of those - from Lord Bragg to Sir Jonathan Miller - who argue that BBC4 merely allows the corporation to "ghettoise" serious programming in its quest for ratings? "That's just not borne out by the evidence," Hadlow replies, sounding the corporation woman already. "The idea that you've seen a diminution of high-end programmes on the BBC is not true." Besides, she adds, there are always new ways to express " seriousness". "And BBC4 is just one more creative voice."
(Evening Standard, June 16 2004)
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