Interview: Lorraine Heggessey, Talkback Thames (Evening Standard)
By David Rowan
Lorraine Heggessey has made one big concession since joining the private sector. After five controversial years running BBC1, she has swapped her EastEnders ringtone for The Bill. As chief executive of Talkback Thames, Britain's biggest independent production house, Heggessey now finds herself lead saleswoman for 850 hours of programming, ranging from ratings-busting police dramas to headline-generating talent shows. "I should probably change it to The X Factor theme," she reflects as her phone interrupts the interview. "It's been fantastic to see it doing so well."
After 20 "fabulous" years at the BBC, Heggessey, 49, is determined not to look back - and not just because by some accounts she has doubled her reported £250,000 corporation salary. "I don't miss BBC1 at all, and I'm quite surprised I don't," she says bouncily in her new office by Oxford Street. "I absolutely adored running the channel, but it's quite nice not to spend Christmas agonising over how the programmes are doing. It's lovely to be out of the limelight, able to get on with my job without everybody commenting all the time."
She certainly took the flak over her declared mission to turn BBC1 into "an accessible fun-filled Italian piazza". Her populist approach to scheduling - moving the news to 10pm, Panorama to Sunday night - helped the channel overtake ITV1 in ratings, but critics were quicker to berate her for Rolf on Art than acknowledge innovations such as Blue Planet. Melvyn Bragg denounced "a total dereliction of [the channel's] public duty" over arts coverage, David Attenborough criticised a lack of "serious" documentaries, and a former director-general, Alasdair Milne, attacked "dumb, dumb, dumb" makeover and cookery shows. Even for a woman as avowedly upbeat and resilient as Heggessey, the attacks, she now acknowledges, were wearing.
"Well, it goes with the territory," she explains with a resigned smile. "I'm determined never to carp from the sidelines or become some dinosaur who thinks everything should be like it was in the old days. As the controller you're trying to work out what's best for everybody. Don't forget, I launched Imagine, I commissioned A Picture of Britain, that wonderful David Dimbleby series. It takes time for your vision to become apparent, but at the time they criticised me, the were only seeing a little bit of the picture."
And Panorama, the flagship current-affairs programme she was accused of burying? "Oh, let's not go there," she says impatiently. "Talk to the BBC about it, I feel I've moved on." But, I suggest, it was her decision to move it ... "They were decisions made by the whole of the BBC and supported by the board of governors, the executive committee, the director of television," she fires back sternly. This must be the "feistiness" that her profile-writers invariably home in on, typically followed by the phrase "despite her diminutive stature ...".
In fact, Heggessey is breezily chatty - her Who's Who hobbies include "having fun and laughing" - with little hint of the dumbingdown ogre denounced by the "dinosaurs". She joined the BBC as a news trainee in 1979 - after studying English at Durham she worked briefly for a "bullying" local-paper editor - and worked her way up from producing Panorama to running science and then children's programmes, famously addressing Blue Peter viewers to explain why Richard Bacon's drug-taking had cost him his job. The mother of 13- and 16-year-old girls - her husband, composer Ronald de Jong, works from home and is the main carer - she sees her role at Talkback as "stimulating creativity and giving people a sense of direction and reinforcement", rather than actively interfering with their productions.
Her portfolio ranges from Property Ladder to Green Wing, although she is open about her weak points: "I find comedy the most difficult thing to judge," she says. Still, she can delegate that to "fantastic practitioners" such as Ash Atalla, Talkback's comedy editor, who made his name producing The Office.
Heggessey was in the rare position last month of claiming some credit for both The X Factor on ITV1 and Strictly Come Dancing on BBC1, which she commissioned. "These are the halcyon days," she admits. "Soon I won't be able to claim credit for anything." It is too soon to see any of her impact on the schedules, but her main focus now is on expanding primetime entertainment and drama, areas where she felt the company has been underperforming. But now a chief executive rather than a channel controller, it is the financial side of programmemaking that worries her most.
. . . ARTICLE CONTINUES HERE . . .
.. . . AND READ MORE MEDIA INTERVIEWS HERE . . .
Lorraine Heggessey has made one big concession since joining the private sector. After five controversial years running BBC1, she has swapped her EastEnders ringtone for The Bill. As chief executive of Talkback Thames, Britain's biggest independent production house, Heggessey now finds herself lead saleswoman for 850 hours of programming, ranging from ratings-busting police dramas to headline-generating talent shows. "I should probably change it to The X Factor theme," she reflects as her phone interrupts the interview. "It's been fantastic to see it doing so well."
After 20 "fabulous" years at the BBC, Heggessey, 49, is determined not to look back - and not just because by some accounts she has doubled her reported £250,000 corporation salary. "I don't miss BBC1 at all, and I'm quite surprised I don't," she says bouncily in her new office by Oxford Street. "I absolutely adored running the channel, but it's quite nice not to spend Christmas agonising over how the programmes are doing. It's lovely to be out of the limelight, able to get on with my job without everybody commenting all the time."
She certainly took the flak over her declared mission to turn BBC1 into "an accessible fun-filled Italian piazza". Her populist approach to scheduling - moving the news to 10pm, Panorama to Sunday night - helped the channel overtake ITV1 in ratings, but critics were quicker to berate her for Rolf on Art than acknowledge innovations such as Blue Planet. Melvyn Bragg denounced "a total dereliction of [the channel's] public duty" over arts coverage, David Attenborough criticised a lack of "serious" documentaries, and a former director-general, Alasdair Milne, attacked "dumb, dumb, dumb" makeover and cookery shows. Even for a woman as avowedly upbeat and resilient as Heggessey, the attacks, she now acknowledges, were wearing.
"Well, it goes with the territory," she explains with a resigned smile. "I'm determined never to carp from the sidelines or become some dinosaur who thinks everything should be like it was in the old days. As the controller you're trying to work out what's best for everybody. Don't forget, I launched Imagine, I commissioned A Picture of Britain, that wonderful David Dimbleby series. It takes time for your vision to become apparent, but at the time they criticised me, the were only seeing a little bit of the picture."
And Panorama, the flagship current-affairs programme she was accused of burying? "Oh, let's not go there," she says impatiently. "Talk to the BBC about it, I feel I've moved on." But, I suggest, it was her decision to move it ... "They were decisions made by the whole of the BBC and supported by the board of governors, the executive committee, the director of television," she fires back sternly. This must be the "feistiness" that her profile-writers invariably home in on, typically followed by the phrase "despite her diminutive stature ...".
In fact, Heggessey is breezily chatty - her Who's Who hobbies include "having fun and laughing" - with little hint of the dumbingdown ogre denounced by the "dinosaurs". She joined the BBC as a news trainee in 1979 - after studying English at Durham she worked briefly for a "bullying" local-paper editor - and worked her way up from producing Panorama to running science and then children's programmes, famously addressing Blue Peter viewers to explain why Richard Bacon's drug-taking had cost him his job. The mother of 13- and 16-year-old girls - her husband, composer Ronald de Jong, works from home and is the main carer - she sees her role at Talkback as "stimulating creativity and giving people a sense of direction and reinforcement", rather than actively interfering with their productions.
Her portfolio ranges from Property Ladder to Green Wing, although she is open about her weak points: "I find comedy the most difficult thing to judge," she says. Still, she can delegate that to "fantastic practitioners" such as Ash Atalla, Talkback's comedy editor, who made his name producing The Office.
Heggessey was in the rare position last month of claiming some credit for both The X Factor on ITV1 and Strictly Come Dancing on BBC1, which she commissioned. "These are the halcyon days," she admits. "Soon I won't be able to claim credit for anything." It is too soon to see any of her impact on the schedules, but her main focus now is on expanding primetime entertainment and drama, areas where she felt the company has been underperforming. But now a chief executive rather than a channel controller, it is the financial side of programmemaking that worries her most.
. . . ARTICLE CONTINUES HERE . . .
.. . . AND READ MORE MEDIA INTERVIEWS HERE . . .
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