Established titles such as Gogglebox
(especially its excellent celebrity
version) and SAS: Who Dares Wins
are its biggest successes and, as with
most of C4’s rivals, launching titles is
proving hard. Among many of Webb-
Lamb’s newer shows there has been
an almost uniform consolidated
ratings performance that, from the
outside, feels a bit underwhelming:
Famous And Fighting Crime (1.3
million/5%), Joe Lycett’s Got Your
Back (1.2 million/5.6%), Extreme
Tribe: The Last Pygmies (1.2 million/
5.6%), Flirty Dancing (960,000/6.3%)
and Liam Bakes (830,000, 3.8%).
Webb-Lamb makes the case for
the defence. “We can’t pretend the
landscape hasn’t changed, or the
way people watch telly hasn’t
changed,” she says. “I’m not about to
say ratings don’t matter, and when
shows don’t live up to what you
hoped, it’s painful. But I was chuffed
with some of those – Flirty did really
well at 10pm, for example.”
Success metric
C4 tracks the percentage of its new
shows that land above and below slot
average and compares that to its
rivals. Webb-Lamb claims the channel
is the same, and in some quarters
better, than BBC1, BBC2 and ITV.
“Launching new shows is hard across
the industry, but it’s clear that brilliant,
distinctive content can still generate
really good audiences – Leaving Never-
land and Three Identical Strangers, plus
60 Days On The Streets, consolidated
to 2 million, and Mums Make Porn did
1 million at 10pm,” she says.
She also points out that “getting
people to watch stuff on All 4 is
massively important” and that
a show’s success can only be judged
when catch-up viewing, noise on
social, views of clips and myriad other
considerations are factored in.
And while the industry recalibrates
quite what constitutes a hit in ratings
terms, Webb-Lamb has a startling
message to producers: “Indies worry
too much about whether something is
a ‘Channel 4 idea’. I’d implore them to
think about shows they’d like to watch
with their families, with their nan, with
their mates – and we can then help
with whatever the twist might be.”
This is the vision for popular factual
rather than the more esoteric genres
such as comedy, docs or specialist
factual, but even so, the shift feels
signifi cant. For years, everyone
pitching at Horseferry Road needed
to play the game of convincing a
commissioner that their idea could
conceivably only air on C4. No more.
Webb-Lamb wants broad, accessible,
entertaining, feelgood shows – “Yes,
we want noise and provocation, but
we want heart-warming too,” she says.
“Shows that make you feel better are
defi nitely what I’m after.”
This doesn’t immediately seem
to dovetail with Ian Katz’s call for
mischief-making, feather-ruffl ing
programming, but Webb-Lamb
says she and her boss are aligned on
the strategy, and that his desire to
tackle tricky subjects chimes with
her own sensibility.
“Everyone knows Ian loves causing
ripples and making noise, and popular
factual is a very good place to do that in
a way that reaches a broad audience,”
she says. “I’ve always loved big provoc-
ative pieces and having the courage
to tackle challenging questions in a
thoughtful way – and he does too.”
Webb-Lamb says she is dovetailing
nicely with Katz and that it’s not the
case that an extra layer of decision-
making has been introduced, or that
the commissioning process has slowed
down. “I hope it’s allowed us to inter-
rogate things and work ideas together,
and to speed things up, if anything.”Continued from page 36
KELLY WEBB LAMB CHANNEL 4
38 | Broadcast | 23 August 2019 broadcastnow.co.uk
The desire to get C4 working
effi ciently is matched by her desire for
the industry to work more equitably.
It has been front and centre in her
thinking about Edinburgh and in
terms of helping to reshape C4, which
research last summer revealed to be
the ‘poshest’ broadcaster.
“We need to be properly diverse
on and off screen, for two reasons,”
Webb-Lamb says. “It’s how to survive- by representing the country and
getting to the most creative, relevant
stories – and it’s the right thing to do.”
She points to a C4 head of depart-
ment line-up that is more than 50%
female – though, she says, work still
needs to be done on female talent –
and highlights the need to push hard
on disability. But her focus is on diver-
sity in the widest sense: “The best way
to change cultural cues is by changing
who is making your decisions. We need
to get to a place where we’re comfort-
able with being uncomfortable and we
congratulate people for not fi tting in,
rather than the other way around.”
New appointments such as head of
portfolio management Kiran Nataraja,
head of specialist factual Fatima Salaria
and head of drama Caroline Hollick
point to the changing face of C4, and
Webb-Lamb wants that progress to
continue. Ushering in a period of fresh
faces, and fresh programming, is the
order of the day.
Indies
worry
too much
about whether
something is a
‘Channel 4 idea’- we can help
with the twist
Celebrity Gogglebox: established
titles are C4’s biggest successesINTERVIEW