Meet The Controller: Kevin Lygo, ITV

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Fin Tree and to those of you poor souls who are in the Tinto... clearly Kevin Lygo at the Pentland would have sold out as well. So thank you all very much for coming. Sorry for the overspill. If you need to talk about Kevin, you are indeed in the right place. He is the right man. He's urbane, he's charming, he has a way with words. He's certainly the only TV senior executive who's called this year's MCT tager lecturer odious. Now he may not look like a man under pressure, but when he took over as director of TV ITV six months ago, he inherited ratings at the lowest for two years. Yet ITV had a profit rating of 900 million and some of that profit is down to Kevin himself as head of ITV Studios. He spent five years hoovering up ITV companies and building a production house with a turnover of a billion pounds. Now he's channel controller and he's already talked about the performance of some of those companies today. He talked about that. So what does that mean for the indie sector? We'll be talking about that. We'll be talking about everything from factual entertainment – what is that? Particularly that elusive baking show, cooking show he's looking for. From the love affair that he has with Piers Morgan to the weird and wonderful scheduling and the acquisition of The Voice, a slam dunk hit or as Shane Smith would have it, vapid, vacuous [bleep]. Yeah, um, Kevin, welcome to your Meet the Controller session. You are essentially the newest controller of essentially a big station. It's been a while since we were last here, it's six years. You were director of Channel 4's director of Television. Time for your 500 questions or should that be another time? Um, does director of TV ITV better being director of TV at Channel 4?

That's what we're going to talk about, okay. Um, Britain's biggest commercial broadcaster. Shareholders are kicking – they're very happy, yeah – ratings are down. But does Adam Crozier worry if anyone's watching? He is an inscrutable man and I don't know if he worries or not, really. Have you never asked him? Never said you're making a shedload of money for shareholders but look at those ratings. No, I... we... no. Right, okay. So let me just explain to you that as you know we've done away with any kind of human interaction by hands up. At the session this morning, the leader session, there were very few hands up. I want lots and lots of app questions. I'll take as many as I can through the whole session. App questions come from within here and come from people watching on YouTube. Kevin has lots of views and lots of things and I've got lots of things to ask him. He's also going to show us some of his important work, very important work. Yes, so we definitely want as many app questions as possible. Um, as you know now the way that we are running this is we're asking certain industry people who like to be on the telly what they would ask Kevin. To ask Shane of you... what? God, okay, it's a gotcha. We've brought him along. Shane, let's hear first of all from cracket elain hacket.

Hi Kevin, how are you and your team at ITV going to make ITV a little less posh? Too posh to push? Is it? Are you too posh?

Well, well, maybe she... let me just run a few past you. As you can tell, I'm very working class. I know, I know. And you love using big words. You used the word 'bantine' this morning. People were so pissed from last night. Did he really say 'bantine'?

So right, yeah, let's talk about what's posh. Inside Aspreys, Mr Selfridge, you're about to do Lady Colin Campbell, stately homes, you've done Norland nannies. Right. Is that an irony television or is it because you believe that that's what your audience actually loves?

And can you relate to the mainstream audience that you're looking for at ITV? What I mean, it's the whole thing about the DNA. What is the ITV audience?

So yeah. Well, let's find out how you are going to win more viewers and win viewers back. There will always be a lot of crime-based drama on ITV, there always has been, there always will be. It's a very broad genre in itself, so from soft marle or midi murders through to some gutting thing murder, there's a lot in between. And what I loved about The Durls was the sort of spirit that Simon and I caught of a sort of shad vivra, a family love. It was just, you know, at the end of a hard day or the end of a weekend – that was on a Sunday evening – I thought it was the perfect sort of show for family viewing. And I was delighted that it's there and we've commissioned it for a few more series. So I think it's just a beautiful – I mean, who didn't like The Durls? Don't speak. App questions come in: if I could wave a magic wand for you, what problem would I fix for you at ITV?

But the way that you're starting to try and solve that is by bringing in key talent. Your biggest poach, one of your big poaches, was Polly Hill for drama. Is she actually finally getting to work? She started this week, but the license fee payer has been paying for her to sit at home for the last five months. Is that a good use of license payers' money?

So as Jay said, after the scorched earth policy that you left at Channel 4 – yes, my words, not hers – it took her a while to build up her team. Now she's seeing that. So have you gone for people and you haven't got them? I mean, what I heard was that a serious amount of BBC commissioners lifted the phone to you when you got the job. Is that true?

So what is Polly? Because she's got less – maybe has she got less money to play with than she had at BBC?

So is that why ITV has hedged its bets and brought back Cold Feet?

Because what I was going to say was, all this talk – you know, if we talked about millennials once we've talked about millennials a lot – if there's one thing that's very hard to find, it is a good relationship drama. I remember the first run of This Life, I thought it was fantastic. It's incredibly difficult to get. If you want to get that kind of 30-something thing, you're going to have to do something that Cold Feet did all those years ago for millennials probably. And we want to try that. Are you actively looking for that?

Well, let's take a question on the app: where is the sixth episode of Coronation Street going to fit in the schedule and with that being there for reduced 30-minute factual opportunities?

Quick question on the app: do you think Ruby Solomon could pen some great drama for ITV?

Okay, we can take now a question from the video wall. That comes from head of documentaries at STV Productions, Mick Mavo.

Hi Kevin, how important is factual going to be in the new ITV schedule and how do you see it evolving over the next year?

So you are looking – you're absolutely fishing for a cooking show?

So Thursday night – let's start with Thursday night. It's going to be crime night? All your big crime shows on Thursday. I thought you meant personally. I don't know about Thursday, I've certainly decided that I think – but you want to throw the schedules? Scheduling is scheduling. ITV changing? You're doing different things – for example 500 Questions at night, and 500 Questions going another time? No, that's just sort of [bleep] up. I think what we got to do with the schedule is make it a bit more lively and exciting, at the same time not throwing up the baby with the bathwater, treating shows in the best way. When you have a show that you believe in – this has come up in other sessions – it's not only some really good shows have not worked because they weren't in the right place, they were up against something too big to shift on another channel. We've got to be really careful with shows that we believe could be a proper hit for us, a show that can run and run for years.

Yes, I think so. Look, we're all very experienced professional people who've worked in this area a long time, and we're not going to put something stupid out like Shane suggested. It's about finding shows that we just believe we need. It's a great opportunity for producers at this point – indies that we need so much of this programming, we will be trying many new shows.

Well, I don't know, the difference is so blurred. You can call it what you like – it's factual programming that is popular. That can be documentary, observational documentary, fixed rig, factual entertainment with a format. I don't really get hung up on what it's called. We know what we mean. It stretches from Long Lost Family through to a documentary about a single crime. We've got The Killing of Sad Heartley coming up. It can be all sorts of things. People shouldn't worry about is it factual or fact end – I don't know.

Well, if it's just factual, it's just any program you put on television that has content which is entertaining. Sure. I think entertainment is the key ingredient for factual on ITV. We are unashamedly an entertainment channel, really. Long Lost Family is not flip or cynical; it's really emotional but it's also entertaining. We are entertained by it. That's what I mean. But are we going to do a serious history of the Byzantine Empire? No, we're not. That's sort of specialist factual; we're not so interested in now.

You were also asked for a clip from a show that exceeded all your expectations. What's called the surprise hit clip? There's a lot of crime docs all over the place on ITV, and this first site looked like another one but it rated higher than anything. It's probably bar the old sort of royal or anent deck based documentary – have you done an anent deal? You bet we have. Oh, a deal? No, Christ no. But with factual, I think with Killer Women it was extraordinary. Access to someone who committed a murder who wasn't some sort of demonized person; it was Pier as an entry point into this, and someone who could bridge the Atlantic gap naturally and ask questions that not everybody would ask in a typical blunt effective way. It was riveting, and they were very well made films – nothing trashy about them. That's an indication of what can really work on ITV. Instead of these films often getting lost, our thinking at the moment is: is there a sort of strand, like an old-fashioned way of crime and punishment, where we do a 12-week run in the same place so audiences know exactly where it is and what they're getting? Some might be presented, some not, but the whole thing is a kind of strand. So you know, if it's Thursday or Tuesday or Wednesday, it's a place where you know what you're going to get and we deliver wonderful stories told in this way. For producers in here, if they want to make an offer on crime or whatever and it's about talent, they just have to sign Piers Morgan up for everything.

Let me just check on these. Here's one: does the failure of 500 questions prove the entertainment slant can't play in midweek prime time, or is it just a bit [__] shame on you?

You famously can big brother, you're not afraid of canning things that don't work. The app says: are you the man to finally say enough is enough and pull the plug on X Factor?

So why did the BBC not do well with The Voice? It did okay. Is it more of an ITV show? Is there ITV stardust that can be sprinkled?

So does that mean, because you now have Saturday takeaway and everything else, you are not looking for more Saturday night entertainment shows?

All right, let's go to our next question from Katie Lander from Fine Strip Productions. Katie Lander: Hi Kevin, if I brought an idea or format to you and you had a similar one from one of your ITV production companies, you'd go with them because you own the IP. What incentive is there for me to bring my best ideas to ITV?

But are you seriously saying that you want all these acres of factual programming, but you've also got these production companies that will be tapped up before the rest of the indies because you have to feed them?

There's enormous scope. You say you're looking for big ratings in factual. To get those figures up, does that mean working particularly with big companies?

The one thing about not having hands up and having the app is that people feel free to be a bit ruder. How few people have to watch Good Morning Britain before you run the test card instead?

On the app, we're getting tons of the same question: do you want BBC off ITV itself? I prefer EastEnders.

I'm going to watch very carefully from now on what shows do on BBC1 and ITV in ratings terms. Even 'Downton Abbey', our biggest drama, was 8 million by the end. If that's the freak end of the hit, maybe we need to reassess what a hit is in drama. That leads to what you've taken on: Victoria. She lived a very long time, so you're not going to kill her off at 35. You've started this, you're going to have to finish it.

We can take one final question from the video wall. It comes from RDF managing director Jim Allen. He's lost all his hair. Kevin, entertainment shows are increasingly bought on overseas formats that have already aired, yet the biggest entertainment hits are Britain's Got Talent, I'm a Celebrity, Strictly – basically homegrown British ideas. So what's wrong with the British entertainment idea sold and bought off paper?

There are a few questions coming in. We've only got a couple of minutes. Why haven't ITV found a sitcom that works well for them? What do a sitcom and ITV need?

Having failed to find much of an audience for Beowulf and Jekyll and Hyde, is ITV giving up on tea-time fantasy drama?

You've been in the job six months. Is it tougher than you thought it would be?

But on that basis, you satisfy your advertisers and shareholders. Do you think being non-experimental is going to work for the next generation?

And how long before ITV is sold?

I've got a few random questions. Little Big Shots, The Voice Kids – don't you feel you're saturating the market for your other shows like BGT? No, fine. Let me get another one. You've changed your key positions in your commissioning team. What wasn't working?

Okay, we've had one celebrity journey in. I want to know if you commission this: Nigel Farage goes to the North Pole and doesn't come back, probably on a husky. That would do it. Yes, so there's no reunion in that one, but there is a celebrity and a journey. We wouldn't do that. Kevin Lygo, thank you very much. Thanks to the sponsors. Broadcast done.