Nobody Knows Anything

William Goldman, has written a couple of great books about writing for the screen. In Adventures in The Screen Trade he famously remarks that when it comes to knowing what audiences will go for “…nobody knows anything.”

This is a frightening notion for media industry professionals, but oooooh, so true.

Look at the panic on the big channels. You have ITV saying their dropping their wall to wall reality drivel and the BBC are desperately scrambling around trying to find a spot in which their own fly on the wall drek“Castaway” will get more than a relative handful of viewers.

It indicates a number of things, not the least of which being we’re sick of reality TV for the moment. Or at least sick of it being on all the frigging time.

But it also indicates something that the current big boys need be much warier of.

The number of times they lead Britain’s TV audience is falling. Tons of programming these days is reactive, someone else’s idea re-hashed. Innovation is at a premium.

The BBC in particular are in for a very tough time over the next few years. When once they had only ITV to content with they now have Sky, You Tube and Bit-torrent battling with them, among a plethora of other distractions. On top of this they are committed to developing digital technology DAB (which as yet doesn’t really work) and they have failed to secure a rise in license fee payments that would have given them a realistic chance of maintaining their multi pronged agenda.

Quality of programming will doubtless suffer as budgets are squeezed, unless they dispense with tired old formats and invest in talent and innovation.

ITV don’t care – they can just stick on more shows like the Mint, but the BBC could really have done with being able to make cheap reality stuff for a few more years.

The good news for us is if they can’t find a reality formula that works, they’ll have to try something else and cheap doesn’t necessarily mean bad.