Axing the Axiom

Commissioning editors never miss a chance to hold forth on the importance of ideas. As soon as the phrase, "What we're really looking for is..." passes the lips of a broadcast exec, producers know exactly what's coming: "fresh, good, innovative" - pick the day's preferred adjective - "ideas."

Not true. Well, not exactly.

This may come as something of a shock to independent producers, but having original program ideas isn't as valuable as you may think. Nor is it the key to being a successful, sought-after production house. In the uk, what broadcasters really prize is the ability to deliver on time and on brief. More often than not, they know what they're after before you even pitch.

"There's an industry joke about commissioners who stand up at conferences and say: 'I don't want to be prescriptive, but I'm looking for this, this and this,'" says Chris Shaw, head of news and current affairs at commercial network Five. "When I started this job, I thought I was here just to open my in-tray and pick out the best ideas, but you learn that most good ideas are variations on or combinations of existing ones," he furthers. "So, what I really need are indies who can execute - because that's where the creativity is."

And that's where semantics can lead producers astray.

Shaw reckons about 30% of his department's program ideas are triggered internally. Of the remainder, many will either have to conform to an existing program strand or be shaped during production: "Most Evil Men in History was my idea," says Shaw, "but Don't Get Me Started is a better example of how it usually works. I wanted a polemic about liberal dilemmas and the producer came up with a great film about the death of manly values."

Views differ on how prescriptive broadcasters need to be, but there's no doubt that the intense competition brought about by digital means today's commissioners have more input into shows than ever before. What's also clear is that this opens up a range of new business issues for indies in the non-fiction entertainment industry.

Not surprisingly, broadcasters originating ideas often frame them more narrowly than indies, which puts the value of any ancillary rights to a show at risk. (While most indies want to devise shows with international potential, a UK broadcaster is focused on its domestic audience.) And while there's certainly a benefit to creative collaboration, it also complicates claims to ownership of the resulting ideas. Even more pressing perhaps is what it means in terms of business development. After all, if ideas aren't guaranteed to win you commissions, what will?

Zig Zag managing director Danny Fenton says the shift in emphasis has changed the way his company works. "We did an internal survey and found that one broadcaster had never taken any of our ideas. The only work we'd done for them was shows they'd asked us to do. That told us we needed to spend as much time relationship-building as working up shows in development."