YORKSHIRE TELEVISION
ANNUAL PROGRAMME STATEMENT 2003
INTRODUCTION
2003 will be the first full year of programming under the new standardised
hours agreement, which has translated into a schedule requiring a much
wider range of programming than in the past. Slots in the traditional
regional programme times of Sunday teatime and Thursdays at 1930
(against Eastenders) remain as important as ever, but they have been
augmented by a new mid-afternoon slot, a good run of programmes
following News at Ten, plus some later slots across the year and on
different nights of the week and a regular Sunday lunchtime slot, as well
as Goals on Sunday throughout the football season. In the past Yorkshire
has not always accessed this range of slots and it gives the opportunity
for us to provide an interesting mix of programming for viewers of all ages
in the coming year.
News
Annually we plan to produce a minimum one-viewer total of 286 hours of
news, as well as 196 hours representing the two other sub-regional news
services.
There are indications that in a global world people value local news even
more highly and we will be working hard to maintain the very local
coverage on which Calendar has built its reputation. A number of other
initiatives are currently under discussion in order to improve/widen
Calendar’s appeal in 2003.
We have already begun partnerships with community broadcasters in
Lincolnshire and plan to develop this approach further during the coming
year. We are forging relationships with colleges across the region in a two
way exchange to help develop a highly trained and professional workforce
for the future, and tap into news gathering resources at the most local
level. We are beginning to look at how best to equip and organise our
newsrooms to take advantage of changing technologies to bring viewers
the service they expect and deserve.
The work that we have undertaken in 2002 with Immage 2000 and
Grimsby College has been particularly important in this regard. Students
from the college participate in the work of Yorkshire Television in three
main ways. Firstly, they are offered placements, both with our regional
news teams around the region and in our regional offices. This gives
them access to real working situations. Secondly, they have begun to
offer up news stories that they have found and filmed for consideration for
1
our bulletins. This is proving aspirational and competitive for them
internally, and, if successful, will give them an advantage in future when
they are writing CVs for employment after their courses finish. Thirdly,
we are providing help with academic courses in the form of members of
our staff giving lectures or masterclasses.
We hope to develop this model further and are currently in talks with the
College of Ripon and York St John, where we hope to develop a similar
relationship.
Going forward the partnership with our Further and Higher Education
institutes is due to be re-tendered in summer 2003. During this retendership process we are proposing to reduce the number of links, thus
allowing us to concentrate on investing all of our energies into the
institutes with the highest levels of commitment and quality. This will
include working closer with students to develop key skills such as IT and
personal skills, as well as media related commitments. Though this
strategy we hope to continue to develop regional talent and support local
institutes, producing high quality graduates who will in the future
contribute to our on-screen regional programming.
We will continue to provide our extremely successful opted sub regional
news bulletins throughout the day in 2003, not simply because of our
licence obligations, but also because we know that this is one of the most
valued services that we provide to viewers within our transmission area.
Current Affairs
During the year we expect to produce 22.5 hours of current affairs
programming within our regional schedule. This will include a new high
profile series The Big Story, an hour long topical studio debate about
issues concerning local viewers. This will be in addition to our regular
political debate programme Around the House. Further, we have
recommissioned Attitude, an experimental current affairs series for the
16-24s which attracted a committed audience in the difficult Sunday 1230
slot and was well received by viewers. We collaborated with local radio
stations as an innovative way to tap into this younger market and
responses from their listeners and in emails from non regional viewers
who had picked up the programme on Sky, indicated that the group we
were aiming at seemed to appreciate the programme. We hope to build
on it further in series two in the Spring.
We are particularly pleased with our new series Crimefighters which
transmits from January on Friday nights, and which reveals what life is
really like for police officers patrolling the streets of West Yorkshire. It is
a very powerful series, which we see as one of our landmark series for
2003. Its success is based on the negotiation of excellent access, high
ambition and very high quality production values.
2
Other
The current expectation is for Yorkshire to deliver 133 hours 30 minutes
of other programming, reflecting a wide diversity of subject matter.
Among other programmes planned for 2003 are a series on the work of
aquarists at Hull’s The Deep, who are becoming world experts on sharks.
We have played a major role in the development of this acclaimed
attraction and are keen to build on the strong relationship that has been
forged during 2002. We expect Sharks to be landmark programming,
involving a trip to South Africa where Gaynor Barnes will join the team as
they track the great white shark and monitor its behaviour.
We look forward to the return of the successful series Zoo Vet, which
follows the work of a vet at Flamingoland near Malton. Animal
programmes have traditionally done well, hence our decision to give this
another run.
Dales Diary will also return for a further run after success once again in
2002.
Home is a high quality programme tapping into the enormous and
growing interest in interior design, as well as visiting some of the region’s
more interesting homes.
In the history genre we are developing a series which looks back at
wedding traditions of centuries gone by through the eyes of modern
brides and bridegrooms from our region who are getting married in the
style of their forefathers. This is expected to be a particularly high quality
series and will look at both religious and secular traditions.
At the other end of the scale, there will be two programmes with Ian
McMillan looking at death in different social, geographical and cultural
communities. These will celebrate cultural and religious differences and
aim to explain why people deal with death in the way that they do.
This and a new series Four Curries and a Wedding are two projects
commissioned after the events of 11th September. This tragic event and
subsequent (and continuing) inter-religious conflict brought home the
importance of people from different faiths and cultures understanding how
each other live. This series will examine family life in an Asian home
where tradition and the modern way of life co-exist for a young couple
just starting out on their married life together.
We are delighted that Yorkshire playwright and actress Kay Mellor wishes
to develop further programming ideas with us, and we are planning a
further series with her for screening in the Autumn. Specific proposals are
currently in development.
We have commissioned two films which look at life through the eyes of
two young people with disabilities as they make their way into adulthood.
Called Same Difference they aim to demonstrate that life for a young
3
adult has all the same issues whether you are able bodied or have
disabilities.
Using archive from the popular Jimmy’s series, we plan to return to some
of the stories which made the series so watchable and see how those
involved are doing many years later. The hospital is keen to be involved
in this and we will also reflect how medical breakthroughs have now
become everday events in our health care system.
One of the arts iniatives we support in the region is the Yorkshire Film
Archive, which is currently running a project – Film Search Yorkshire,
funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and based in our offices in York. The
fruits of this search are a number of personal film collections which depict
life in our region during the last century and we plan a short series
featuring these previously unseen personal archives.
We hope to develop another arts series for transmission in the early
afternoon.
Work of artists, actors and other entertainers will be featured in a variety
of entertainment series, including The Buzz, which was successfully
piloted in 2002. This will move to a more appropriate late night slot for a
series in the Spring.
For the younger end of the market I Spy Love is a speed dating
entertainment show featuring young would-be lovers from our region as
they try to find the perfect partner and a return of Attitude!, a current
affairs series for the 16-24’s.
In sport, we welcome the return of the Nationwide League and Goals
on Sunday, plus mid-week highlights of both the Worthington Cup and
Nationwide League. We also plan a documentary series Leeds, Leeds,
Leeds following the fortunes and misfortunes of the club, its players and
managers.
We would identify the most likely landmark series to be
Crimefighters and Sharks.
Community Action, Off Air Support and Sub-Titling
Our community action strand It’s Your Call is continuing to prove
popular and provides a much needed service to small community groups.
We also plan to use our social action programming to galvanise our
communities into socially purposeful action, possibly in collaboration with
local radio stations and Granada’s other regional companies.
Where appropriate our programmes will be backed by off air support
including fact sheets, ancillary text pages, telephone helplines and web
site information. The new Viewer Services team will be providing a range
of support services focusing on education, health and social action.
Programme support in place from week 1 of 2003 includes a helpline and
4
teletext page for the Crimefighters series and a health factsheet service
for the You Are What You Eat series.
Calendar is subtitled for the hard of hearing and we intend to continue
subtitling our Thursday 1930 programmes, which we did for the first time
in 2001.
Target Audience
We are conscious of the fact that within our large editorial area we have
viewers from all social groups and across all age ranges. We will continue
to aim most of our programmes at the widest possible audience, while
taking account of the likely nature of the audience available to view in the
different slots.
We aim to produce a regional schedule which will be enjoyed equally in all
parts of our editorial area, whilst addressing specific local demands, most
obviously/regularly through our sub regional news service.
Resources
We are committed to maintaining and developing the quality of all our
regional programming and will ensure that we have the necessary
resources to do so. We are also committed, at a time of increasing viewer
choice, to working with the other six regional companies in the Granada
group to bring the best ideas and the best production practices to support
and enhance our programme offering.
Regional Advisory Group
Recruitment of Yorkshire Television’s Regional Advisory Group is well
underway and details of the membership will be published next month –
ahead of the Group’s first meeting which is scheduled for 27th January,
2003. The Group will be chaired by Grant McKee, one of Yorkshire
Television’s two new Non Executive Directors.
CLARE MORROW
CONTROLLER OF PROGRAMMES
DAVID CROFT
MANAGING DIRECTOR
30th December, 2002
5