At this afternoon's MGEITF sessions, I went along to "Smells Like Teen Spirit" to hear the ideas three established production companies had to pitch to a panel of young people from the Television and Young People forum.
Here's what programmes they reckoned could possibly be teen TV hits:
Relentless was pitched by Danny Fenton of Zig Zag Productions - a half-hour quiz show which follows the contestant for 24-hours to get them to answer 10 questions. Though the contestant doesn't know when the 24-hours will start, or when the next question will be asked. They could be asked by a beggar on the street, or the woman at the checkout at Tesco. And when they're asked, they have to answer it in the requested manner - appropriate to the answer. Which could mean spray-painting the answer to 'What was the Sex Pistols first UK album?' on a billboard opposite Parliament, or being asked to say what year the Eiffel Tower was built via a poster hung from the tourist attraction itself, with a limited time frame to do it in.
Next came Celebrity Stalking from Camilla Lewis at TalkbackThames. The show would involve fans of particular celebrities living that celebrity's lifestyle for a month, to get an idea of what that would be like. Lewis said her dislike of 'celebrity' shows - referring to the phrase as 'the c-word' - had given her the idea, as she thought it would be good for young people to see that it's not always the glamorous lifestyle it is portrayed to be in the press.
Dig, which Leon Wilde from Hat Trick Productions pitched, would involve a group of contestants being driven in the dead of night to a remote location. Housed overnight in a dark dormitory, they would awake to find they were in a desert, with a big pink neon sign with the word 'Dig' on it, and bunch of shovels. The idea is that at some point, someone is going to start digging, but unbeknown to the contestants, a £1 million prize is slowly diminishing by the pound as they dig, until one bright spark goes to the TV company and says: "Okay, why are we doing this?" at which point they will win the prize.
Wilde also showed a film by upcoming star Scroobius Pip which was meant to illustrate his original idea, Simon Cowell Can Kiss My Arse. He'd decided to scrap the idea after Russell Brand "let him down" by failing to film a piece for the pitch, provoking to quip, "I'm just another person Russell Brand has screwed."
Will these ideas make it to your screens? Well, who knows these days!
What do young people want to watch?
Saturday, August 25 2007, 23:06 BST
By Joanne Oatts




