TV
Channel 4 has today released details of its £430m winter programming lineup, up 4% from £413m last year.
"This is the first significant increase in Channel 4's annual programme budget since 2000," said CEO Mark Thompson. "We are already making good on our promise to make the main Channel 4 service the priority for fresh creative and financial investment, ahead of our digital businesses.
"Without access to public funding and without private shareholders to fall back on, Channel 4 can only generate additional investment by increasing its revenues or reducing its cost base. Some jobs will therefore be lost to deliver this fresh investment, but every penny we can transfer from overhead to the screen means a better, richer service to our viewers."
A new series from the makers of Big Brother heads the bill -- The Salon, which will go out every weeknight on the channel. Run by nine full-time staff, the show will feature the gossip, makeovers, staff-room banter and beauty-tips, via "discreet cameras and microphones" placed at key locations throughout the premises. An element of interactivity will allow viewers to book appointments for treatments at the salon.
New dramas include 40, a three-part drama revolving around seven people "whose lives are intimately linked by their hidden sexual and emotional secrets". Heading up the cast is Eddie Izzard, Joanne Whalley, Hugo Speer and Kerry Fox. Meanwhile, Twenty Things To Do Before You’re Thirty, -- bearing no connection to five's upcoming documentary 99 Things To Do Before You’re Thirty -- focuses on four colleagues rapidly approaching their thirtieth birthdays, who transform their neuroses about ageing into a personal list of goals and end up with their own league table.
Returning series include V Graham Norton, with a thirteen-week run beginning in January, Sex and the City, ER, The Sopranos, The West Wing, The Secret Life Of Us, Will and Grace and Bremner, Bird & Fortune.
Following on from C4's popular 17th Century season will be the 18th Century season of programming, including 18th Century Gay Underworld, Invitation to a Hanging and Black Boxers. China Season, going out in January, will feature specials from Graham Norton and author Marcel Theroux, as well as the terrestrial premiere of Bejing Rocks.
Also in January is the "Fat Season," with programmes such as The Fat Plague, exploring a theory that obesity is contagious; and Skinny Kids, looking at the "thin is beautiful" culture amongst children.
Stars coming under the spotlight in The Real.. series include model-turned-rocker Sam Fox, former tennis loudmouth John McEnroe and the late skater John Curry.
"This is the first significant increase in Channel 4's annual programme budget since 2000," said CEO Mark Thompson. "We are already making good on our promise to make the main Channel 4 service the priority for fresh creative and financial investment, ahead of our digital businesses.
"Without access to public funding and without private shareholders to fall back on, Channel 4 can only generate additional investment by increasing its revenues or reducing its cost base. Some jobs will therefore be lost to deliver this fresh investment, but every penny we can transfer from overhead to the screen means a better, richer service to our viewers."
A new series from the makers of Big Brother heads the bill -- The Salon, which will go out every weeknight on the channel. Run by nine full-time staff, the show will feature the gossip, makeovers, staff-room banter and beauty-tips, via "discreet cameras and microphones" placed at key locations throughout the premises. An element of interactivity will allow viewers to book appointments for treatments at the salon.
New dramas include 40, a three-part drama revolving around seven people "whose lives are intimately linked by their hidden sexual and emotional secrets". Heading up the cast is Eddie Izzard, Joanne Whalley, Hugo Speer and Kerry Fox. Meanwhile, Twenty Things To Do Before You’re Thirty, -- bearing no connection to five's upcoming documentary 99 Things To Do Before You’re Thirty -- focuses on four colleagues rapidly approaching their thirtieth birthdays, who transform their neuroses about ageing into a personal list of goals and end up with their own league table.
Returning series include V Graham Norton, with a thirteen-week run beginning in January, Sex and the City, ER, The Sopranos, The West Wing, The Secret Life Of Us, Will and Grace and Bremner, Bird & Fortune.
Following on from C4's popular 17th Century season will be the 18th Century season of programming, including 18th Century Gay Underworld, Invitation to a Hanging and Black Boxers. China Season, going out in January, will feature specials from Graham Norton and author Marcel Theroux, as well as the terrestrial premiere of Bejing Rocks.
Also in January is the "Fat Season," with programmes such as The Fat Plague, exploring a theory that obesity is contagious; and Skinny Kids, looking at the "thin is beautiful" culture amongst children.
Stars coming under the spotlight in The Real.. series include model-turned-rocker Sam Fox, former tennis loudmouth John McEnroe and the late skater John Curry.
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