The other big changes was the less reliance on US Dramas, thats not to say there didn't have any; I do wonder who it was within ITV to push them out? Im not sure there got pushed out completely it just peak time was free from anything outside of the uk. ?
Was it just push for more uk content or just a lack of room because of all the commitments promised.
I would suggest the lack of US imports on British screens was for no other reason than they all flopped and they eventually decided that British viewers were no longer interested in them. You could cite 1997 as the year they finally fell out of favour as ITV lavished millions of pounds on Millennium only to find it woefully unsuitable for their schedules (they were just after The New X Files), while they also showed The Practice at 9pm for about four weeks before that was axed because of appalling ratings. And all the imports at Saturday teatime like The Visitor and Time Trax were dropped after about five minutes. People just weren't watching them.
In the past, imports were considered important for the channels because they allowed for more new programmes in the schedules, but programmes became cheaper to make as well. In Will Wyatt's book he talks about how the number of new programmes on BBC1 shot up in the mid-nineties, not because of any great increase in the budget, but because docusoaps were becoming popular and they were much cheaper to make than most primetime programmes and so effectively filled the gaps that might otherwise have been filled by imports and repeats.
Wyatt also says that increasingly the imports they were offered weren't suitable, after Dallas and Dynasty ended nothing much was coming through that they thought was worth showing in primetime. Touched By An Angel was on the Beeb, by the way, in the Sunday morning God slot.
During the 90s there was quite a trend for the ITV companies making their own versions of American shows such as The Upper Hand, Brighton Belles and Married For Life. I might be wrong but I think the last of these was Days Like These, a Britcom version of That 70s Show which died on its arse.
I think I've said this before but when they launched Days Like These, they said they realised that one of the problems is that they were always compared to the American originals, so there was a clause in the contract with meant That 70s Show would never be shown in Britain, and they wouldn't even show the cast any episodes, so as far as everyone was concerned it was a new show. In fact it flopped so much that within a year Channel Five were showing That 70s Show. The American scripts were adapted by Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, now very successful writers with shows like Peep Show. In David Mitchell's autobiography he says he assumes their substantial talents were blunted by "interfering executives from both sides of the Atlantic at every turn".
ITV also did an adaptation of Mad About You around that time as well. And actually the BBC sitcom In With The Flynns from a few years back was also an adaptation of a US format, in that case Grounded For Life.
Who made all three of those sitcom?........ Was was the US version of the upper hand? mind you that lasted 6 years? The problem with Days Like These, apart from it being crap was it was completely unrealistic... unlike the next 1970s sitcom The Grimleys which was more real about the problems with the 70s, and hasn't been repeated has it ?
To be fair.. ITV had Baywatch, but that wasn't cheap was it? I dont think MSW was either. Step by step was used for summer holls, Veronica closet was given peak slot but moved, Im sure there was one other US sitcom that also tried but failed?
Well, sitcoms don't have to be realistic to be a success, do they? I don't expect Allo Allo was an especially realistic portrayal of occupied France. The Grimleys was more to the British audience's tastes, mind, but what was especially odd is that both series were actually running at the same time in the spring of 1999, which seems a bizarre bit of scheduling.
ITV showed Veronica's Closet at 10.40 in early 1998. This was part of a concerted effort by ITV to pull in younger audiences after News at Ten, after they'd seen They Think It's All Over get millions of viewers after ten o'clock. So in 1998 they did make a big thing about new shows at 10.40, and Veronica's Closet was one of those shows, they did a proper advertising campaign in the papers and I remember reading they had very high hopes for it - I remember The Box, the short-lived TV magazine, reviewing the entire new US TV season in 1997 and saying Veronica's Closet was the best show of them all and would be a smash hit on both sides of the Atlantic, and there was a bidding war which ITV won, and they showed it at 10.40 on Fridays. But in the end it didn't do anything for them.
Also in that 10.40 slot in 1998 was The Drew Carey Show, plus Ian Wright's chat show, the horrible docusoap Friday Night Fever and a crappy panel show called Stuff The Week. But it was consistently interrupted because of the vagaries of the regions - I remember Central opted out of the Friday line-up for Central Weekend, and they had to put "Coming soon to Central" in all those press ads - and nobody was interested in switching over at 10.40 so none of it really caught on. Though it's not surprising given the slot between 10.30 and 10.40 was a total mish-mash of news, weather, the pollen count and umpteen trailers and adverts that gave viewers a million opportunities to switch over or off.
That's the main reason why they wanted to move News at Ten, to create a They Think It's All Over-style show at ten o'clock to attract young and upmarket audiences. But they never found one.
Last edited by Steve Williams on 1 March 2018 11:37am