The Stage

Christmas crackers

Published Friday 25 November 2011 at 15:57 by Parvin Ramchurn

From Del Boy to Morecambe and Wise - the British love affair with Christmas television is an open secret. But as competition from the internet and other media increases, Parvin Ramchurn investigates whether the seasonal TV ratings war is still important

For years, spending big money at Christmas has been a no-brainer for the main terrestrial channels. It is a time when a network can gain its biggest audience for an entire year. As recently as 2008, the Nick Park film A Matter of Loaf and Death secured 14.3 million viewers for BBC1. This made it the highest rated television programme of the year.

Scroll back to 1986, and it was EastEnders pulling in the viewers on Christmas Day, when 30 million people tuned in to see Den Watts present his wife Angie with divorce papers. Michael Grade, who has held some of the top jobs in British television, was controller of BBC1 at the time, and it is a piece of television that he is particularly proud of. And he thinks Christmas TV is still very important to BBC1 today.

“It’s a moment in the year when the BBC is unashamedly there to get ratings,” Grade says. “It’s a time when the BBC can put its foot on the floor to try and get as big an audience as it can. Christmas is a moment when the whole family gets together and the BBC licence fee comes into its own. If people say ‘that was wonderful’ [about a programme] it makes it all worthwhile.”

But Grade admits that the modern-day TV environment is undoubtedly different to when he was in charge of BBC1 - the impact of movies being a case in point. In 1984, ITV shocked the BBC by winning the Christmas TV ratings war after screening Raiders of the Lost Ark on Christmas Day. It is one of the few times the ITV Christmas schedule has emerged triumphant in the last 30 years.

But Grade admits that films can no longer sway the final outcome. “Movies don’t do it anymore on TV - at least not on the scale that we saw with Raiders,” he says.

“By the time a movie is available in the free-to-air window, it has already received saturation. Of course films are still important to the major networks, but they no longer have blockbuster value.”

One of Grade’s successors as BBC1 controller is Lorraine Heggessey. During her time in charge of the channel (2000-2005), packing the Christmas schedule with ‘crown jewels’ was an important part of the job.

“When I took over at BBC1, a colleague said that the planning for Christmas Day started on Boxing Day - or at least that is what it will feel like,” Heggessey recalls. “He was right - it is something you think about all year. That’s partly because many programmes [such as dramas] have to be commissioned early. Getting talent to work during Christmas isn’t a problem as most programmes are pre-recorded. The main challenge was to provide programmes that families could watch together. That’s what people expect from the BBC.”

But is that challenge something that is still relevant today? After all, viewers now have a multitude of channels to pick from, not to mention the internet and other types of media.

“Of course there is more competition,” Heggessey says. “But you have to remember that watching television at Christmas is a tradition in Britain. And people enjoy tradition, especially at Christmas. If you grew up watching TV at Christmas, you will still want to do the same. Comedy entertainment is particularly important.”

Heggessey left the BBC to head Talkback Thames, which makes The Apprentice and Britain’s Got Talent. She admits that not having to worry about the Christmas TV schedule was a relief when she changed job.

The present controller of BBC1 is 37-year-old Danny Cohen. He has been in charge of the channel for just over year, and reveals his thinking regarding Christmas.

“Christmas is a really important family moment for BBC1,” Cohen says. “We want to provide something for everyone, and draw the nation together.”

In recent years Doctor Who, The Royle Family and Strictly Come Dancing have become mainstays in the channel’s Christmas schedule. But this year Cohen is bringing back David Jason to the network. The actor will star in The Royal Bodyguard - a new comedy about a soldier put in charge of security at Buckingham Palace.

Perhaps the channel’s biggest coup is the return of Absolutely Fabulous, starring Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley as Eddy and Patsy. Cohen has also announced a new adaptation of Great Expectations starring Ray Winstone.

Evidence, then, that the BBC still takes Christmas very seriously. But with a 3% cut to the BBC1 budget imminent, it is likely the broadcaster will have to reduce its overall spend on Christmas programming in years to come.

For ITV, Christmas has always been a double-edged sword. Advertisers are reluctant to pay top-dollar for advertising slots during the festive season. The logic is simple - when the shops are shut people don’t spend money. As a consequence, the network has a limited budget to play around with. But audiences still expect specials of their favourite programmes.

Grade, a former executive chairman of ITV, says: “ITV doesn’t take the ratings battle as seriously because the shops are shut until New Year. There’s no revenue in it. They don’t want to spend a fortune because it doesn’t matter as much. Of course they make a token effort. But there’s a reason why you don’t see The X-Factor final broadcast on Christmas Day.”

Nevertheless, ITV bosses are hoping that a Christmas Day special of Downton Abbey will entice viewers away from the BBC. Coronation Street is another key programme for the channel. The soap performs consistently well at Christmas, challenging the BBC’s dominance during peak time. Kevin O’Sullivan is TV critic for the Sunday Mirror. He says the battle of the soaps is very important.

“The soaps are crucial at Christmas,” O’Sullivan says. “Without fail, the hour-long December 25 specials of Coronation Street, Emmerdale, and EastEnders are the most watched programmes of the year. The networks have to put a lot of effort into shows that are guaranteed to attract massive audiences. This is when all the blockbuster plot lines that have been brewing for months reach their explosive conclusions.”

A good example came on Christmas Day in 2007, when Stacey’s affair with Max Branning in EastEnders was discovered by members of their family. But outside of the soaps, O’Sullivan thinks the standard of Christmas programming is beginning to fall. And this is partly down to the audience being more fickle.

“What the networks are all well aware of these days is they do not have a captive audience,” O’Sullivan explains. “In the 70s and 80s families would pretty much plonk themselves in front of the telly in the afternoon and watch it until they went to bed. Nowadays, people cherry-pick. The days of all the family gathering around the box for Morecambe and Wise, The Two Ronnies, or Only Fools and Horses are over.”

Nonetheless, there are still good ratings out there to be won. The actor John Challis is best known for playing Boycie in Only Fools and Horses. He remembers the incredible popularity of the programme in the 80s and 90s.

“Only Fools and Horses became so much a way of life that people would plan their Christmas activities around the TV schedule,” Challis says. “The longer [Christmas] episodes enabled John Sullivan to develop the storyline and flesh out the characters more than usual. He always wrote too much anyway and, consequently, a lot more material ended up on the cutting room floor. Thank God for the specials. Imagine not having Heroes and Villains with its unforgettable Batman and Robin scene.”

For BBC2 and Channel 4, the strategy at Christmas is a lot different. Jay Hunt, chief creative officer for C4, says: “Christmas isn’t a priority for us, but C4 can, and should, offer an alternative to the BBC at this time of year. C4 can be cheekier and more irreverent than others at Xmas. It can also serve a younger audience who can feel a bit neglected by the nostalgia fest on other channels.”

The channel’s highlights this year include Gordon Ramsay cooking live on Christmas Day, the adventurer Bear Grylls taking Miranda Hart on a wild weekend, and a new entertainment series called Home for the Holidays.

Traditionally, BBC2 has tried to offer intelligent programming to audiences at Christmas. The idea is to not eclipse what BBC1 has to offer but to provide a genuine alternative.

Jane Root is a former controller of BBC2 and now runs the transatlantic independent production company Nutopia.

“Christmas is suddenly a schedule with no maps - no Newsnight, no returning shows - so you can do anything you like,” Root says. “And audiences watch much, much more. I always thought it was another Christmas treat, but an arduous one. Setting it up is like playing a very tough game of Monopoly that lasts for weeks.”

Root admits that beating Channel 4 was not the main objective. “We were much more focused on how we made the whole BBC family into a great experience for everyone. There was lots of horse trading with BBC1 at the last minute, especially on movies,” she says.

But with greater scope than BBC1 to take risks, Root was able rethink the network’s schedule.

“George Dixon [former head of scheduling and planning] and I talked about how people might stay up later than we’d ever really thought of on BBC2 and we ran I Love the 1980s for two hours every night, starting, I think, at 11pm. The results were so enormous that it actually changed our channel ranking for the whole year,” she recalls.

Now living in the United States, Root - former president of Discovery Channel US - remembers British Christmas television with affection.

“In America now there’s never anything big on TV at Christmas, because advertising is down, and I really pine for it,” she says.

“It’s a really special thing about British television culture and I hope it never goes away.”