The Stage

C5 and Paramount bid to become home for new television comedy

Published Tuesday 20 July 2004 at 11:05 by Joanna Taylor

Channel 5’s new partnership with Paramount will enable the UK broadcaster to usurp both BBC3 and Channel 4 as the premier breeding ground for new British comedy talent, head of the venture Graham Smith has claimed.

Smith, currently the BBC’s acting editor of new comedy, where he was part of the team responsible for hits such as Little Britain and the new Dom Joly series, will join C5 at the beginning of next month to spearhead the station’s first foray into original comedy programming.

He will work for both C5 and the Paramount Comedy Channel, who will split the ‘substantial’ budget that will be spent on developing home-grown sitcoms for both companies.

Said Smith: “The focus will be on developing new British talent for the UK screens, it is not about making shows that will fit onto US screens but if they do then that will be an added bonus.

“The number of places that new talent can go at the moment is very limited. There’s Channel 4, where all you can really hope for initially is a Comedy Lab, or BBC3, where it is really hard to make a splash without the support of the terrestrial channels. BBC1 and BBC2 don’t really support new comedy unilaterally now.”

Specifically laid out in the government’s conditions for digital youth channel BBC3 is the commitment to develop ‘untried talent’ but Smith said that he believes C5 will prove more capable at the task.

He said: “BBC3 is an anomaly. It is a digital channel with terrestrial funding. The fact is that in terms of programme budget BBC3 has about 60% of C5’s budget but about 5% of the audience so in reality the amount of impact that C5 can make compared with BBC3 is massive. Any exposure that new comedy can get on C5 will have a far greater impact than BBC3.”

C5, the youngest terrestrial broadcaster, has so far shied away from risking its budget on the relatively high-cost genre, preferring to invest in buying films, football, American drama imports and producing entertainment shows such as Swag and Monkey Magic.

But director of programmes Dan Chambers, who joined the station in September last year said: “Ever since I got this job I have been keen to increase the amount of comedy on the channel - it’s a key way of making yourself truly distinctive from your rivals.

“I am delighted we are doing this in partnership with Paramount Comedy, which has a great reputation for discovering and nurturing home-grown talent, and in Graham we have found the perfect executive for the job.”

Smith added that he has spoken to Chambers and managing director of Paramount Comedy Tony Orsten about setting up a writing scheme in a similar vein to the BBC’s New Writing Initiative to unearth new talent.

Before joining the BBC Smith was a commissioning editor for C4 where his credits included Harry Hill, Spaced, So Graham Norton, Jo Brand and TFI Friday.