A new generation game — the future of quality on the BBC
With healthier competition than ever before, can the BBC keep pace with the growing expectations of the contemporary online crowd?
Young people like screens. Young people like being entertained. Young people spend a huge amount of time consuming and sharing visual culture. Young people do not watch TV. This is odd.
The importance of TV scheduling is falling, year on year. High quality drama and comedy, online and on demand, is increasingly the order of the day — whether its House of Cards via Netflix or Game of Thrones via some “creative googling”, modern audiences head straight to the good stuff, when they want it.
However, the UK’s chief creative force continues to choke on the transition — the BBC, for all its strengths, has so far failed to produce a single show that could be deemed a veritable runaway online hit, and aside from one or two interesting things on the horizon, recent commissioning has been extremely depressing.
The organisation’s announcement of the imminent return of The Generation Game has been met with wild enthusiasm by absolutely nobody whatsoever. The show hails from a pre-internet era when the sole screen in the house was a filial coping mechanism/sedative — its memory conjures an uncomfortable grubby nostalgia for that dark age of ritualistic shared viewing, before the internet gave us all our own handheld fireplaces around which to mutely commune.
It’s been a whole 12 years since that conveyor belt of crockery and cuddly toys creaked to a dusty halt, and The Generation Game‘s imminent resurrection will only serve to remind the British public of two things — that 2002 really was that long ago, and repulsive gall bladder in a cheap suit Jim Davidson used to be a fixture of our Saturday night zeitgeist.
The decision is another example of the BBC sticking their sickly shades firmly to the mast of the ever-swelling ranks of the over-50 demographic, people they believe to be so hopelessly set in their ways where TV is concerned that any old shit will do, even if it’s shit they’ve seen before but this time with a promoted hashtag, a flashier set and in HD.
This attitude is both inaccurate and unhelpful. As audiences of all ages increasingly migrate to on-demand services, quality will hold sway and shows that were once cheap but reliably popular schedule filler will see their audiences dwindle.
The 16–34 demographic has the most competition for its leisure time, and a huge number of quality productions to choose from — BBC3’s upcoming migration to iPlayer will be a key moment in how the BBC set about chasing this demanding audience.
Early signs have been positive, if fleeting. The social media success of Murdered by my Boyfriend and the quality of sitcom pilots such as The Vodka Diaries demonstrate the creative and viral potential of good BBC3 content.
However, these are one-offs. A whole TV channel for the purpose of experimentation meant time for shows to refine and improve — the likes of Gavin and Stacey, Little Britain, Torchwood and Being Human were all afforded the space to find their voice and their audience.
The ‘swingometer’ of online quality is far more instantaneously hit or shit, and the swift courts of social media are not prone to offering patient and considered judgments.
An iPlayer full of stupefying, readily ignorable shiny floor shows, dated drama formats and a scattergun pilot policy of ‘iPlayer Exclusives’ will lead nowhere. The internet should not be allowed to kill the patience often needed for a good idea to become great.
If the BBC is to reduce its dependency on an ageing core audience and become a hub for quality comedy and drama online, they must first demonstrate that they are not scared to commit to new ideas and trust in creative potential over the long term.
Originally published at abstractmag.com on September 2, 2014.
