[nodisharmony]

Peter Bazalgette & Endemol

Article (1)
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Link & Article:- http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...020864,00.html

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Why we're right about Celeb BB


In his first public statement since the row over Big Brother, the man behind the show argues this is what broadcasting should be all about

Peter Bazalgette
Sunday February 25, 2007
The Observer


The programme generated more than 400 million hits on Big Brother websites, 2.5 million video downloads, a record 50,000 complaints to the television regulator, a private audience for the winner with the current Prime Minister, a plea to vote for the winner from the next Prime Minister, a national debate on racism and a rolling story across the world.

Channel 4's Celebrity Big Brother seems to be living in the 'interesting times' referred to in the sinister Chinese curse. Is Jade Goody a racist? Was the series 'racism as entertainment'? Do 50,000 complaints mean such a show should be taken off air? No to all of those. But before I explore this rather surreal terrain, let me remind you how the recent furore was, in a sense, business as usual for the most celebrated and reviled reality show on television.

There is one thing that sets Big Brother apart from most other shows in the world: the influential and vocal minority who want it stopped. When it was first produced in Germany in 2000, an elderly regulator tried to stifle it before it was aired. He argued that it infringed the individual's basic right to privacy and compared it to the Nazi era. He failed.

In Mexico, a small group of Catholic patriarchs owns most of the country's major companies. They tried to strangle Big Brother by withdrawing all advertising from the programme. They failed too. Last summer, John Howard, the Australian Prime Minister, told Network Ten that it should decommission the series. It declined. In Malawi, Parliament demanded the state broadcaster take it off the air. The cowed management complied. But the courts declared the politicians ultra vires. In Bahrain, the Big Brother house was carefully constructed with separate boys' and girls' sections and a prayer room. But angry Muslim clerics demonstrated outside the house. They succeeded this time - the series ended after eight days.

What disturbs these objectors, across five continents, is one basic issue: the supposed indecency of real individuals living their lives in public with everyday intimacies on display. And the more ordinary the people, the greater the offence seems to be. But they are out of touch with the moral perspective of a new generation. In 1996, an American student, Jennifer Ringley, borrowed a video camera from her college library, placed it in her apartment, connected it to the world wide web and went public with her life. Within days, millions of surfers were accessing 'Jennicam' to see her brushing her teeth, studying and making love to her boyfriend. For a decade now, there has been a minority who want to be watched and a majority who want to watch them - and the more unmediated the better. To an older generation, this is still shocking. To the fans of reality shows and internet exhibitionism, it's normal.

Normal human behaviour in the Big Brother house includes the participants rowing and making up. And what even many of the show's biggest fans cannot believe is that such events are unplanned. The manipulative, all-seeing producers must have chosen Jade and Shilpa in order to provoke racial conflict. They do not understand that Big Brother is 12 characters in search of a story. The producers put this group together, but the cast wrote the script. And no one knew in advance what that script would be. With 35 cameras, 20 security staff and a production team of 200, it is carefully managed. There are rules which the housemates must abide by, including prohibitions on violent or threatening behaviour. Of course they fall out and take sides from time to time, but the production team finds that the housemates usually resolve their differences, as happened on this occasion when Jade and Shilpa made up. All sorts of things occur in the house, but it is absurd to claim that this series was designed to serve up racism as entertainment. Indeed, was racism involved at all?

No doubt about it, according to the Sun, the Mirror and the News of the World ('Vile racist', 'Vile Jade Goody'). But the many columnists who debated the issue were evenly split between racism, bullying and class as the motive for the fallout. The complaints to Channel 4 were also divided. The point is that you cannot be certain about a person's motives. So this was never an open-and-shut case. As it happens, I know Jade Goody and I do not believe her to be remotely racist. Her father is mixed race. She spent nine weeks in the Big Brother house in 2002 with three black people without the hint of a racist attitude. She had a blazing row with one of them, Adele, but that was about verrucas.

Jade certainly has a temper and may be prone to bullying - not an attractive trait, but not a crime either. What is far more significant is the national debate on racism that the incident inspired. Is Big Brother entertainment or is it social documentary? It defies television's usual categories, but this was BB at its best, a show that constantly surprises us as it explores the spirit of a new generation.

It was the same when Brian, a gay man, won Big Brother 2, the warmth of his personality eclipsing the stereotypes that gay people have had to put up with on television in the past. Or when Nadia triumphed in 2004 and proved that a transsexual need not be dismissed as a 'freak'. And the story was the same for 2006's winner, Pete, a Tourette's sufferer, a charming man afflicted by a foul mouth.

Trevor Phillips, head of the Commission for Racial Equality, has previously praised Big Brother for the racial understanding it has promoted. But he attacked this series - getting it wrong - along with a gang of politicians whose knowledge of television is probably limited to Newsnight and Question Time. They felt, no doubt, that they had to respond to the weight of complaints. And here we have to acknowledge a new phenomenon - by dextrous use of the web, a mass protest can now be whipped in no time at all, as the Prime Minister discovered with road pricing.

This is a powerful democratic tool, but we should all keep a cool head. Last year, the BBC also received more than 50,000 complaints about Jerry Springer: The Opera. Contrast that with the big row over Brass Eye on paedophilia just five years ago (only 992 complaints to the regulator) or the televising of The Last Temptation of Christ in 2003 (a mere 1,554). We are in a new era in the relationship between viewers and programmes.

Looking back, we can now say that this most recent series has, by accident rather than design, done more than anything for a decade to force us to examine our prejudicial attitudes. Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, who was one of the critics of CBB this time, later had the good grace to credit it with inspiring an extraordinary issue of the Sun on 30 January, devoted to an anti-racism campaign. The front page featured teenagers who had been verbally abused.

I have been reminding myself of Channel 4's remit, as laid out in the Communications Act 2003. It should demonstrate 'innovation', appeal to 'a culturally diverse society', include 'programmes of educative value' and 'exhibit a distinctive character'. Celebrity Big Brother may have proved uncomfortable viewing. But isn't that exactly what those who framed the act had in mind?

· Peter Bazalgette is the chief creative officer of Endemol. This piece first appeared in Prospect magazine (www.prospect-magazine.co.uk)
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Article (2)
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Link & Article:- http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...6/ai_n18633471


Jade Goody and Celebrity Big Brother have finally departed from the scene, but here comes the maker of them, the irascible Peter Bazalgette, smooth and pleased as double cream. And who can blame him? The last Celebrity Big Brother went from a dull domestic to global drama and the cash rolled in and in and in.

Jade Goody and Shilpa (great friends now) have had their fortunes boosted and fame assured for a while. I bet Jade's week in rehab generated more dosh for the poor thing. And the shareholders of Bazalgette's company must be dancing.

Some easily pleased folk in the UK also think the ejection of Jade marks the end of racism in Britain. It still isn't enough for Peter. The dude wants us to take him and his abysmal programmes even more seriously to heart. He says that Celebrity Big Brother demonstrates "innovation" and gives us "educational value".

Next stop, the Lords, perhaps? Lord Bazalgette of Peckham, bringing innovation and educational value to those who most desperately need it?
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Article (3)
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Link & Article:-http://education.independent.co.uk/careers_advice/article2399672.ece

Passed/Failed: An education in the life of Peter Bazalgette, the man behind 'Big Brother'
'I was in the B-stream, definitely'
Interview by Jonathan Sale
Published: 29 March 2007
Peter Bazalgette, 53, is the chairman of Endemol UK, the television production company behind Big Brother, Deal or No Deal, Ready Steady Cook, Changing Rooms and Ground Force. His books include Billion Dollar Game.

The headmaster of St David's Primary in Beckenham, Kent, was called Dr Shove, pronounced "Showve" (just as Hyacinth Bucket called herself "Bouquet"). He had a PhD in meteorology - really obscure - and used to walk around in a mortarboard.

At seven I went to Dulwich College Prep in south London, which was run by a head whose stock-in-trade was "Onward Christian Soldiers", which he loved. We used to sing it once a week in assembly, and he would march on the spot in time to this stirring anthem. I left at nine to go to a junior boarding house of the main Dulwich College. I was the youngest boy in the school and quite plump: they called me "Bazalgetty [sic] Stodge". It was pretty tough and pretty mad, the law of the jungle. I started during the big freeze of 1962-63 and the boiler in Orchard House frequently broke down, so we would have to wash in cold water.

When I was 13 I carried on to Dulwich College itself. Although technically a public school, it was effectively a grammar, as the brightest boys from the surrounding south London area went there, some on grants from the council. It used to vie with Manchester Grammar for getting the most boys into Oxbridge.

I was definitely in the B-stream, a form called for some obscure historical reason the "Geography Fifth", where all the wastrels ended up. In fact, of the 25 or 30 of these "wasters", at least 10 of us went to Oxbridge.

I captained the Third XV, boys who were too drunk, doped-up or left-wing for the rugby First and Second teams - and we were unbeaten! During the general election of 1970, we had a mock election in which I set up my own party, the Centre Reform Party. Our manifesto said that the Church of England should be disestablished, which hasn't yet happened, and that the Pill should be available on the NHS, which has.

The headmaster found this scurrilous document and went berserk: "This could appear in the Evening Standard!" He was right: I rang up Jeremy Deedes - I played village cricket with him - who ran the paper's Londoner's Diary. I duly won the election, with the Bread and Circuses Party second, and I rang Jeremy up again.

In my mock A-levels, I got two Es and an F. I had eight weeks to pull myself together and got three As. The A grades in English and history were probably deserved, but to this day I do not know how I got an A in economics: a clerical error?

At the time, law was thought to be an easier subject for entry into Cambridge and I got a place at Fitzwilliam College. I started to climb the greasy pole at the Union and got on committees. In June 1975, three days after I was elected president, the Union's roof burnt off. In October I had Harold Macmillan, Rab Butler, Michael Heseltine and Denis Healey all coming up for the debate on "This House has no confidence in Her Majesty's Government", which would be filmed by the BBC - and a building with no roof. I spent the whole of the long vacation under a tarpaulin.

We opened on time. Butler had not spoken to Harold Macmillan for 10 years because Macmillan had backed Douglas-Home - instead of Rab - as his successor for Prime Minister. They had an edgy reunion before the debate.

When I had finished being president at the Union I decided it would be fun to have a gossip column. Stop Press, the student paper edited by Robert Harris [author of Enigma], was a bit lefty and agitprop but I wrote a jovially unpleasant gossip column called "Muckraker by Lord Muck". I also sold stories to newspapers.

My biggest coup was when Rab Butler told me that the Duke of Edinburgh was going to be chancellor of the university. The Standard gave me £50.

Law? It didn't really register, I got a Third. The only case I can remember is Regina vs Davies, which was about a sexual assault on a duck. It hinges on whether a duck is an animal and there was a lot of squawking and feathers, but I forget the verdict.

jonty@ jonathansale.com