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Meet the UK Factual Commissioner: Charlotte Moore, Commissioning Editor, Docs and Features, BBC
Charlotte Moore, Commissioning Editor, Docs and Features at the BBC recently outlined her commissioning needs to attendees of the Broadcast Factual Forum (March 2010). Charlotte oversees the commissioning of docs on BBC1, BBC2 and BBC4.
Charlottes's overview of documentaries and features on BBC1:
- Photo by Torres CC BY-SA 2.0
- BBC1 is aimed at a broad mainstream audience
Programmes that work on BBC1:
- Films that really matter, such as Wounded - a 90′ documentary at 9pm (it was split in to two parts to accommodate the news at 10pm);
- Provocative, edgy, informative docs on issues that matter to the nation eg. The Day the Immigrants Left, which got 5.4m viewers.
Looking For:
- Documentaries for 10.35pm – she has 30 slots a year to fill;
- Docs that have impact and will get ‘pick of the day’.
Charlottes's overview of documentaries and features on BBC2:
- Charlotte quoted BBC2′s controller, Janice Hadlow, who described BBC2 as being “about making the good popular and about making popular good”.
Programmes that work on BBC2:
- Lambing Live – exciting and feels fresh and original, which is bringing in a growing audience. The narrative, which tells the story of British sheep farming, is stripped across five days and is really engaging the audience online.
- An upcoming series on Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital shows medical staff tackling tough moral dilemmas of the modern world – it’s challenging material.
- Also coming up a series on Lagos, Nigeria – the story of the fastest growing city in the world from its citizens’ point of view.
Looking For:
- Two or three big event ideas.
Charlotte's view on BBC3
Charlotte works alongside Harry Lansdown and Sam Anstiss, who commission docs for BBC3.
- Documentaries are very important to BBC3 – they want people in their teens and twenties to engage with documentaries.
- The channel likes to tackle difficult subjects in an accessible way, such as Underage and Pregnant and Blood, Sweat and Takeaways.
- Fresh is a new strand that commissions six documentaries a year and is a place where assistant producers can make their first hour-long doc. Sam Anstiss is the first point of contact.
- They are looking at doing a ‘mixed race’ season.
Charlottes's overview of documentaries and features on BBC4:
- BBC4 is the main place for international stories.
Source: Broadcast Factual Forum 10th March, 2010
Discussion
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© 2010 TV Mole
Hello,
How would you feel if you discovered you were unable to eat and digest any food?
That you were unable to perform such a natural thing as putting food in your mouth and digesting it without suffering chronic pain?
How would you possibly survive?
How could you survive?
Would you be interested in making a story/documentary for a TV Channel about an extremely brave little 7 year old girl who suffers from exactly this problem?
Or even just about this very rare and dibilitating illness.
My Wife and I recently discovered the very sad news that our Daughter Daisy, who has just turned 7, is suffering from this very rare and serious illness called Chronic Intestine Pseudo Obstruction (CIPs)
This basically means that Daisy has a mystery blockage somewhere inside her intestines that prevents any food from getting through, leaving her in chronic pain when she eats anything. Therefore, like many other sufferers, Daisy has become unable to eat anything orally.
There is currently no cure for this, and it can only be managed with extremely strong drugs to ease the pain and discomfort that she still gets even without eating. Daisy is instead fed intravenously directly into the arteries of her heart via something called a Hickman Line, totally bypassing the entire digestive system. This is done by connecting Daisy’s Hickman Line to a feeding machine for 14hours overnight, every night.
Daisy has just spent over 6 months in the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel from the end of January 2010 to early August 2010, where she was fitted with this Hickman Line and also received the best treatment available in this field where very little is known.
All of Daisy’s care, medicines and treatment are now administered by my wife and myself at home, after some intense training whilst in the hospital. It is the equivelent to what an intensive care nurse would have to do, and involves a high level of risk, and is sometimes quite frightening.
Because of the extreme rareness of this illness, not alot is known about it, and due to a lack of NHS funding, research has to be funded by other means.
All we really want to do is help to raise awareness of CIPs and the charity that deals with this illness, P.O.R.T. (Pseudo Obstruction Research Trust – http://www.port-charity.org.uk) by any means we can, and if along the way we raise some funds for research, by appearing on TV, then that can only be a good thing.
During Daisy’s stay in hospital, London Tonight were very interested in Daisy’s story and ran a short article:
http://www.itv.com/london/cant-eat-or-drink58440/
They also came back on the day Daisy was discharged from hospital:
http://www.itv.com/london/home-at-last72623/
You may notice that Daisy appears to look quite healthy here, but this is entirely down to the intravenous feed she receives for those 14hours every night, giving her all the goodness and nutrients that she she requires. She has no junk food like us! But if that feed were to be switched off, then sadly it would be an entirely different matter. She simply would not survive.
Can you imangine the look on Daisy’s face as she watches her friends enjoying all the normal things a typical 7 year old child enjoys, such as sweets, chocolate, ice-cream, cakes ? The only things Daisy is allowed is non-coloured Ice Pops – and then no more than 5 per day. Daisy is very brave and thoughtful, and doesn’t mind others eating infront of her, but we know deep down it really saddens her.
This obviously has a knock on effect to the rest of Daisy’s family, especially her older sister who has remained very mature throughout, despite having to spend 6mth staying at her Grandparents whilst my wife an I remained at the hospital with Daisy.
During Daisy’s stay in hospital this year, my wife (Tracy) and some friends decided to run the Brentwood Half Marathon back in March 2010 to raise funds for P.O.R.T. Tracy’s place In the run was obviously booked way before she knew Daisy would be staying in hospital for so long, but despite little or no training in the weeks leading upto the race, because she was sleeping at the hospital every night with Daisy, she still remained determined to complete the race for the sake of Daisy and other sufferers of this terrible illness.
You will be pleased to know that Tracy and her friends did indeed finish the 13miles, despite having never run that far before, and helped raised just over £12,000. You can see her fundraising page here:
http://www.justgiving.com/Tracy-Karen-Lisa-Joe
However, this is nowhere near the amounts of money required to properly fund some investigation into what really causes this illness, or even how it can be cured.
On behalf of the PORT Charity, we would really appreciate you giving some consideration to running a story about this terrible illness. We are not doing this to receive sympathy for Daisy, we simply want to raise the awareness of this terrible illness and from doing this, you never know, a donation may be made that can help further research and perhaps one day find a cure.
Any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.
Thanks in advance
Damon & Tracy Palmer
Daisy’s Story (needs updating to include the rest of her hospital stay):
http://www.port-charity.org.uk/pages/Daisys%20Story.htm