ITV president Kevin Lygo has disclosed that the successful drama Mr Bates versus The Post Office suffered a loss of roughly a million pounds.
This is despite the raucous crowd reaction and the four-part series’ sale to a number of overseas networks.
The drama, starring Will Mellor, Toby Jones, and Monica Dolan, brought back to light one of the most significant miscarriages of justice in UK history.
The narrative follows Alan Bates, a former sub-postmaster who lost his Post Office in north Wales after being accused of stealing. He later realised that he was not alone, as hundreds of people were also impacted by the scandal but had done nothing wrong.
Innocent individuals were convicted of stealing, resulting in homelessness, debt, and 236 jail sentences. Four individuals also took their own lives.
The show sparked public indignation and helped bring the Horizon affair to light.
Lygo, the managing director of media and entertainment of ITV, told the Voice of the Listener & Viewer (VLV) spring conference on Wednesday: ‘Mr Bates has made a loss of something like a million pounds and we can’t continually do this.
‘Of course, some things are very profitable on the channel, and some things aren’t.
‘But it’s a challenge to be able to fund some of the things that aren’t, obviously, of international appeal.
‘We’re hoping this may be because it caused such a furore here that maybe sales will pick up, but there’s no evidence of it yet.
‘If you’re in Lithuania, four hours on the British Post Office? Not really, thank you very much. So you can see the challenges here.’
He said the challenge for mainstream television broadcasters at the moment is ‘getting enough audiences to turn up on the night’ to watch their shows.
Lygo noted that five or six years ago, they would have anticipated a programme like Mr Bates to get about six or seven million people, but that now an overnight audience rating of four million is as ‘excellent as you get’.
The ITV head also acknowledged that after the first viewing, he thought the programme was ’emotional’ and ‘fully told’, but he had no idea how much of a stir it would make.
The show brought the subject back to the public’s and parliament’s attention, with former Post Office executive Paula Vennells subsequently stating her intention to hand back her CBE in the wake of the controversy.
Lygo said: ‘These days, it is harder and harder to guess in advance now what something is going to do and whether people will turn up at all.
‘There is so much choice and competition now in your homes every night… Everything that’s ever been made, you can watch now and there is some wonderful stuff out there, it’s quite hard to find.
‘But the competition, none of us have ever seen anything like this and that’s the real pressure on the production community, on commercial broadcasters, in getting sufficient audiences and the right audiences for various commercial partners…
‘That’s the reason we’re all a bit tense and nervous these days.’
Due to pressure on the broadcaster from various angles, ITV is currently trying to save £150 million.
Discussing how ITV’s cost-saving measures will affect viewers, Lygo said: ‘In the first instance, we’re trying to find every penny that we can, not on the screen.
‘So we’ve got to turn over every stone in the office, so to speak, to make cuts there. To really, yet again, re-examine what it is we should do, what we don’t have to do, how can we change the way we’re doing things.’
He also said that the broadcaster is looking at whether technology and artificial intelligence can be utilised to help them make ‘programmes more efficiently and cheaper’.
Mr Bates vs. The Post Office was ITV’s largest new drama in almost a decade, surpassing the premiere of Downton Abbey in 2010.
ITV announced that the series averaged 9.8 million viewers throughout its four episodes, and that, adding post-seven-day watching, the first three episodes were seen by more than 10.6 million people, with the debut now averaging 10.9 million after ten days of catch-up.
The series, including the documentary, has received 16.6 million streaming on ITVX.
This comes after the writer of Mr. Bates highlighted how ‘ecstatic’ the postmasters are and how ‘astounded’ she is by the drama’s impact.
Having spent three years researching the story, writer Gwyneth Hughes said, according to The Guardian: ‘None of us expected this. I thought it was quite a niche story which would get respectable viewing figures but I was completely wrong.’
‘I’m thrilled about it on every level, but it’s been a massive team effort, a team that includes hundreds of postmasters,’ she added.
Since the drama aired, millions of people have shown their support for the genuine victims of the tragedy, leaving them saddened.
Over 1,000,000 people signed a petition to deprive ex-Post Office CEO Paula Vennells of her CBE after the corporation wrongfully persecuted hundreds of employees. Vennells has already declared that she will return it.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has proposed legislation to exonerate and compensate all falsely convicted sub-postmasters, with only 93 cases resolved thus far.
Mr Bates vs The Post Office is available to watch on ITVX.
Source My Celebrity Life.