Peter Fincham

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Peter Fincham (born 1957) is a British television producer and executive, who since May 2005 has been the Controller of BBC One, the primary television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation.^[1] Immediately prior to joining the BBC he had been the Chief Executive of the independent production company talkbackTHAMES, a role in which he was succeeded by Lorraine Heggessey, his predecessor as Controller of BBC One, meaning the pair had effectively swapped jobs.^[2] In 2006, The Guardian newspaper reported that at BBC One Fincham is ultimately responsible for an annual programming budget of £873 million.^[3]

Fincham was regarded in some quarters as a surprising choice as Controller, as prior to his appointment he had never worked for either the BBC or any other broadcaster, having spent his career in the independent production sector.^[4] He had previously applied for a job at the BBC in 1984, a position as a researcher on The Late, Late Breakfast Show that had recently been vacated by his friend Helen Fielding — later author of the Bridget Jones novels — when she left to concentrate on her writing career. However, Fincham was unsuccessful in this application.^[5]

In 1985 he joined the staff of the independent production company TalkBack Productions as a producer. At the time the company, which was founded by comedians Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones, produced radio programming, television advertisements and corporate videos.^[6] Fincham became the company's Managing Director in 1986,^[6] and in 1989 oversaw the move of TalkBack into fully-fledged television production when it produced its founders' sketch show, Smith and Jones, for BBC One.^[2]

TalkBack became particularly well-known for its comedy output, which included such shows as The Day Today (BBC Two, 1994), Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge (BBC Two, 1994), Never Mind the Buzzcocks (BBC Two, 1996–present), I'm Alan Partridge (BBC Two, 1997 and 2002), Smack the Pony (Channel 4, 1999–2003) and Da Ali G Show (Channel 4, 2000). Fincham served as executive producer on many of these programmes.^[6] He also helped to establish TalkBack as a noted producer in other genres, with the company moving into drama with Stephen Poliakoff's Shooting the Past (BBC Two) in 1999. In 2001, Fincham was given an Indie Award for outstanding contribution to the independent production sector.^[1]

Also in 2001 TalkBack was sold to FremantleMedia in a £62 million deal,^[2] which made Fincham personally a multi-millionaire.^[5] Fremantle merged TalkBack with another of its acquisitions, Thames Television, to form the new talkbackTHAMES production company, of which Fincham became the Chief Executive in February 2003.^[6] He remained in this position until he left at the beginning of 2005, after twenty years at TalkBack and its successor company, claiming he wanted "a new challenge and a new adventure."^[5] Heggessey's appointment to his old post opened up the vacancy at BBC One, which he in turn applied for and won despite being rich enough never to have to work again.^[2]

Fincham oversaw the commissioning of successful BBC One programmes such as Robin Hood (2006–present), Jane Eyre (2006) and How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? (2006).^[7] His first full year in charge saw a year-on-year growth in the channel's audience share, with BBC One earning a 23.6% share in August 2006, compared to 22.2% in the same month in 2005.^[8]

Fincham directly initiated the creation of both the early evening current affairs and lifestyle programme The One Show (2006–present) and the prime time chat show Davina (2006), the latter designed as a vehicle for presenter Davina McCall.^[9] However, Davina was a critical and ratings disaster,^[10] which Fincham subsequently admitted was personally his fault, although he defended the strategy of experimenting with the BBC One schedule.^[3] He made another notable change to the schedule in January 2007, when he moved the current affairs series Panorama back from Sunday nights to the prime time Monday evening slot it had been removed from in 2000, although this decision was at least partly in response to a demand from the Board of Governors of the BBC for the channel to show more current affairs programming in prime time.^[11]

It was also Fincham's decision to scrap the BBC One "Rhythm and Movement" idents, which had been used to provide the channel with its on-screen identity between programmes since they were introduced by Heggessey in 2002.^[12] They were replaced by a new set of idents, known as the "Circle idents", in the autumn of 2006; however, Fincham again found himself criticised, this time by The Daily Telegraph newspaper, for the decision to spend £1.2 million on the set of eight ten-second films, some of which were shot in Mexico and Croatia.^[13] Fincham also found himself having to publicly defend the £18 million salary the BBC awarded presenter Jonathan Ross in 2006,^[14] although Ross's BBC One work — which primarily consisted of Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, Film... and various one-off events — formed only part of his BBC commitment, which also encompassed programmes for BBC Three and BBC Radio 2.