Dispatches

Television

Time to dust off the mothballed hits

Alan Boyd, president of Fremantle Media worldwide entertainment, best known for putting Blind Date on ITV, is sitting in a London restaurant with his predictions for 2006. He has a veteran's instinct for hits: top of his list is a revival of old gameshows. There is, he says, a desire for nostalgia - and gentler programmes. "People want contest, not cruelty."

Boyd has a vested interest: his company owns a huge library of old formats. But later the same day, on the set of Dancing On Ice, the same thoughts are running through the minds of younger producers.

It is an open secret that the top brass at ITV, with their new analytical, predictive research tools, were convinced that Dancing on Ice was going to be a £5m flop. They were spectacularly wrong. For Will Smith, controller of ITV's London-based factual department, the key lay in reuniting 1984 Olympic gold medal winners Torvill and Dean. He says that important elements of the production are deliberately "retro", including the style of judging and the commentator, Tony Gubba.

Meanwhile Paul Jackson, chief executive of Granada America, who returns this spring to run the ITV Network's entertainment and comedy department, is quoted as saying: "I'm getting the feeling that this year will see an upswing in traditional studio-based gameshows."

ITV is spending an estimated £300,000 making a pilot of the old Carlton show Catchphrase. Boyd reckons there are several reasons for a scramble through the archives. For example, some old shows lend themselves well to interactivity. "A lot of people around the world are talking to us and are interested in what can be revived," he says.

Jackson admits that everyone in ITV was astonished when Ant & Dec's Gameshow Marathon, devised to celebrate the channel's 50th anniversary last year, was a big hit. It offered a nostalgia trip through several Fremantle formats, including The Price is Right, Family Fortunes and Blankety Blank.

Nostalgia could also mean more revived careers: Bruce Forsyth, Noel Edmonds and Des Lynam have benefited so far. Boyd predicts that Cilla Black will soon return with a regular show "Dating is set for a comeback" he says, "but not Blind Date". Well, that's a relief.

Magazines

Sleazenation team gets a new outfit

The style magazine Sleazenation may have sunk with Swinstead publishing but the editorial team that manned it is back. Ex-Sleaze music writers Chris Cottingham and Stuart Turnball have returned at the helm of different publications: Cottingham's music quarterly Dummy and Turnball's irreverent London free-mag Good For Nothing.

In February Sleaze's former editorial and fashion heads, Steve Slocombe and Namalle Bolle, are launching their new take on the style mag that aims to combine the spirit of a fanzine with the language of a celebrity glossy. The magazine - called Super Super - will, they claim, make the glamorous fashion press less, well, boring.

Attendees of last year's London Fashion Week had a taster of what is to come, called Superblow. About 15,000 test copies were printed, 35% of which were left on seats at high-profile runway shows. And when the demand continued from a few select distributors more magazines were produced, 90% of which were sold. Such was its impact that some dubbed it "the new iD". After that success the producers of Superblow decided to create the monthly Super Super.

"Our version of a style magazine is about entertainment," says Slocombe. "How many laughs per copy do you get with iD or Dazed and Confused? There aren't any." "Julie Burchill does Hello!" is the editorial pitch, while the look of the mag will include Heat-style, multi-image covers, "straight ups" taken on camera phones, tabloidy spoof features such as "24-hours with Jodie Harsh" (a transvestite, obviously) and pull-out pin-ups.

The magazine, priced £2.50, will be edited by Hanna Cowan, 24, who made her name as part of !WOWOW!, a "of the moment" art collective. After they left Camberwell art school, the collective attracted the fashion press's attention with a series of debauched "art balls" in disused Kwik-Fits, clubs and warehouses in Peckham, south London. Cowan edited an affiliated fanzine called FashionArtLeisure. Slocombe says: "I don't see the other fashion mags as our competition. In the office we look at Grazia more than anything else, so we're not exactly aiming to be the new iD."

Radio

New Radio 4 theme the shortlist

To: all staff, Radio 4

From: Mark Damazer, controller

Re: Radio 4 UK Theme

Good news! I think we've found a way to head off the protests of a small and unrepresentative group of elderly cranks who hate change of any kind: we're going to issue the old theme as a podcast, so the old duffers can download it on to their iPods or BlackBerrys and use it as an alarm or a ringtone - an obsolete, jingoistic slice of yesteryear, on demand, wherever, 24/7. Sorted.

Unfortunately it has become clear that a pacey news bulletin will not be an adequate replacement for this twee little medley; we need something to demarcate the switch from the World Service to Radio 4. The shortlist follows - please tick your favourites.

I Predict a Riot by the Kaiser Chiefs
Streetwise and up tempo, this should attract a largely untapped demographic to Radio 4: teens who get up at 5.30 in the morning. Unfortunately one of the Kaiser Chiefs - the bassist I think - is a big fan of the old theme, and they're cutting up rough. At present the only version we're allowed to use is one performed by the Royal Artillery band.

National Lottery Daily 5.30am Draw
Focus groups indicated that most people like the idea, although the majority said they wouldn't get out of bed that early for less than £100,000.

A New Medley
A fresh montage of stirring British music every morning, using snippets of Elgar, the Kinks, something from Dreamcoat, Status Quo, the Dad's Army theme, etc. The real innovation here is the quiz element: from 5.45 listeners can call in and try to guess the songs in exchange for, let's say, tickets to Any Questions. What I like about this option is its boldness; to my knowledge, nothing like this has ever been attempted on radio before.

An Original Patriotic Composition by Gordon Brown

To be honest, we thought he'd say no, but he was very enthusiastic and sent over three demos straight away. The best of them, entitled The Essential Common Purpose (Without Which No Society Can Flourish) is a little doleful, but I think that's down to his voice. Let's see what Joss Stone can do with it.

The Three-minute Silence
A budget-conscious alternative perhaps, but there's an argument which says that we're going to need a daily commemorative silence to address the growth in collective grief, and let's face it - it's pretty quiet at that hour anyway.