NICK FERRARI is not a man lacking in scruples. While happy to provide a home for clothes-shedding financial analysts, trampolining midget meteorologists and a rabbit who reckons he s Jeremy Paxman, the L!VE TV programming guru holds no truck with stammering newsreaders.
Actually, we did look into the idea, he admits with the nonchalance of someone who thought about having Chili Concarne for lunch but decided it might just be a bit too spicy.
This is an absolutely true story, Ferrari resumes. We phoned up the British Stammering Association who told us, There are two areas of employment we ve been trying to get our members into one is air traffic control and the other is television newsreading. The air traffic control thing not surprisingly didn t work out but they placed an advert for us in their monthly magazine and we had six people come along for a screen test who were all absolutely brilliant. Come the playback, though, it just felt wrong. You weren t laughing with them, you were laughing at them, so we scrapped the idea.
Rusty, the bouncing dwarf who does our weather, is different, because his stock-in-trade is his size and he s appeared in numerous films and TV shows because of it.
Based in that phallus-shaped monument to Thatcherism, Canary Wharf, L!VE has a very different ethos to its terrestrial telly rivals.
While the likes of BBC 2 and Channel 4 go on about public service remits and sink millions into operas that nobody apart from the cast and their immediate families watch, the latest jewel in the Mirror Group crown goes straight for the ratings jugular.
The bottom line is can we deliver an audience to the advertising agencies which their clients want? , resumes Ferrari whose suitably fast-track career includes stints with CNN, Fox, Sky, The Sun and News Of The World.
I m not fully upto speed with the situation in Ireland but I imagine that although your MTVs and Skys are developing an audience there, it s only RTE and UTV that are getting substantial ad revenue. That s not the case in the UK where along with ITV and Channels 4 and 5, you ve got the Sky Network, UK Gold, UK Living, Granada, Bravo, Carlton, Challenge TV . . .I could go on for ages. We re providing a very specific service for a very specific audience which, like it or not, is how television s developing in the digital age.
Unlike their competitors, L!VE s audience is confined to the two million UK households that are hooked up to cable. Along with the 24 hour a day national programming, there are City Television Network opt-outs in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Manchester, Westminster and Newcastle which deliver them 25% of the local piped TV market.
As we say in our press blurb, there s no such place as Granada , Nick Ferrari proffers. While the nature of their franchise agreements means that ITV companies have to be regional, we re able to recognise that Manchester and Liverpool are very different cities that require their own separate services. Our ability to respond to that is what gives us our edge.
So what, for instance, do L!VE s 200,000 Mancunian subscribers get for their few pence a week? At least seven hours of dedicated programming a day with occasional one-offs such as their exclusive coverage of Man U s 1997 Far East tour. When it comes to doing the business nationally, though, Nick Ferrari is the first to admit that it s L!VE s more salacious offerings which gets the remote controls flicking.
Topless Darts has been both the making of L!VE TV and the biggest albatross around our neck, he reflects. Yes, it sends our BARB rating through the roof but it only counts for four minutes of our daily output which has been expanded to include a huge range of programming. The amount of stuff we buy in is negligible.
A quick perusal of L!VE s weeknight schedule reveals such compulsive viewing as:
7.59. Tiffani s Big City Tips. If your idea of playing footsie is nothing to do with the financial market then this programme is for you. As Tiffani updates the viewers on market shifts she does some asset-stripping of her own. Watch her go from power-dressed to undressed in 60 seconds. It s sure to raise your interest rate!
8.00. Lie Detector. Viewers who want to find out if their friends are telling the truth are invited to the studio and rigged up to a genuine polygraph. Our psychologist then analyses the results and decides who s lying.
10.02. Sport L!VE. Our Brady is the best of the bunch. All the latest sporting news, reviews, competitions and celebrity interviews all brought to you by our very glamorous sports presenter, Louise Brady.
Brady is a Derby lass who s been to Pride Park but doesn t appear to know who the Bald Eagle is.
Oh, Jim Smith, she laughs. I don t think he likes me.
Why, did you criticise his tactical awareness?
No, the team stopped doing their warm-up exercises when I walked out onto the pitch in my short-skirt.
I dare say that caused a strained groin or two.
The trouble is the players keep asking me out to dinner.
And, being a consummate professional who wants to maintain a sense of objectivity, you always politely decline.
Actually, Dwight Yorke s my boyfriend.
A former model who knows precious little about the beautiful game or not, Brady makes Sport L!VE work by virtue of her upbeat Northern personality and, let s be honest here, extremely large breasts.
I d never done telly before and was told on a Friday that I d be starting a five-night-a-week show on the Monday, she reveals. What I ve learned coming to London is that looks sell. If by controlling and using it you can get ahead, why not? Old school football fans are always going to stick with Jimmy Hill and Des Lynam but younger people, well, they want something a little more interesting to look at.
The insinuation being, I think, that our Jimmy and Des are somewhat lacking in the glamour department. Wandering round L!VE s spacious 24th floor quarters which come complete with a stunning view of the embryonic Millennium Dome it s noticeable that there s not a Keith Chegwin in sight.
Seriously, I think Keith Chegwin s a very, very talented presenter but L!VE TV s about fresh faces and new ideas which, I m afraid, rules him out, Nick Ferrari explains. My job is to spot newcomers with enough talent and charisma to make viewers stop and go whoah! Let s look at some of the people L!VE have created over the past two years Claudia Winklemen who does Talking Telephone Numbers on ITV, Gayle McKenna who went and did Channel 5 sport, Richard Bacon who s the new Blue Peter presenter, Audrey Williams, Esther McVey, Wendy Turner . . . that s a pretty impressive list.
The main reason they advance so quickly, he continues, is that they re encouraged to be creative. Outside of promotion which happens pretty quickly here they get #100 if they come up with an idea that goes to pilot and more money if it makes it to screen.
L!VE s most obvious star-in-the-making at the moment is Anne Marie Foss, the presenter of The Weather In Norwegian who also gets to lead the teams out at the New Den as part of their sponsoring of Millwall FC.
It was originally The Weather In Dutch but one Sunday morning Kelvin McKenzie opened the News Of The World and there was the girl who presented it whipping people, Foss laughs. They d always wondered why her mobile phone kept going off well, she had another business on the go!
A sometime actress who made her British TV debut on Kavanagh QC., the 6 2 blonde was alerted to the vacancy by a friend and had no prior idea of L!VE s milieu.
My initial reaction when they asked me to bring a bikini to the screen test was oh no, it s a porn channel! and then I came here and realised it wasn t at all sexual. My mother, who s a Lutheran minister back in Norway, took a bit more convincing but now she sees it for what it is a bit of fun and a great career opportunity.
As well as a Fantasy Football engagement in June, Foss is also shooting a pilot for another channel which she hopes will lead to employment of the non-isobaric variety.
The danger with something like The Weather In Norwegian is that you ll become so stereotyped no one else will want to use you. Not only that but with L!VE being so ratings-driven, I could get one set of bad figures and be shown the door.
A fact that s acknowledged by Nick Ferrari who, lest we forget, has the King of the Hirers & Firers, Kelvin McKenzie, as his boss.
I doubt if there s any UK channel that responds to ratings as quickly as we do, he agrees, which is down to the fact we have very little money and have to ensure that every minute of programming pays for itself. The current BARB ratings place us as the third biggest cable operator in the UK which, when you consider we re up against multinational corporations like Disney and MTV, is quite remarkable.
Would we sack someone if they got one set of bad figures? In certain cases, yeah, we would.
While the Millennium Dome will be completed before L!VE goes into profit, Ferrari says their losses are far less than originally projected. This means the continued expansion of the City Television Network with Dublin just one of the places that could soon be ogling Louise Brady s trophy cabinet.
Dublin is our kind of city young, vibrant and currently without its own dedicated service. Unfortunately, Cablelink has a more or less full carriage and needs to upgrade before taking on more channels. If and when that happens, we d love to come, he maintains.
News that will concern not only the nation s self-appointed moral guardians but the more Jurassic elements at RTE who won t appreciate L!VE s ruthless professionalism and ability no matter how stiff the competition to poach viewers.
It d be a total anathema to how L!VE TV is set up if we just barged in and laid down a doctrine well, this is what comes from Canary Wharf and, I m sorry, that s what you re putting up with. A small company such as ourselves has to be aware of local sensitivities which, yes, includes listening to people who for whatever reason don t like our programming.
The perception of us going out of our way to shock isn t true. We re subject to the same rules, regulations and 9 o clock watershed as the BBC and ITV and have never been censured for our on-air conduct. Church-wise, we ve been available in cabled-up areas of Belfast since last September and not received a word of ecclesiastical complaint. In fact, considering the small number of homes we re available in 3,000 or so the feedback has been incredibly positive.
But will they broadcast The Angelus?
The what?
The call to prayer for millions well, hundreds of devout Irish Catholics.
I don t think that s really us. Unless, of course, we souped it up a little.
Given L!VE s track record, that ll mean replacing the Virgin Mary with a Pamela Anderson lookalike who gets her kit off to an accompaniment of bonks rather than bongs . Until that glorious day, Irish viewers will have to make do with the cybercasts at http://www.livetv.co.uk/ which, courtesy of the j-peg Tiffani Banister screen saver, bring a whole new meaning to the term downloading .
I don t want to sound arrogant, Ferrari concludes, but however long it takes us to get up and running in Ireland, it ll be worth the wait.