‘Mr Bates vs The Post Office’ drama made loss of £1m, reveals ITV chief
ITV boss Kevin Lygo has revealed the hit drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office made a loss of around £1m as he discussed the pressure broadcasters are facing due to increased competition from more media outlets.
The ITV show, detailing how hundreds of innocent sub-postmasters and postmistresses were wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting due to a defective IT system, prompted public outrage and helped put the Horizon scandal under the spotlight. Alongside airing on ITV, the corporation announced last month that 12 foreign broadcasters had bought the right to show it, but this was not enough for them to break even.
Mr Lygo, the managing director of media and entertainment of ITV, told the Voice of the Listener & Viewer spring conference: “Mr Bates has made a loss of something like £1m 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 explained that five or six years ago, they would have expected a show like Mr Bates to bring in around six or seven million viewers but that now an overnight audience rating of four million is as “good as you get”.
The ITV boss also said he knew the show was “emotional” and “well told” after the first watch, but admitted he did not realise how much of a stir it would cause.
The show, written by Skipton woman Gwyneth Hughes, brought the issue back to the attention of the public and parliament, with the former Post Office boss Paula Vennells later announcing she planned to hand back her CBE.