>>Kirsty Wark: Tim Hincks is the head honcho of Endemol and he will be delighted that rather
like Sleeping Beauty or Rumplestiltskin, Big Brother has come back to life courtesy of
Mr. Desmond on Channel 5. But also you have got Million Pound Drop, as in Million Dollar
Drop, on a Friday night, which I'd like to say was killing Newsnight, but not quite.
We seem to be holding our own against that, though it was an absolutely brilliant show.
These are the ultimate games, aren't they? >>Tim Hincks: Yes. Unless I missed something
this morning, I am actually CEO of Endemol in the U.K. and not globally.
>>Kirsty Wark: I was just promoting you. I thought everything was virtual so I could
just promote you. >>Tim Hincks: To make it even better for you,
I think the actual global CEO is in the audience here.
>>Kirsty Wark: Well, he won't be global CEO for long, Tim.
>>Tim Hincks: But it's a hell of a way to find out, so thank you.
[ Laughter ] >>Tim Hincks: I think for me, from my point
of view, I recognize many of the themes that the guys have been talking about, which is
to say we are a games company. We create games. Not in the way that you have brilliantly done
but in the television sense we have created formats. Whether it's Big Brother, Deal or
No Deal, Million Dollar Drop, it's games, sets of rules.
And the wonderful thing about games is if you -- if the rules are good, whether as defined
by the users or defined by TV producer, whatever it is, they tell a story. They have a beginning,
a middle and an end. You care about them. There's a winner, there's a loser.
So there are the brilliant stories in their own right. Very powerful.
And I guess for us the challenge has been to think the television model is a good one.
I think rumors of its death are somewhat exaggerated. It's still very strong. But how do we use
and interact with this world out there, particularly in social media? I think we have long realized
that when we put a game, a TV show on air, people play it.
Big Brother, for example, was before YouTube, before Twitter, before Facebook, was a social
phenomenon that people talked about in the pub, in the bars, at home. They watched it
and they chatted about it. The rather exciting thing right now is the
technology now exists for the -- platforms exist where they can do that in a more meaningful
way. And we're exploring that in ways we haven't
done before. I think that the notion of TV that you can
play is the most important kind of philosophy we have. And as you say, we have this -- about
a year ago, today, back when I was just running the U.K., the -- actually, I have got to go
in a second. I have got quite a will the on. [ Laughter ]
>>Tim Hincks: One of the guys at Endemol U.K. came forward with a piece of paper which had
a game idea on it, and the idea was that you had four squares on the page, possible answers
in each square, and all I had to do with a million pounds, which I had in front of me,
bet on which answer was the right answer. And I thought then, I reckon in about a year's
time I am going to sit at the Google Zeitgeist conference and take credit for this game,
and amazingly, it's come true. That very simple thought became, about a year
ago, this Channel 4 show that took off, and it's a very important show for them now and
for us. >>Kirsty Wark: So explain to me because you
play it in television. Of course you can play it at home but of course you can play as the
family mastermind, whatever at home. So where does the audience at home get engaged
and how does it make money for you? >>Tim Hincks: Yeah. So I think we have a very
simple situation, which is, we had this very interesting game, and if we'd have just done
it in a normal television way, we probably -- this is a bit parochial, but we probably
would have taken it somewhere like ITV, which would have been rather brilliant, by the way.
Having a game show in IVT is a wonderful thing. But we actually thought, "What if we took
this to a slightly more -- to a channel which think it's innovative, has a younger demographic,
and took it to Channel 4?" So we took this show to Channel 4, and the
decision we took was why don't we do it live and in the pitch -- I'll say just over a year
ago, I made the point that there had been no -- no one had done a live game show before,
which is obviously not true, but in a pitch it sounds quite good, right?
[Laughter] >>Tim Hincks: And but what's definitely true
is no one -- >>Kirsty Wark: That's what's brilliant about
Tim. >>Tim Hincks: -- no one's done a high-stakes
game show that happens live in front of an audience. That much is true.
And we said let's do it live and we'll make it young, we'll put young people on the show,
so for the first time in a way that Millionaire and other shows it will belong to a younger
audience who are more Internet savvy. And from that -- to be honest, I'd like -- it
wasn't a great master plan. You suddenly realize, well, hang on. If we're doing that, then there
will be really interesting ways of interacting for the audience, and we --
>>Kirsty Wark: Yeah. So how does that work? >>Tim Hincks: And so what we did is we invented
it with Monterosa, a game-making company. They created with us a game. You play along
with the show as you're watching it. So you've got your TV screen on and you're online on
your phone or on your iPad or whatever and you are playing the game and you're winning
virtual money. You're answering the same questions as them, and you can become a virtual millionaire.
Now -- >>Kirsty Wark: Yeah. Well, how exciting is
that. >>Tim Hincks: You -- well, I'll tell you why
it's very exciting, Kirsty. It's very exciting because --
>>Kirsty Wark: Because at the end of the day, you go home and you're just as poor.
>>Tim Hincks: Well, because -- I don't. That's the good news.
>>Kirsty Wark: No. Clearly. [Laughter]
>>Tim Hincks: No. So I can't see what the problem is.
[Laughter] >>Tim Hincks: What you're able to do is play
along with that game, and what they do on Twitter -- what our players of the game do
on Twitter and on Facebook, they share their scores, they boast about their scores, they're
able to have a leader board. So they're enjoying interacting with it whilst, by the way, enjoying
the show. >>Kirsty Wark: Yeah.
>>Tim Hincks: But more than that, we -- people apply to be on the show via Twitter and Facebook.
So we use social media to actually get people to play and be part of the game and it creates
a buzz around the show and a fan base, and it's one of the few shows that we make that
I actually go onto Twitter while it's on air because mostly it's full of all sorts of rather
wonderful abuse, but this one they embrace it and love it and we can show --
>>Kirsty Wark: We can, and let's do it now. >>Tim Hincks: This is a couple who ended up
on our show a few weeks back. It's a short clip which shows their progress. There will
be a few clips of them losing money on their way to their final question, where they have
a big moment as to whether they will win 200,000 pounds or not live on Channel 4.
>>Kirsty Wark: Let's watch it. >>> This is the million pound drop live.
>>> You're kidding! [Cheers and applause]
>>> Please, please, please, please, please. >>> For 200,000 pounds.
[Screaming] >>> You are either going home with 200,000
pounds or the unthinkable happens -- >>> My mom and my sister need to be --
>>> -- and you go home empty-handed. In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, which of
these characters speaks first? >>> Romeo.
>>> Romeo. >>> 45 seconds. 10 --
>>> I can't -- >>> -- 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
It was a guess. So for 200,000 pounds, have you beaten the million pound drop?
>>> I think it's Juliet. Oh, God. >>> Don't say that now!
[Screaming] >>Kirsty Wark: Gee, and as I watched that
at home, it was just riveting. >>Tim Hincks: I watch it instead of Newsnight.
[Laughter] >>Kirsty Wark: But looking at that, and now
imagining in your great big sandbox that you have at Endemol U.K., what you think you're
going to be doing next in terms of television, branding, online. How will things change?
In terms of the big ideas, what will they be and where will they be?
>>Tim Hincks: Yeah. So, you know, I think on one level, we want to do more Million Pound
-- you know, more shows like this. And when we say "more shows like this," we mean shows
that enable the audience to play along and use social media and other platforms to interact
with it. I think that means we've got to be on top
of our creative game. So on one level we've got to keep doing what
we're doing, which is creating the best ideas and the best formats we can.
I think for me where things might start to change a bit is that we might, as a company
-- and I think we're already doing this on a couple of projects -- start to reassess
what our attitude to risk is. The traditional broadcaster model, very simple. Take a show
in, they'll pay for it and put it out and see how you do.
What we might want to do is start taking more risk on our products, and in particular, there's
a couple of ideas we have where we'll go to broadcasters and say, "Look, we're both in
the same business together. Why don't we partner up and create something which has a TV window,
so it's important that that exists, but that actually exists online in a far more meaningful
way than things have done before." And via the broadcaster, we can market this and people
can interact with this show and it would be like, a sense, owning our own channel but
in a very different way now. I think that means a very different thing.
You're giving me that look that you've got to move on.
>>Kirsty Wark: There we go. Tim Hincks, megalomanic. >>Tim Hincks: U.K.