News

« Headlines

R&J heads for UKTV

17.04.08 Tom Tivnan

Chat show hosts Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan are to move from Channel 4 to digital broadcaster UKTV for a new daily show, which will continue their book club strand.

The move marks the end of Richard and Judy’s relationship with Channel 4, where the R&J show averaged 1.9 million viewers this year. The UKTV series will consist of an hour-long prime-time entertainment show, airing five days a week from this autumn. It will retain the Richard & Judy Book Club, as well as celebrity interview slots.

The new series will air on a new-look channel, to be announced in the summer, and place the coupl "at the heart of UKTV's Pay TV entertainment portfolio". 

Plans have yet to be finalised, but UKTV says it will “definitely” have a book club special around Christmas 2008, and aims to air further book show specials in 2009. Amanda and Simon Ross of Cactus TV will be the new show’s executive producers.

UKTV operates 17 broadcast streams. It claims to attract 33 million viewers a month, with channels including “lads’ ” station Dave and UKTV Gold. Its record show had 750,000 viewers.

Media tom tivnan Richard & Judy Home Cactus TV

Add comment

By posting on this website you agree to the Bookseller Comments Policy. Comments go direct to live, please be relevant, brief and definitely not abusive. Report any "unsuitable" comments by clicking the links.

Name

Comment

Email

Comments on this article

By BSEL014862

How big is there present audience? Presumably it will be quite a drop in coverage A Freeviewer.

17 Apr 08 15:25

Unsuitable?

By Philip

According to The Independent, R&J's show on Channel 4 regulary pulled in over 2 million viewers, but they can expect less than 400,000 on a UKTV channel scheduled for a summer 2008 launch. The impact on book sales could be huge. Titles that made their 2007 club were worth £26.8m to the market last year. If the reduction in viewers equates to a reduction in sales (not to mention that retailers, surely, are unlikely to push R&J as hard next year), you could be talking about a loss of around £21m to the market alone by this UKTV move. Here's hoping all the bookstores across the UK factor R&J reductions and no more Harry Potter into their budgets in 2009. What the market could really do with is a new Dan Brown...

17 Apr 08 15:36

Unsuitable?

By Sylvia Murphy

Three cheers for Richard and Judy! They bring hope to us all who labour to write books. To those who may ask (and they do) whether there are enough quality novels around to fill their shows, may I suggest that there are not enough quality shows aroound to satisfy the reading public. On whatever Channel, please keep up the good work of bringing reader and writer together

17 Apr 08 15:53

Unsuitable?

By im a tree

Much will depend on how both the publishers and retailers present the books in their new slot - if they are downgraded because of the reduced audience then the drop off in sales will be huge - but I think the brand is strong enough without the TV audience to still sustain very big sales indeed, as long as the retailers give space and branding to R&J in-store.

18 Apr 08 08:22

Unsuitable?

By David R N Livesley - Woodstock Vermont

So how many publishing house marketing departments are quivering as the 21st century marketing tool for the mass market is under threat? I congratulate Richard & Judy and the production company behind it for doing such an amazing job on main stream TV for so long and also at getting to readers. What saddens me is that despite HUGE budgets the large corporate publishing houses with numerous divisional directors, who I know have massive expense account size salaries, were and continue to be so ineffective at spending their shareholders dosh! Richard & Judy revitalised the Nibbies along with chocolate and the Daily Mail...and the consumer in Tesco/Asda or W H Smug lapped it up. Just goes to show that often publishers and retailers with the 'let's charge the publisher to get into the top 20 slot' marketing initiative, can kill a good book. Hey ho onwards and upwards for Amazon.....

20 Apr 08 03:32

Unsuitable?

See Also