Michael Jackson (TV)
Encyclopedia
Michael Richard Jackson (born 11 February 1958) is a British
television producer
and executive. He is notable for being one of only three people to have been Controller of both BBC One
and BBC Two
, the main television channel
s of the British Broadcasting Corporation, and for being the first media studies
graduate to reach a senior level in the British media. He was also the Chief Executive of another major British television station, Channel 4
, between 1997 and 2001.
, Jackson was the son of Ernest Jackson, a baker
, and his wife Margaret. He was educated at The King's School
, at the time a direct-grant grammar school, and now an independent school
in Macclesfield
, Cheshire
and his sister, Hilary, later claimed in a newspaper feature that he was already focused on a media career by the age of twelve. Following school, Jackson studied at the Polytechnic of Central London (renamed the University of Westminster
in 1992), from which he graduated with a First Class Honours BA
in Media Studies
in 1979. The media studies degree at the Polytechnic of Central London had been launched by David Cardiff in 1969, when the institution was still known by its former title of Regent Street Polytechnic, and was the first such degree course ever to have been established in the United Kingdom.
Immediately after graduating, Jackson became the organiser of "The Channel Four Group", having written his final year dissertation at university on the prospect of a fourth national television channel in Britain. The Channel Four Group was a collective of television producers lobbying the British Government to establish a new independent television channel outside of the BBC
/ ITV
duopoly
, to act as a "publisher" of programmes produced by independent production companies rather than using the almost exclusively in-house production methods the existing channels then employed. This channel, named Channel 4
, was eventually launched in 1982, and Jackson was the producer of one of its first major documentary
series, The Sixties, screened that year.
The following year he joined the staff of the independent production company Beat Productions Ltd, where he continued to make programmes for Channel 4. The two most noted programmes he worked on for the channel during the 1980s were Open the Box, which looked at the way television programmes were both produced and viewed and the attitudes held towards them, and The Media Show, of which he was founding editor when it launched in 1987. The Media Show went on to become an acclaimed series, described by Waldemar Januszczak in The Guardian
newspaper in 1997 as "one of the defining television programmes of the 1980s... In Michael Jackson, its first producer, it gave us a media-genius."
Despite his success in the independent sector however, in 1988 Jackson was persuaded by Alan Yentob
, the then Controller of BBC Two, to join the staff of the BBC. Jackson came to be seen as something of a protégé
of Yentob's during his time at the corporation, both coming from a background in arts
and media programming, and Yentob immediately installed Jackson as the founding editor of the new late-night BBC Two arts magazine series The Late Show
.
, would be a success. In a feature for The Times
newspaper on television arts coverage, published two months prior to the show's launch, Brian Appleyard wrote that: "the real tension is building up around The Late Show and its young creator, Michael Jackson." Appleyard pointed out that: "the investment financial, intellectual and egotistical in the programme is enormous... Yentob is determined to put his own cultural stamp on BBC2 and Jackson has everything to prove." However, the programme went on to be a success, running for six years. Looking back at The Late Show and other television arts programming in a feature for The Guardian in 2003, David Herman felt that the programme represented the last great era of television arts coverage. "The Late Show cast its net wider in terms of formats... What drove it was the enthusiasm and passions of its presenters, producers and editors, and this built a certain eclecticism and unashamed highbrowness into its agenda... It could be argued that the real high point of intellectual life on British television was not the 1960s or the 1970s, but the decade between the beginning of Channel 4 and the end of The Late Show in 1995."
Jackson remained as editor of The Late Show for the next two years, until in 1991 he was promoted to become BBC television's Head of Music and Arts. At the age of thirty-three, he was the youngest Head of Department in the history of the BBC.
In 1993, at the age of thirty-five, he became the second youngest Channel Controller in the BBC's history when he was promoted to succeed Yentob, who had been promoted to Controller of BBC One, as Controller of BBC Two. Jackson's time at BBC Two was generally seen as a great success — he was described by The Guardian in 1996 as "one of the best controllers BBC2 has ever had." During his time in charge of the channel it increased its average audience share from 10% to 11%, and was the only channel during that period to increase its audience share in households which had cable
or satellite television
.
Jackson enjoyed particular success with drama at BBC Two, finally commissioning the production of Peter Flannery
's serial Our Friends in the North
(1996) in 1994 after the drama had spent a decade in development and been commissioned and then cancelled on two previous occasions. Its £7 million budget was a record for BBC Two, but the serial was a great success, garnering huge critical acclaim and many accolades at the British Academy Television Awards
(BAFTAs), Royal Television Society Awards and others. Other drama successes came with This Life
(1996–97) and the American
import The X-Files
(1994–96; its ratings success on BBC Two saw it transferred to BBC One).
Other successes Jackson oversaw at the channel included the documentary series The Death of Yugoslavia
(1995) and The House
(1996), the daytime television
series Ready Steady Cook
(1994–2010) and Esther
(1996–98) and the comedies The Day Today
(1994), Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge
(1994) and The Fast Show
(1994–2000). However, he also took the decision to cancel The Late Show, the series he himself had initiated, in 1995. "I think it simply boils down to Michael not wanting to spend that much money that late," was how one "insider" described the decision to The Sunday Times
newspaper. He also delayed the transmission of the second series of the sitcom Joking Apart
; this has been seen as ruining the momentum that the series needed to become established.
Jackson's next move came somewhat unexpectedly in the summer of 1996, when the Director-General of the BBC
, John Birt
, unveiled a series of major — and controversial — changes to the structure of the corporation. The administration of the BBC was to be split into two main divisions; BBC Broadcast, responsible for the commissioning of programmes and the running of the channels, and BBC Production, responsible for producing in-house programme content. Some of these changes were made very suddenly — Alan Yentob was informed that he was to be moved on from his post as Controller of BBC One, and allegedly given just forty-eight hours to decide whether he wanted to run BBC Broadcast as Director of Television or BBC Production as Director of Programmes.
Yentob chose the latter, which although technically a promotion was interpreted by some as him having effectively been sidelined. In his place, Jackson was promoted to a dual role as both Controller of BBC One and Director of Television, responsible overall for all BBC television broadcasting as well as the implementation of planned future services on the new digital television
platforms. The Guardian suggested, in reference to Jackson's replacement of Yentob at BBC One, that "in the end Yentob was eclipsed by his protege."
Jackson had little time to make a significant impact in his new senior role at BBC One, however. He did commission a new range of idents for the channel, keeping the traditional "globe" theme used since 1963, but now based around the globe in the form of a roaming hot air balloon
. But in May 1997, after less than a year in his new post and in what The Guardian described as "a hammer blow" to the BBC, Jackson was tempted away from the corporation to succeed Michael Grade
as the Chief Executive of Channel 4. He took up the post at the end of June.
in a £103 million deal, for the first time in history taking the coverage away from the BBC, which had broadcast television coverage of such matches since 1938. Channel 4's coverage of the sport went on to win a British Academy Television Award (BAFTA) for Best Sports Coverage in 2000.
The channel's comedy output enjoyed particular success under Jackson's aegis, with the sitcoms Spaced
(1999–2001) and Black Books
(2000–04), sketch show Smack the Pony
(1999–2003) and the more generally comic Da Ali G Show
(2000) and So Graham Norton
(1998–2002) all proving to be popular successes. However, it was the launch of the British version of Big Brother (2000–present) that proved to be his longest-lasting legacy, with the reality television
series becoming an immediate popular culture
event and proving to be a returning mainstay of the Channel 4 schedules.
Jackson is often cited as the reason for the channels once flagship soap opera Brookside
being removed from primetime in 2002 before being finally axed in 2003 after 21 years, so much so that the main antagonist in the soaps final 6 months was named Jack Michaelson, a drug dealer who was eventually hanged from a bedroom window in the final episode.
In drama, Jackson was at times criticised for relying more on US imports than home-grown material, with Ally McBeal
, The West Wing and Sex and the City
all arriving at the broadcaster during his time there. In 1999 he also spent £100 million reacquiring the rights to the US drama series ER
— in a joint deal which also included the sitcom Friends
— which Channel 4 had lost first-run rights for to rival broadcaster Sky1 in 1996. Home-grown drama successes were rarer, as he himself admitted in a 2001 interview with The Guardian. He did, however, point to notable British drama successes with Queer as Folk
(1999–2000) and Teachers
(2001–04), describing the former as one of the "signature shows" of his time at the channel.
The high spending on imported shows, however, contributed to a financial shortfall at Channel 4 that saw the channel negotiating a £55 million overdraft
in his final year in charge, and by October that year having already used up most of a £49 million reserve it had set aside for the year. Jackson also later admitted that he had made a mistake in setting up the channel's independent film production company FilmFour Limited in 1998. Channel 4 had participated in feature film
production ever since its launch in 1982, backing successful films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral
(1994), but FilmFour Limited was an attempt to set up a full-blown rival to Hollywood studio productions. The studio saw several of its big-budget films flop, and was eventually closed down in 2002, with the channel going back to its original more modest film backing strategy. More successful spin-offs from the main channel under Jackson's control were the establishment of the offshoot digital television
channels E4
and Film4
, which continued to grow successfully.
In 2001 Channel 4 won eleven BAFTAs, but on 23 July that year Jackson shocked many in the British television industry when he announced that he had decided to leave the channel to work for Barry Diller
's USA Entertainment company. Jackson had first been approached by Diller in 2000, but had declined his initial offer as he had wanted to remain at Channel 4 to oversee the launch of the E4 digital channel. The reaction to Jackson's departure was similar to that which had greeted his equally unexpected move from BBC One four years previously. One producer for Channel 4 told The Independent
the week that his decision was announced that: "We are devastated."
networks USA Network
and Sci-Fi
, as well as the feature film production company USA Films
. After various mergers, his job became Chairman of Universal Television
, and in this role he commissioned the successful drama series Monk
(2002–present) and The Dead Zone
(2002–07). In January 2006, he was made President of Programming of Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp
internet
business, responsible for producing multi-media content for the company's various website
s.
Since his move to the USA, Jackson has been linked at various times with a return to a senior media position in the United Kingdom. In September 2002, only one year after he had left the country, the Independent on Sunday reported that Jackson had put himself forward as a candidate to run the ITV network, but nothing eventually came of this. Similarly, there was media speculation that he would at least apply for the vacancy of Director-General of the BBC following Greg Dyke
's resignation in early 2004, again with no result. In 2006, The Observer
reported that ITV wanted Jackson to replace their outgoing Chief Executive Charles Allen, but this role eventually went to Michael Grade, Jackson's predecessor at Channel 4; as a result, Grade resigned from his post as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the BBC
in a similarly surprising move to Jackson's departure from the corporation in 1997.
He is also on the board of Anglo-American company Nutopia (Production Company)
, founded in 2008 by Jane Root
and Laura Franses.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
television producer
Television producer
The primary role of a television Producer is to allow all aspects of video production, ranging from show idea development and cast hiring to shoot supervision and fact-checking...
and executive. He is notable for being one of only three people to have been Controller of both BBC One
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
and BBC Two
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
, the main television channel
Television channel
A television channel is a physical or virtual channel over which a television station or television network is distributed. For example, in North America, "channel 2" refers to the broadcast or cable band of 54 to 60 MHz, with carrier frequencies of 55.25 MHz for NTSC analog video and...
s of the British Broadcasting Corporation, and for being the first media studies
Media studies
Media studies is an academic discipline and field of study that deals with the content, history and effects of various media; in particular, the 'mass media'. Media studies may draw on traditions from both the social sciences and the humanities, but mostly from its core disciplines of mass...
graduate to reach a senior level in the British media. He was also the Chief Executive of another major British television station, Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
, between 1997 and 2001.
Early life and career
Born in MacclesfieldMacclesfield
Macclesfield is a market town within the unitary authority of Cheshire East, the county palatine of Chester, also known as the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. The population of the Macclesfield urban sub-area at the time of the 2001 census was 50,688...
, Jackson was the son of Ernest Jackson, a baker
Baker
A baker is someone who bakes and sells bread, Cakes and similar foods may also be produced, as the traditional boundaries between what is produced by a baker as opposed to a pastry chef have blurred in recent decades...
, and his wife Margaret. He was educated at The King's School
The King's School, Macclesfield
-Notable former pupils:* Peter Moores, ex-England Cricket Coach* Rev. Thomas Taylor, priest and historian* Alan Beith, politician* Jon Craig, Chief Political Correspondent of Sky News...
, at the time a direct-grant grammar school, and now an independent school
Independent school
An independent school is a school that is independent in its finances and governance; it is not dependent upon national or local government for financing its operations, nor reliant on taxpayer contributions, and is instead funded by a combination of tuition charges, gifts, and in some cases the...
in Macclesfield
Macclesfield
Macclesfield is a market town within the unitary authority of Cheshire East, the county palatine of Chester, also known as the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. The population of the Macclesfield urban sub-area at the time of the 2001 census was 50,688...
, Cheshire
Cheshire
Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...
and his sister, Hilary, later claimed in a newspaper feature that he was already focused on a media career by the age of twelve. Following school, Jackson studied at the Polytechnic of Central London (renamed the University of Westminster
University of Westminster
The University of Westminster is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom. Its origins go back to the foundation of the Royal Polytechnic Institution in 1838, and it was awarded university status in 1992.The university's headquarters and original campus are based on Regent...
in 1992), from which he graduated with a First Class Honours BA
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in Media Studies
Media studies
Media studies is an academic discipline and field of study that deals with the content, history and effects of various media; in particular, the 'mass media'. Media studies may draw on traditions from both the social sciences and the humanities, but mostly from its core disciplines of mass...
in 1979. The media studies degree at the Polytechnic of Central London had been launched by David Cardiff in 1969, when the institution was still known by its former title of Regent Street Polytechnic, and was the first such degree course ever to have been established in the United Kingdom.
Immediately after graduating, Jackson became the organiser of "The Channel Four Group", having written his final year dissertation at university on the prospect of a fourth national television channel in Britain. The Channel Four Group was a collective of television producers lobbying the British Government to establish a new independent television channel outside of the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
/ ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
duopoly
Duopoly
A true duopoly is a specific type of oligopoly where only two producers exist in one market. In reality, this definition is generally used where only two firms have dominant control over a market...
, to act as a "publisher" of programmes produced by independent production companies rather than using the almost exclusively in-house production methods the existing channels then employed. This channel, named Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
, was eventually launched in 1982, and Jackson was the producer of one of its first major documentary
Television documentary
Documentary television is a genre of television programming that broadcasts documentaries.* Documentary television series, a television series which is made up of documentary episodes....
series, The Sixties, screened that year.
The following year he joined the staff of the independent production company Beat Productions Ltd, where he continued to make programmes for Channel 4. The two most noted programmes he worked on for the channel during the 1980s were Open the Box, which looked at the way television programmes were both produced and viewed and the attitudes held towards them, and The Media Show, of which he was founding editor when it launched in 1987. The Media Show went on to become an acclaimed series, described by Waldemar Januszczak in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
newspaper in 1997 as "one of the defining television programmes of the 1980s... In Michael Jackson, its first producer, it gave us a media-genius."
Despite his success in the independent sector however, in 1988 Jackson was persuaded by Alan Yentob
Alan Yentob
Alan Yentob is a British television executive and presenter who has worked throughout his career at the BBC.-Early life:...
, the then Controller of BBC Two, to join the staff of the BBC. Jackson came to be seen as something of a protégé
Mentorship
Mentorship refers to a personal developmental relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps a less experienced or less knowledgeable person....
of Yentob's during his time at the corporation, both coming from a background in arts
The arts
The arts are a vast subdivision of culture, composed of many creative endeavors and disciplines. It is a broader term than "art", which as a description of a field usually means only the visual arts. The arts encompass visual arts, literary arts and the performing arts – music, theatre, dance and...
and media programming, and Yentob immediately installed Jackson as the founding editor of the new late-night BBC Two arts magazine series The Late Show
The Late Show (BBC2 TV series)
The Late Show is a British television arts magazine programme that was broadcast on BBC Two weeknights at 11.15pm — directly after Newsnight — often referred to as the "graveyard slot" in terms of television scheduling....
.
The BBC
Prior to the launch of The Late Show in January 1989, there was some scepticism as to whether or not the programme, running four nights per week on BBC Two in a late night slot after NewsnightNewsnight
Newsnight is a BBC Television current affairs programme noted for its in-depth analysis and often robust cross-examination of senior politicians. Jeremy Paxman has been its main presenter for over two decades....
, would be a success. In a feature for The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
newspaper on television arts coverage, published two months prior to the show's launch, Brian Appleyard wrote that: "the real tension is building up around The Late Show and its young creator, Michael Jackson." Appleyard pointed out that: "the investment financial, intellectual and egotistical in the programme is enormous... Yentob is determined to put his own cultural stamp on BBC2 and Jackson has everything to prove." However, the programme went on to be a success, running for six years. Looking back at The Late Show and other television arts programming in a feature for The Guardian in 2003, David Herman felt that the programme represented the last great era of television arts coverage. "The Late Show cast its net wider in terms of formats... What drove it was the enthusiasm and passions of its presenters, producers and editors, and this built a certain eclecticism and unashamed highbrowness into its agenda... It could be argued that the real high point of intellectual life on British television was not the 1960s or the 1970s, but the decade between the beginning of Channel 4 and the end of The Late Show in 1995."
Jackson remained as editor of The Late Show for the next two years, until in 1991 he was promoted to become BBC television's Head of Music and Arts. At the age of thirty-three, he was the youngest Head of Department in the history of the BBC.
In 1993, at the age of thirty-five, he became the second youngest Channel Controller in the BBC's history when he was promoted to succeed Yentob, who had been promoted to Controller of BBC One, as Controller of BBC Two. Jackson's time at BBC Two was generally seen as a great success — he was described by The Guardian in 1996 as "one of the best controllers BBC2 has ever had." During his time in charge of the channel it increased its average audience share from 10% to 11%, and was the only channel during that period to increase its audience share in households which had cable
Cable television
Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...
or satellite television
Satellite television
Satellite television is television programming delivered by the means of communications satellite and received by an outdoor antenna, usually a parabolic mirror generally referred to as a satellite dish, and as far as household usage is concerned, a satellite receiver either in the form of an...
.
Jackson enjoyed particular success with drama at BBC Two, finally commissioning the production of Peter Flannery
Peter Flannery
Peter Flannery is a British playwright and screenwriter. He was educated at Bath Spa University and is best known for his work while a resident playwright at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the late 1970s and early 1980s...
's serial Our Friends in the North
Our Friends in the North
Our Friends in the North is a British television drama serial, produced by the BBC and originally broadcast in nine episodes on BBC Two in early 1996...
(1996) in 1994 after the drama had spent a decade in development and been commissioned and then cancelled on two previous occasions. Its £7 million budget was a record for BBC Two, but the serial was a great success, garnering huge critical acclaim and many accolades at the British Academy Television Awards
British Academy Television Awards
The British Academy Television Awards are presented in an annual award show hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts . They have been awarded annually since 1954, and are analogous to the Emmy Awards in the United States.-Background:...
(BAFTAs), Royal Television Society Awards and others. Other drama successes came with This Life
This Life
This Life is a BBC television drama that was produced by World Productions and screened on BBC Two. Two series were broadcast in 1996 and 1997 and a reunion special in 2007....
(1996–97) and the American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
import The X-Files
The X-Files
The X-Files is an American science fiction television series and a part of The X-Files franchise, created by screenwriter Chris Carter. The program originally aired from to . The show was a hit for the Fox network, and its characters and slogans became popular culture touchstones in the 1990s...
(1994–96; its ratings success on BBC Two saw it transferred to BBC One).
Other successes Jackson oversaw at the channel included the documentary series The Death of Yugoslavia
The Death of Yugoslavia
The Death of Yugoslavia is a BBC documentary series first broadcast in 1995, and is also the name of a book written by Allan Little and Laura Silber that accompanies the series. It covers the collapse of the former Yugoslavia...
(1995) and The House
The House
The House might refer to:* The House , a political radio programme in Canada.* The House , a 1996 BBC series about the Royal Opera House, London...
(1996), the daytime television
Daytime television
Daytime television is the general term for television shows produced that are intended to air during the daytime hours on weekdays. This article is about American daytime television, for information about international daytime television see Daytime television....
series Ready Steady Cook
Ready Steady Cook
Ready Steady Cook was a BBC daytime TV cooking programme it first debuted on 24 October 1994 and the last edition was broadcast on the 2 February 2010. The programme was hosted by Fern Britton from 1994 until 2000 when celebrity chef Ainsley Harriott became the new host...
(1994–2010) and Esther
Esther Rantzen
Esther Louise Rantzen CBE is an English journalist and television presenter who is best known for presenting the BBC television series That's Life!, and for her work in various charitable causes. She is founder of the child protection charity ChildLine, and also advocates the work of the Burma...
(1996–98) and the comedies The Day Today
The Day Today
The Day Today is a surreal British parody of television current affairs programmes, broadcast in 1994, and created by the comedians Armando Iannucci and Chris Morris. It is an adaptation of the radio programme On the Hour, which was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 between 1991 and 1992...
(1994), Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge
Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge (TV series)
Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge is a BBC Television series of six episodes , and a Christmas special in 1995...
(1994) and The Fast Show
The Fast Show
The Fast Show, known as Brilliant in the US, was a BBC comedy sketch show programme that ran for three series from 1994 to 1997 with a special Last Fast Show Ever in 2000. The show's central performers were Paul Whitehouse, Charlie Higson, Simon Day, Mark Williams, John Thomson, Arabella Weir and...
(1994–2000). However, he also took the decision to cancel The Late Show, the series he himself had initiated, in 1995. "I think it simply boils down to Michael not wanting to spend that much money that late," was how one "insider" described the decision to The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times (UK)
The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...
newspaper. He also delayed the transmission of the second series of the sitcom Joking Apart
Joking Apart
Joking Apart is a BBC television sitcom written by Steven Moffat about the rise and fall of a relationship. It juxtaposes a couple, Mark and Becky , who fall in love and marry, before getting separated and finally divorced...
; this has been seen as ruining the momentum that the series needed to become established.
Jackson's next move came somewhat unexpectedly in the summer of 1996, when the Director-General of the BBC
Director-General of the BBC
The Director-General of the British Broadcasting Corporation is chief executive and editor-in-chief of the BBC.The position was formerly appointed by the Board of Governors of the BBC and is now appointed by the BBC Trust....
, John Birt
John Birt, Baron Birt
John Birt, Baron Birt is a former Director-General of the BBC who was in the post from 1992 to 2000.After a successful career in commercial television, first at Granada and then at LWT, Birt was brought in as deputy director-general of the BBC in 1987 for his current affairs expertise...
, unveiled a series of major — and controversial — changes to the structure of the corporation. The administration of the BBC was to be split into two main divisions; BBC Broadcast, responsible for the commissioning of programmes and the running of the channels, and BBC Production, responsible for producing in-house programme content. Some of these changes were made very suddenly — Alan Yentob was informed that he was to be moved on from his post as Controller of BBC One, and allegedly given just forty-eight hours to decide whether he wanted to run BBC Broadcast as Director of Television or BBC Production as Director of Programmes.
Yentob chose the latter, which although technically a promotion was interpreted by some as him having effectively been sidelined. In his place, Jackson was promoted to a dual role as both Controller of BBC One and Director of Television, responsible overall for all BBC television broadcasting as well as the implementation of planned future services on the new digital television
Digital television
Digital television is the transmission of audio and video by digital signals, in contrast to the analog signals used by analog TV...
platforms. The Guardian suggested, in reference to Jackson's replacement of Yentob at BBC One, that "in the end Yentob was eclipsed by his protege."
Jackson had little time to make a significant impact in his new senior role at BBC One, however. He did commission a new range of idents for the channel, keeping the traditional "globe" theme used since 1963, but now based around the globe in the form of a roaming hot air balloon
Hot air balloon
The hot air balloon is the oldest successful human-carrying flight technology. It is in a class of aircraft known as balloon aircraft. On November 21, 1783, in Paris, France, the first untethered manned flight was made by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes in a hot air...
. But in May 1997, after less than a year in his new post and in what The Guardian described as "a hammer blow" to the BBC, Jackson was tempted away from the corporation to succeed Michael Grade
Michael Grade
Michael Ian Grade, Baron Grade of Yarmouth CBE is a British broadcast executive and businessman. He was BBC chairman from 2004 to 2006 and executive chairman of ITV plc from 2007 to 2009.-Early life:...
as the Chief Executive of Channel 4. He took up the post at the end of June.
Channel 4
At Channel 4, Jackson enjoyed several notable successes. In 1998 the channel won the rights to broadcast the England cricket team's home Test matchesTest cricket
Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...
in a £103 million deal, for the first time in history taking the coverage away from the BBC, which had broadcast television coverage of such matches since 1938. Channel 4's coverage of the sport went on to win a British Academy Television Award (BAFTA) for Best Sports Coverage in 2000.
The channel's comedy output enjoyed particular success under Jackson's aegis, with the sitcoms Spaced
Spaced
Spaced is a British television sitcom written by and starring Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson, and directed by Edgar Wright. It is noted for its rapid-fire editing, frequent pop culture references and jokes, eclectic music, and occasional displays of surrealism and non-sequitur humour...
(1999–2001) and Black Books
Black Books
Black Books is a British sitcom television series created by Dylan Moran and Graham Linehan and produced by Nira Park, first broadcast on Channel 4 from 2000 to 2004...
(2000–04), sketch show Smack the Pony
Smack the Pony
Smack the Pony is a British sketch comedy show that ran from 1999 until 2003 on Channel 4. Its title was intended to sound like a euphemism for female masturbation; the working title was Spot the Pony. The main performers and writers on the show were Fiona Allen, Doon Mackichan and Sally Phillips...
(1999–2003) and the more generally comic Da Ali G Show
Da Ali G Show
Da Ali G Show is the name of two related satirical TV series created by and starring British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen and featuring the character Ali G....
(2000) and So Graham Norton
So Graham Norton
So Graham Norton is a British television programme, hosted by Irish personality Graham Norton. It ran from 3 July 1998 to 1 March 2002.-Theme:...
(1998–2002) all proving to be popular successes. However, it was the launch of the British version of Big Brother (2000–present) that proved to be his longest-lasting legacy, with the reality television
Reality television
Reality television is a genre of television programming that presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors, sometimes in a contest or other situation where a prize is awarded...
series becoming an immediate popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
event and proving to be a returning mainstay of the Channel 4 schedules.
Jackson is often cited as the reason for the channels once flagship soap opera Brookside
Brookside
Brookside is a defunct British soap opera set in Liverpool, England. The series began on the launch night of Channel 4 on 2 November 1982, and ran for 21 years until 4 November 2003...
being removed from primetime in 2002 before being finally axed in 2003 after 21 years, so much so that the main antagonist in the soaps final 6 months was named Jack Michaelson, a drug dealer who was eventually hanged from a bedroom window in the final episode.
In drama, Jackson was at times criticised for relying more on US imports than home-grown material, with Ally McBeal
Ally McBeal
Ally McBeal is an American legal comedy-drama series which aired on the Fox network from 1997 to 2002. The series was created by David E. Kelley, who also served as the executive producer, along with Bill D'Elia...
, The West Wing and Sex and the City
Sex and the City
Sex and the City is an American television comedy-drama series created by Darren Star and produced by HBO. Broadcast from 1998 until 2004, the original run of the show had a total of ninety-four episodes...
all arriving at the broadcaster during his time there. In 1999 he also spent £100 million reacquiring the rights to the US drama series ER
ER (TV series)
ER is an American medical drama television series created by novelist Michael Crichton that aired on NBC from September 19, 1994 to April 2, 2009. It was produced by Constant c Productions and Amblin Entertainment, in association with Warner Bros. Television...
— in a joint deal which also included the sitcom Friends
Friends
Friends is an American sitcom created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, which aired on NBC from September 22, 1994 to May 6, 2004. The series revolves around a group of friends in Manhattan. The series was produced by Bright/Kauffman/Crane Productions, in association with Warner Bros. Television...
— which Channel 4 had lost first-run rights for to rival broadcaster Sky1 in 1996. Home-grown drama successes were rarer, as he himself admitted in a 2001 interview with The Guardian. He did, however, point to notable British drama successes with Queer as Folk
Queer as Folk (UK TV series)
Queer as Folk is a 1999 British television series that chronicles the lives of three gay men living in Manchester's gay village around Canal Street. Both Queer as Folk and Queer as Folk 2 were written by Russell T Davies...
(1999–2000) and Teachers
Teachers (UK TV series)
Teachers is a British television sitcom, originally shown on Channel 4. The series follows a group of secondary school teachers in their daily lives....
(2001–04), describing the former as one of the "signature shows" of his time at the channel.
The high spending on imported shows, however, contributed to a financial shortfall at Channel 4 that saw the channel negotiating a £55 million overdraft
Overdraft
An overdraft occurs when money is withdrawn from a bank account and the available balance goes below zero. In this situation the account is said to be "overdrawn". If there is a prior agreement with the account provider for an overdraft, and the amount overdrawn is within the authorized overdraft...
in his final year in charge, and by October that year having already used up most of a £49 million reserve it had set aside for the year. Jackson also later admitted that he had made a mistake in setting up the channel's independent film production company FilmFour Limited in 1998. Channel 4 had participated in feature film
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...
production ever since its launch in 1982, backing successful films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Four Weddings and a Funeral is a 1994 British comedy film directed by Mike Newell. It was the first of several films by screenwriter Richard Curtis to feature Hugh Grant...
(1994), but FilmFour Limited was an attempt to set up a full-blown rival to Hollywood studio productions. The studio saw several of its big-budget films flop, and was eventually closed down in 2002, with the channel going back to its original more modest film backing strategy. More successful spin-offs from the main channel under Jackson's control were the establishment of the offshoot digital television
Digital television
Digital television is the transmission of audio and video by digital signals, in contrast to the analog signals used by analog TV...
channels E4
E4 (TV)
E4 is a channel on British digital television, launched as a pay-TV companion to Channel 4 on 18 January 2001. The "E" stands for entertainment, and the channel is mainly aimed at the lucrative 15–35 age group...
and Film4
Film4
Film4 is a free digital television channel available in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, owned and operated by Channel 4, that screens films.-Programming:...
, which continued to grow successfully.
In 2001 Channel 4 won eleven BAFTAs, but on 23 July that year Jackson shocked many in the British television industry when he announced that he had decided to leave the channel to work for Barry Diller
Barry Diller
Barry Charles Diller is the Chairman and Senior Executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp and the media executive responsible for the creation of Fox Broadcasting Company and USA Broadcasting.-Early life:...
's USA Entertainment company. Jackson had first been approached by Diller in 2000, but had declined his initial offer as he had wanted to remain at Channel 4 to oversee the launch of the E4 digital channel. The reaction to Jackson's departure was similar to that which had greeted his equally unexpected move from BBC One four years previously. One producer for Channel 4 told The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
the week that his decision was announced that: "We are devastated."
America
Jackson's initial role in the US was as President and Chief Executive of USA Entertainment. In this role he was responsible for overseeing the cable televisionCable television
Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...
networks USA Network
USA Network
USA Network is an American cable television channel launched in 1971. Once a minor player in basic cable, the network has steadily gained popularity because of breakout hits like Monk, Psych, Burn Notice, Royal Pains, Covert Affairs, White Collar, Monday Night RAW, Suits, and reruns of the various...
and Sci-Fi
Syfy
Syfy , formerly known as the Sci-Fi Channel and SCI FI, is an American cable television channel featuring science fiction, supernatural, fantasy, reality, paranormal, wrestling, and horror programming. Launched on September 24, 1992, it is part of the entertainment conglomerate NBCUniversal, a...
, as well as the feature film production company USA Films
Focus Features
Focus Features is the art house films division of NBC Universal's Universal Pictures, and acts as both a producer and distributor for its own films and a distributor for foreign films....
. After various mergers, his job became Chairman of Universal Television
Universal Television
Universal Television is the television production arm of the NBCUniversal Television Group, and by extension, the NBC television network...
, and in this role he commissioned the successful drama series Monk
Monk (TV series)
Monk is an American comedy-drama detective mystery television series created by Andy Breckman and starring Tony Shalhoub as the titular character, Adrian Monk. It originally ran from 2002 to 2009 and is primarily a mystery series, although it has dark and comic touches.The series debuted on July...
(2002–present) and The Dead Zone
The Dead Zone (TV series)
The Dead Zone, aka Stephen King's Dead Zone is an American-Canadian science fiction/suspense series starring Anthony Michael Hall as Johnny Smith, who discovers he has developed psychic abilities after a coma...
(2002–07). In January 2006, he was made President of Programming of Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp
IAC/InterActiveCorp
InterActiveCorp is an American internet company with over 50 brands across 40 countries headquartered in New York City...
internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
business, responsible for producing multi-media content for the company's various website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
s.
Since his move to the USA, Jackson has been linked at various times with a return to a senior media position in the United Kingdom. In September 2002, only one year after he had left the country, the Independent on Sunday reported that Jackson had put himself forward as a candidate to run the ITV network, but nothing eventually came of this. Similarly, there was media speculation that he would at least apply for the vacancy of Director-General of the BBC following Greg Dyke
Greg Dyke
Gregory "Greg" Dyke is a British media executive, journalist and broadcaster. Since the 1960s, Dyke has a long career in the UK in print and then broadcast journalism. He is credited with introducing 'tabloid' television to British broadcasting, and reviving the ratings of TV-am...
's resignation in early 2004, again with no result. In 2006, The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
reported that ITV wanted Jackson to replace their outgoing Chief Executive Charles Allen, but this role eventually went to Michael Grade, Jackson's predecessor at Channel 4; as a result, Grade resigned from his post as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the BBC
Board of Governors of the BBC
The Board of Governors of the BBC was the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation. It consisted of twelve people who together regulated the BBC and represented the interests of the public. It existed from 1927 until it was replaced by the BBC Trust on 1 January 2007.The governors...
in a similarly surprising move to Jackson's departure from the corporation in 1997.
He is also on the board of Anglo-American company Nutopia (Production Company)
Nutopia (production company)
Nutopia is a leading independent production company established in 2008 with offices in London and Washington DC. It specialises in making international specialist fact-based documentary television programmes and has created a pioneering factual television format - the mega-doc...
, founded in 2008 by Jane Root
Jane Root
Jane Root is a creative executive in the media industry, who has run major television networks on both sides of the Atlantic...
and Laura Franses.