“Black Doves” and “Kaos” producer Jane Featherstone has admitted she will not be “assured concerning the sustainability” of the high-end TV manufacturing sector within the U.Okay.

Featherstone, who’s the COO of transatlantic prod-co Sister, was talking as a witness into the U.Okay. parliamentary inquiry into the sector. Among the many considerations she highlighted for U.Okay. manufacturing had been growing prices and budgets, modifications in viewing habits and the way in which wherein expertise has turned the business on its head.

“We’re now at a tipping level,” Featherstone informed the Tradition, Media and Sport committee. “Prices under the road have gone up round 40% and under the road is all people. That’s the manufacturing prices. In order that doesn’t embrace solid, writers, producers; and people prices are referred to as above the road. They’ve gone up much more, in all probability 50 to 60%. So we’re at a spot now the place budgets have grow to be so excessive that that’s priced the general public service broadcasters just about out of the market.”

The impression meant that whereas previously getting a inexperienced gentle for a venture was a trigger for celebration, now it’s a trigger for concern, with the primary query producers asking themselves being “How are we going to fund it?” Featherstone revealed. “As a result of a inexperienced gentle will not be a inexperienced gentle. It’s ‘Right here’s 30% of the price range.’”

The business veteran revealed that presently the BBC have “a a number of variety of exhibits which, via completely no fault of their very own, they’ll’t fund.”

At an business confab final December, the BBC’s director of drama Lindsay Salt stated the identical. “We want co-production on the BBC,” Salt stated. “We are able to’t afford to completely fund exhibits.”

Making issues trickier nonetheless, Featherstone informed the committee, is that uniquely British content material doesn’t promote nicely internationally. “British content material could be very onerous now to promote overseas in the way in which that it used to,” she stated. “One thing like ‘Mr. Bates,’ for instance … didn’t promote to many international locations in any respect.” She clarified that there was a distinction between British content material and world content material made within the U.Okay.

Featherstone’s proposed answer is to reform the present high-end TV tax incentive to look extra just like the 40% indie movie tax incentive, which might apply to “particularly public service broadcasting and nations and areas out of London.”

Different business figures who’ve given proof within the inquiry embrace “Sluggish Horses” director James Hawes, “Physician Who” producer Jane Tranter and “High Boy” director Myriam Raja.