In a TV studio on the banks of the Thames in London, a crew of comedians attempt — and just about absolutely failing — to get enjoyable out of a gameshow viewers.
It feels significantly unsettling at first. Studio audiences aren’t typically primarily essentially the most comically discerning. Nonetheless proper right here, that’s all the degree. Each time an viewers member rather a lot as sniggers or sneezes, money is docked from a prize pot of £250,000 ($330,000), the slightest noise costing them as a lot as £10,000 ($13,000) each time. Sadly for them, all 75 are on digicam and mic’d up, with a crew of stern-looking officers on the aspect monitoring fluctuating amount ranges and capable of press a buzzer.
“Silence is Golden” — as a result of it’s known as — launches on UKTV on May 5. In a single factor of a rarity, the format has already been provided to 4 completely different worldwide areas all through Europe and Latin America sooner than it’s even aired a single episode.
The current marks the first out of the gate for Positive Positive Media, the indie manufacturing agency launched in 2023 that, and never utilizing a second of televised content material materials to its establish, managed to attract a formidable — and eclectic — array of consumers. Amongst them are Elisabeth Murdoch’s ingenious powerhouse Sister (which produced the likes of “Black Doves” and “Chernobyl”) and French unscripted TV massive Satisfaction. Then there’s former “Associates” star Courtney Cox, Snow Patrol musician Johnny McDaid and pop genius and frequent Ariana Grande collaborator Savan Kotecha (an Oscar nominee for “Eurovision Music Contest: The Story of Fireside Saga” music “Husavik”).
“Silence is Golden” could be the brainchild of Positive Positive founder Richard Bacon, who simply recently returned to London to spearhead his agency after a 9-year spell in LA .
As a result of the Brit — best recognized inside the U.Okay. as a TV and radio host for the right part of 20 years starting inside the late 90s — enthusiastically explains from the Positive Positive workplaces inside the well-heeled neighbourhood of Primrose Hill, the concept for the current acquired right here to him one morning.
“I wakened with this image in my head of [Brit comedian and TV host] Jimmy Carr standing in entrance a studio viewers who weren’t allowed to make any noise — within the occasion that they did they started dropping money,” he says whereas eyeing up a bowl of croissants. “And I merely thought: that’s a format. So then I spent three hours writing it.”
Bacon, as he freely admits, lives and breathes ideas. “They make me happy,” the 49-year-old says with a beaming smile, noting that his recently-diagnosed “sturdy strand” of ADHD permits him to get pleasure from “hyper-focusing” on every. “I’ll be occupied with ideas and refining ideas at 9pm on Saturday night or on Christmas Day and I’ll be waking up at 4am and inserting notes on my cellphone.”
It’s Bacon’s penchant for ideas — and by no means merely these involving an awkwardly silent studio — that his consumers (which had been, for primarily essentially the most half, mates sooner than they turned enterprise companions) have all bought into.
He’s a “uniquely gifted ingenious” with an “extraordinary capability to generate genuine, scalable ideas that resonate globally,” says Murdoch (who herself prepare “Masterchef” producer Shine sooner than launching Sister with Jane Featherstone). Satisfaction founder Arther Essebeg (who, like Bacon, started his career on native radio) merely notes that, “Richard truly does suppose in one other approach.”
Bacon’s ideas are on the beating coronary coronary heart of Positive Positive, which has itself blossomed from an idea proper right into a bustling ingenious outfit the place, he proudly asserts, there’s “fairly a bit taking place abruptly.”
Actually, he’s speaking in entrance of a wall on which a neatly displayed grid of A4 sheets perform fast blurbs for practically 30 concepts spanning experience, quiz, actuality, relationship and cooking reveals, plus dwell events. Most are lined in vibrant Publish-It notes on which updates have been scribbled.
Among the many concepts are just a few phrases with a screen-grabbed image from a film — a unfastened idea that most probably needs some foremost padding out, nevertheless others are fully-fledged duties which is likely to be transferring forward at tempo. Three go into pilot this summer season, along with a quiz current, a critical experience current being developed for a U.S. group and an journey actuality assortment “on a Survivor-type scale, nevertheless with absurdity in it,” for a streamer. Bacon says one different experience current and one different actuality current have merely gone into funded development with streamers.
A sizeable number of the A4 sheets level out the names of very recognizable figures from the world of TV and music (most of whom, likes his consumers, are, or have become Bacon’s mates). One current in late-stage development is about to mark the first small show outing for a critical Hollywood star, who will — hopefully — entrance a very high-concept recreation current straddling TV and video gaming.
Numerous the ideas sound hilarious. “We are going to’t do one thing that isn’t humorous,” laughs Bacon. “It’s obtained to have a story in it, and an outstanding story. Nonetheless primarily, it would most likely’t not be humorous.”
Bacon inside the studio for “Silence is Golden” with host Dermot O’Leary ({Photograph} by Positive Positive Media)
For all Bacon’s passionate descriptions of each current, be it a “hybrid of Enormous Brother and the X-Difficulty,” a format merely known as “The Greatest Quiz Current inside the World” or one different with the topline “One Lady, One Draw back: Too Many Males,” plus some very spectacular sizzle reels, little can — however — be formally launched.
Nonetheless what could also be talked about is Positive Positive’s proprietary know-how, the WOMI, nonetheless in verify mode and numerous different months away from its official launch.
A big foundation of Bacon’s imaginative and prescient for Positive Positive being a “codecs agency that straddles TV and tech,” the WOMI seems and looks as if an iPhone in a considerably cumbersome, military-grade case. Nevertheless it certainly might shake up and simplify unscripted programming by inserting, as he explains, “a actuality TV crew in your pocket”.
Primarily, when the WOMI cellphone is picked up, a TV-quality digicam on the doorway instantly begins recording an in depth up of the buyer — in panorama — as they take a look on the show whereas the one on the once more concurrently information whatever the cellphone is pointing at. Within the meantime, any on show train paying homage to textual content material messaging or video calls is captured. After which as quickly because the cellphone is put down, each of these specific particular person recordings is modified into data and despatched to the cloud to permit them to immediately be edited remotely.
“It’s not a consumer product, on account of that’s a crazy funding,” says Bacon. “What we’ve carried out is a B2B issue — it’s by producers for producers, it’s for television, it’s for producers, it prints content material materials for YouTube and it’s going to be in quite a few our reveals.”
It moreover acquired right here to Bacon all through one different brainwave, this time whereas hanging out with three-time Oscar nominee Stephen Daldry. “We had been watching a Christopher Nolan film collectively, and he suggested me that the important thing to all show drama is the shut up,” he says. “And it merely obtained me pondering how all an important data you research in your life is in your cellphone, so that you simply’re really inserting your self in shut up for all an important data you’ll ever research.” Bacon reached out to software program program engineer mates in LA, now part of Positive Positive, and challenged them to assemble one factor that may harness this.
To showcase the WOMI’s capabilities by means of actuality filmmaking, Positive Positive has produced an early verify of a “self-shot” assortment by way of which a gaggle of college school college students acquired WOMI telephones and requested to go about their days. The footage offers what Bacon describes as “real, raw content material materials,” highlighting a scene from the promo by way of which we see one in every of many women writing to a boy she’s been flirting with on her cellphone as her excited mates watch on, the animated ellipses exhibiting that he was writing once more and the gasps from the group learning the show as he does so.
“I checked out their reactions and I assumed, okay, with WOMI, one thing is a drama,” Bacon says. “The best way wherein I take into account it’s the method that, like ‘Planet Earth’ captured bats flying at night, that’s capturing kids inside the wild.”
Positive Positive now plans to self-finance “The College Women of Liverpool” as a 10-15 minute episode dimension assortment, which it’ll put straight onto YouTube with sponsorship, adopted by a U.S. mannequin “The College Women of Miami.”
Nonetheless that’s merely the start. There are numerous — many — completely different plans for the WOMI that embody incorporating it not merely into Positive Positive codecs, nevertheless using it in pre-existing reveals produced elsewhere and offering it to producers. WOMI was used inside the agency’s first step into dwell events, the Purple Bull Custom Battle, a head-to-head music battle held in London’s massive Drumsheds that it broadcast dwell. Using the WOMI — which he says will shortly be able to live-stream — people inside the crowd or backstage can efficiently become part of the crew.
The “crazy issue,” Bacon elements out, is that he simply recently secured the patent for the know-how, one factor he admits he wasn’t anticipating. “We’ve obtained completely the monopoly, by way of U.S. patent regulation, to assemble a device that information the show and your reactions to the show on the an identical time.”
Nonetheless the WOMI — which Bacon counsel is “in some strategies our largest problem, and as well as barely the slowest” — isn’t solely a elaborate gizmo that gives a model new close-up non-public contact to unscripted TV. It’s one factor that may moreover help drive Positive Positive’s fortunes all through an not sure time for the leisure sector.
“I don’t want to merely rely upon getting 10% of a producing cost, on account of this is usually a declining market — and other people costs get capped anyway,” claims Bacon. With the know-how — if leased out to TV producers or offered to producers with a earnings share system — the company will get to open up full new earnings streams, as a result of it does by way of discovering sponsoring for its self-made YouTube reveals.
“It’s warning in direction of the reality that the enterprise is in just a little little bit of a humorous place,” says Bacon. “So truly we’re merely attempting to suppose in one other approach.”
Even with little to level out for it by means of exact tangible content material materials available on the market to see correct now, all of it genuinely sounds very spectacular (presuming you’ll have the ability to maintain with Bacon as he pinballs haphazardly — and charmingly — from one thought to the next). Nonetheless for Brits of a positive age, turning right into a hyper-creative tech-focussed innovator on this planet of unscripted TV most probably wasn’t what they’d been anticipating from him.
Starting out on BBC radio on the age of 17 inside the early Nineties, a 21-year-old Bacon landed a life-changing TV break as a quantity on iconic kids current “Blue Peter” in 1997. Nonetheless this would possibly end in infamy 18 months later, when he was sacked following a tabloid data report of him taking cocaine. “12-hour drugs romp shame of kids’ TV idol,” blasted the (now defunct) Info of the World (funnily adequate, run by Murdoch senior). Such was the seriousness of the matter, the BBC’s then youngsters’s head was compelled to go on air to awkwardly make clear the firing to its youthful viewers.
Bacon’s cancellation didn’t remaining prolonged, and just a few months later he was among the many many buzzy youthful faces fronting the groundbreaking and anarchic 90s morning current “The Enormous Breakfast” (a job he says first obtained him “into the mindset of ideas”). Many further TV and radio gigs would observe, sooner than an extended run as a result of the host of his private focus on radio current with the BBC. Nonetheless in 2014 he jacked all of it in, transferring to LA alongside along with his partner and two youngsters.
Richard Bacon when he joined the U.Okay.’s Capital FM’s as a DJ perform in 2005. ({Photograph} by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Photographs)
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When a U.S. travelogue TV thought fell by way of (really sooner than Bacon had even left the U.Okay.) what adopted was an just about year-long interval of unemployment, broken when he landed a gig as presenter of the Nationwide Geographic Channel’s “Explorer.” The debut current: mountaineering by way of Yosemite with Barack Obama inside the final days of his presidency. “And that was my first day’s work in America!” he says. There could possibly be completely different jobs, most on U.S. daytime TV, after which, within the summertime of 2018, Bacon expert a kind of seismic life-altering moments.
“I went proper right into a coma — and I was anticipated to die,” he considerably nonchalantly explains. A lung an an infection — first felt whereas on a flight once more to London from LA — compelled medical docs to put Bacon into an induced coma, which he solely wakened from 9 days later.
“And that changed all of the issues. As soon as I acquired right here out of that I assumed: I’m going to do what I speculated to do, which is give you codecs,” he says. And so, prompted by this “near demise issue,” that’s what he did, quitting a job and over the subsequent yr writing three codecs that went to pilot after which to assortment. NBC signed him up on an common deal, sooner than he would acquired all the way down to chart his private course inside the unscripted world with Positive Positive Media.
In spite of everything, it helped that by this stage the naturally gregarious and really likeable Bacon had, over a near three-decade career in every the U.Okay. and U.S., amassed a giant circle of influential enterprise mates. Amongst them, Elisabeth Murdoch, who “bought into the imaginative and prescient” for Positive Positive by way of Sister when it was merely an idea. “They’re wonderful at backing creatives,” he says.
By the use of a friendship with Snow Patrol’s McDaid, he had obtained to know his affiliate Cox — “merely truly such a nice particular person” — whereas moreover turning into shut with Kotecha (“we truly talk each day”). All three moreover joined as consumers. As did Essebeg’s Satisfaction.
“Sure, I do know all these people, nevertheless they’re all proficient they normally’re all fascinating — it’s, selfishly, about having consumers that I get on with, that I’m cosy with socially, however as well as are strategically helpful to the company,” he says, together with that he’s been writing codecs with every McDaid and Kotecha.
There’s moreover the Positive Positive creatives that Bacon has assembled spherical him. As he explains, with zero bravado, “all ideas start with me, all of them.” It’s not all the best way all the way down to conceitedness or any sense of megalomania, nevertheless considerably Bacon’s ADHD. “It’s truly arduous to elucidate, nevertheless I’m merely not that good with completely different people’s ideas, even once they’re good,” he says. “For me to really care about it a way or one different the thought has to start out out with me, in another case I don’t truly know what to do with it.”
Whereas an unorthodox ingenious course of for any manufacturing agency, what Bacon does have is an “elite crew that ship these ideas into life.” Amongst them are his two large league hires, launched on board in late 2023. Head of leisure Mark Sidaway, generally called “Sid,” is a five-time BAFTA-winning exec producer and served as showrunner on “The X Difficulty” for 10 seasons. Sidaway is foremost Positive Positive’ “large push” into dwell events. Then there’s director of producing Lydia Arding, poached from Hilary and Chelsea Clinton’s label Hidden Delicate. Arding was beforehand head of factual manufacturing at producer-agency massive “Avalon.”
It’s this crew’s job, alongside receiving random emails late on a Saturday night with each lightbulb second, to hone down irrespective of ideas Bacon comes up with proper right into a manageable selection of exact workable codecs. Because of with ADHD, he warns, it’s “quite simple to have an excessive amount of ideas and by no means finish them.”
Bacon elements to a room on the completely different end of the office the place they accumulate to boost concepts and “assemble the deck and write and refine, write and refine,” repeatedly until they’re happy. “At one degree there have been 4-fucking-9 in there, nevertheless now there are 12 that we’re rising,” he says. “12 continues to be quite rather a lot when you say it out loud, nonetheless it’s not 49!”
With its patented proprietary tech, A-list consumers, a format that’s now hitting screens and has already been provided globally and plenty of further coming down the pipeline, Positive Positive Media seems and looks as if a high-concept startup that hit the underside working and has solely accelerated since. And it fully is that.
Nonetheless there’s moreover a delightfully frenzied and unpredictable energy to agency, as if it could abruptly, out of nowhere — and fully casually — uncover the next foremost globe-spanning format in leisure. It would already have it — it is likely to be someplace on the wall, perhaps merely three phrases printed on an A4 sheet and awaiting refinement.
Nonetheless irrespective of this subsequent foremost globe-spanning format in leisure is, it’s extraordinarily susceptible to have first come to Positive Positive’ creatively-charged mad genius founder as an idea at 4am inside the morning and quickly written into his cellphone.
As Bacon excitedly explains, “I want to put chaos in all of the issues, truly.”
