The strange weeks continue and script 2 is well underway. Jase got married, Shaun is leaving for Vegas to get married, Kim gave birth to a girl, Chloe had a car accident, Jess is in Syria, Jack’s in the new AC/DC video, Franki’s left for LA, Dean is locked in at Heathrow, Stroop’s off to Australia and it just carries on. In a few months i will be in Jerusalem toasting that the first 30 bullshit years are done.

Today i also heard some very sad news. A body was found in Radford Park in Liphook, where i always used to walk every day (and still do when i visit). After speaking to Nat i found out it was an old friend of mine called Oli Softley who i used to hang around with occasionally back in the day. He became homeless and was living out of a tent in the woodland, and it seems his drug problem finally got the better of him as a walker found him dead. It’s scary how many of my friends died young. I’ve got used to it. although i know i shouldn’t be.

In case you hadn’t realised it yet, things really are very doom and gloom. If you study the history, you’ll find that despite the differing conditions in terms of war etc, the economic environment is very similar to that of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Now’s not the time to be stubborn and resistant about it, as you’ve already lost enough. The most important thing to know about the depression is that it started years before people noticed it. The main effects of the economic collapse only started to bite badly around 1935, when unemployment reached 25%.

9000 banks went bust back then. The climate of the day was one of “false prosperity” where moneylending was rampant and everything was financed on debt (ring any bells?), In the last few weeks we have seen the nationalisation of Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley, the near-collapse of HBOS through deposit withdrawal, and RBS is down 50%. Tonight the government pledged to increase our national debt by a third of our GDP (400BN) to part-nationalise and underwrite the debts of a whole raft of high-street banks, which out every household in the UK in for £13,000. The Americans just did a 700BN bail-out. This is total fucking madness.

It’s like trying to hold a cupboard’s doors shut when there is too much stuffed inside that keeps collapsing back onto you.

The reason i’m writing about it is more and more people are asking me what to do. I’m no maths or economics genius, and to be honest i’m not sure. But what i do understand is the basic laws of business and survival, as i learned them in blood, fire and anguish. There are a lot of very lost and frightened people out there at the moment not sure if they’ll have a job in a few weeks or whether they’ll lose their home.

Let’s start with the bad news. Recessions, slowdowns and depressions always last a hell of a lot longer than we expect them to. We’re talking 5-10 years. There is a very good likelihood that you will lose your job and possibly your home. In the very least your standard of living will drop and you will have major troubles working out how to keep all the things you have now on the income you have. We’re at the beginning of the cycle and it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. We will have a lot of false positives on the economic curve – it’ll seem like it’s getting better, but then it will crash again. The point of a depression is that even though it goes up and down, the figures are always below a certain line – trading and throughput is depressed.

So what can you do?

First, you need to start jettisoning excess baggage and trim the fat.

The people who have loaned you money will want it returned because they think you won’t be able to pay it back and also need the cash themselves – banks, credit card companies, loan/finance firms, retail stores and others. Get your debts paid off fast and get out now. Now is not the time to go out spending and racking up more debts. If you have serious debts you need to consolidate them and get a plan worked out for the worst case scenario. If you own a business, the bank won’t loan you anything and your customers won’t have much money to spend on you.

Next you need to ditch all your superfluous expenditure – all the luxurious shit you don’t need. That means getting rid of Sky and Virgin Media for a Freeview box, and a cheaper telephony provider other than BT. Bye bye magazine and DVD subscriptions (read it online), gym membership (create a plan of exercise in the open), expensive life insurance and more. If it’s not essential, get rid of it. Sell your car with the repayments and get something cheaper. Sell what you can now whilst the price is still reasonable and cattle panic-sell and flood the market. Use the bus. If you like spending £200 on a meal, then it’s premium organic fruit and veg and a new cookery course.

The first wave of people hit will be those in retail (as they rely on people paying with credit/store cards) and finance (for obvious reasons). Recruitment will be frozen everywhere, and then the job losses will start, You need to look at your job and see how depression-proof it is, and maybe changing career temporarily to something safer for up to a decade. Think i’m kidding? I’m not.

If you work for a moneylender (including leasing companies), get out right now. It doesn’t matter how good you are at your job or how indispensable you are, it’s about how well the company is fairing and how good the CFO is. Your qualifications mean nothing on the company’s balance sheet.

Your house value is going to decrease, and so is your ability to pay back your mortgage. So if you bought high, you’re in for some serious shit. If you don’t have a lot of equity (less than 10%), it’s time to think about selling up and taking on more flexible arrangements. Now is the time to think about that travelling around the world you always wanted to do for a bit and missing out the carnage. If you do decide to travel and sit it all out, register yourself as non-domicile with HMRC and set up a savings account to put 10% of what you earn overseas into for when you come back and look for a job.

Look at a second/back-up career or a second home-based business (e.g. eBay) to top up your income. If you’re smart, you’ll see lots of stuff coming on to the market very cheaply that you can snap up and make a great profit from. Get on a training course and extend your working day to bring in more cash. Don’t rely on your main job, and don’t rely on the company you work for’s assurances. They give you the “we’re in a great position” talk to fend off competitors backchat and stop shareholders from pulling out their investments. It’s all bullshit and you’ll be the last to know.

When others start jettisoning the excess baggage, they will try and sell everything they can, including all the stuff they bought on loans and credit cards. It’s an opportunity to pick things up very cheap. So wait for all the lemmings to sell their stuff, as they’ll take any price. And that is business markets 101 – buy low, sell high. Just wait it out. The cattle have bought high, and will be selling low out of panic to get money to keep up the payments on their house. That’s also an interesting point – if you haven’t bought yet, wait. There will be a whole wave of repossessions and you can get a place for 20% of what your trendy “property ladder” friends paid.

And that is why i personally haven’t bought a house yet.

As panic sets in, everyone will try to raise prices in a desperate bid to raise revenue. Household bills will go up, rent will get high and customer service will be slimmer. It’s a blip. Give it time and they will all lower prices once their existing customer bases deserts because they can’t afford it. It’ll keep getting lower so just wait.

It goes without saying not to put your money into stock markets or PE-based start-up companies. Invest in physical wealth (true wealth – things that retain their value) and unusual areas, like entertainment. You can’t afford to speculate. When times are hard, you can guarantee people will drink more, take more drugs, gamble more, watch more shit TV, fight more and commit more crime. Movies make great returns. Art grows its value. Gold is the all-time security. Debt collectors will be making a lot of money. If you make an investment now, it will be a long-term one and you can’t expect to cash out or make a return for a decade.

Most companies will look to save money, so they will outsource what they can. If you’re a computer programmer, it’ll be cheaper to hire someone from India or the Baltic states. If you make things in the factory, it’ll go to China, as it already is. If you’re a project manager, someone else’s job will get doubled up and yours will go. If you’re in recruitment, no-one is recruiting – move on. Don’t start a business that offers obscure or new products or one in a different market. Adapt your sales strategy to appeal to your customers need to save money. Don’t get involved in anything that involves customer’s spending excess cash as they won’t have it.

Whether or not you take your money out of a bank is up to you, but i’d be inclined to spread assets. The Bank of Ireland is guaranteeing 100% of savings, unlike the limit of £35k in the UK. If the bank collapses, you’re going to lose your money. Even if the government guarantees it, you won’t see it for a long time. The government’s backup is linked to the economy – if the economy goes, so does the government’s bonds.

What you need to understand is that cash does not have a constant value, and it only constitutes less than 5% of the money system. There is a very distinct difference between wealth and cash. A painting you own that is worth 500k won’t deviate and it is an asset. You sell that asset to exchange it for generated cash you can use. Cash in the bank is not security – physical wealth is. Put your money into wealth that is sustainable and will act as a preservative for your money.

You need to get a plan going, and face the things you don’t want to face. This is uncomfortable so you will procrastinate and find anything else to do other than work out what to do. You need to have 3 plans – a) if it stays the same, b) for when it gets worse, and c) the very worst case scenario. The sooner you deal with it, the less you will lose. Yes, it may be an inconvenience, but bankruptcy and homelessness is a lot more of an inconvenience.

If you think this is drastic, think back to last year when i wrote about the banks “battening down the hatches”. Everyone i know who is very rich or materially wealthy who can afford good advice pulled their money out a long time ago because they knew what was about to happen. That’s why they are still wealthy and very secure.

A lot of the way i have lived in the last few years have been about this depression. I didn’t buy a house, maintain a constant home or work for a corporate employer. I sold my business whilst i was ahead, have never trusted debt or credit of any form, and am actually financially conservative in terms of my resistance to buying high. Perhaps the reasoning behind many of my decisions will become clearer now and there will be less of the cynicism about my motives and so called “achievements”.

I saw a lot of this coming and reconciled my position by thinking ahead for the next 10 years. I didn’t buy a house when the price was sky high as everyone i know did, as i’m waiting for it to go bottom-low during re-possession time like a vulture. I didn’t saddle myself with debts and vaults of consumer high street bullshit because i knew it would be impossible to repay once the credit boom wave broke. You have to see the big picture and understand where you are going instead of just reacting in the moment blindly. If i want to get married and have kids, there was no way i was doing it having bought high, lost all my money and in the middle of a recession. Better to consolidate, wait, and do it when the cycle turns so my family are more secure.

If i am going to have a family, i want their home set on a rock foundation of stone rather than being a rudderless ship in a storm-drenched ocean. True security for me is not about wealth, it is about smart decision-making, conservative management and planning ahead. It’s about doing your research, choosing the right timing and being wise. You may not be able to anticipate everything, but the economic and scientific laws that govern us allow us to offset enough of the risk to avoid the worst of the trouble. I will never allow my wife, kids or extended family to know the pain and vulnerability i felt of losing your security, or the pain i will feel for allowing them to get anywhere near it.

I’ve learned a lot in the last few weeks about leadership, and the most profound part of it being the massive responsibility towards others that you have. Kate was telling me a story about her and her mum frantically locking up the house and hiding when they heard noises in their back garden, and i remarked that what they needed was the strength and presence of a man in the house to fend off the burglar in the dark at 3am.

It was around then when i saw what Virgilio said in a clearer light about most people being helpless and vulnerable – they put their trust in authority and look up to leaders for hope. When you fail, so do the hearts of those who look to you for strength, confidence and security. I realised that i spent the first 30 years of my life scared, untrusting and being betrayed by corrupted authority for one very simple reason – so that when i became an authority, i would never let the same thing happen to those who put their trust and hope in me.

“For the heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord.”

Today i wrote to a very senior person i know at Channel 4 who is head of their Specialist Factual department but as it became broader in its scope and is philosophy-defining it deserved a re-print here. Names and details are omitted, naturally.

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Thanks for your responses to the format proposals i submitted last week via the 4Producers/EWorks system. I didn’t want to flood your inbox with replies to each so i’ve combined them all into a single mail here. I appreciate they came through as a lump rather than a flow.

We were saddened by the rejection of Chris Morris’s latest series. But we’re also very surprised as they would seem to have a natural home at C4. I can imagine it must be hard to make decisions to trust program formats where the company behind them has so little track record despite a fantastic-looking team. It must also be difficult to see credibility when decisions on talent are left open and not tied up on the ticket. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for you to get good quality programming generated in your department onto the schedule when the constant internal pressures seem to be for “tabloid” content.

Before any proposals or pitches are made for films or programs, we put them in front of a focus group of 500 people from 16-40 in different places and demographics to get an idea as to which are most popular. It may not seem much but it’s 10% of BARB’s capacity of 5000 or so and ultimately staying close to the customer is what keeps us all in business and ensures viewership. In all of our studies the same feedback is arriving – a boredom/intense dislike of reality TV and tabloid content. Our research (and others) seems to suggest that people are just watching it because “there’s nothing else on”. They are dying for something better. They want more interesting and challenging programming that is as entertaining as it is thought-provoking. They feel patronised. I cannot over-emphasise how many times we are all approached and told how fed up those customers are. What we have done is listen to the viewers and give them what they want, and reassured them that broadcasters care and will be faithful to that demand because the last thing they want viewers to feel is that they are monopolistically abused.

I think i’ve identified a number of themes which i’d like to address with the same candour, if you would allow me to.

The first is concerning underestimation of the tasks involved. I’m fortunate in having built a team that has successfully delivered programming for the likes of Discovery and the BBC that has taken considerably more than “Dark Nature” or “Worldchangers” requires to achieve the dynamic you rightly point out. Both myself and Joanne Reay have run and exited multi-million pound companies and part of that success has arguably been managing resources and cashflow, as well as finding ways to accomplish great things without necessarily having the greatest means. The awkward truth i’ve come to see, especially in TV production, is that production companies frequently bloat their budgets to squeeze as much money out of broadcasters as they can – a good example being a spec document my friend at a web agency received recently from Fremantle for £30k for a simple website that could have been built in 48hrs for 5% of the cost with the right software and expertise. This kind of thing is implicit everywhere in media, but from experience, we don’t just believe, but know, that the amount of money being claimed just isn’t needed. Yes, there are great pressures, but effective management of resources, personnel and processes mean that we can operate at a more efficient level, and of course we will come in and pitch low because we’re hungrier and want the business. The cheaper we do it, the more programming you can re-commission us for.

The second is talent. Even though none of us deny the need for programs to have talent as a draw, one thing we all share in our team is a resistance to celebrity-reliant programming. It seems these days that formats are created by getting a bunch of them together and building a show around it, as it’s what seems to draw in the crowd. Our belief is that the people, the story and the subject material are what compels the audience and tells the story and the talent points in the direction of the story, which is central. We believe genuinely excellent presenting talent generates and casts a spotlight on guests and featured parts of a story rather than stealing it for themselves, and is part of a bigger story or issue that has importance to us all. For our own part we want discover and nurture new talent, and we know broadcasters will always want to discuss it (and a lot of the time have an idea that might be more effective that we missed), so we leave it open to show our willingness to work together in partnership.

The third and last is about being conceptual. Tabloid content is like a greasy hamburger – it might ease the hunger, but if you had your choice, you’d order a cordon bleu fillet steak with champagne. And it never fills you up. We want to look deeper and ask what the hunger is and why it’s there. We’re going into a recession and its hard time for everyone, and of course nobody wants to get home to more doom and gloom when they switch on. But being hungry doesn’t mean you want a hamburger if you had the choice, even though you might take it if there was no other food around or if it was the first thing on offer. Escapism doesn’t have to be mindless – it can mean becoming lost in a new subject, topic, area, story, character, premise or moment. Difficult or deeper topics don’t have to be less entertaining, as our approach is about finding new ways to show new angles on well-explained things (e.g. drug chemists/labs rather than social impact). It’s riskier to commission programming for the minority who aren’t over the 100 point IQ barrier than to consider your audience to be intelligent and discerning. Most people spend 9 hours a day in a job they hate with their brains switched off, and aren’t resistant at all to being challenged and inspired to think by learning and experiencing new things. They do want ideas. They want concepts. Movies are based on concepts and premises. Thinking is refreshing. Discovering new things is refreshing. They want to learn and to care. They want the variety that allows them to delve into narrower places than simple “broad appeal”.

Dan Chambers may have been a famous casualty of the “upmarket” sting at Five but where i believe he got it wrong was that the programming wasn’t dramatic or pushy enough to compel viewers. Our formula is one where for each step up in the intellectual/emotional stakes may possibly alienate the audience, so the entertainment/adrenaline factor needs to go up 2 steps each time in parallel.

While i’m at it i probably should say that there is also the issue about formats being “original” or differentiated enough, as this seems to be a recurrent theme in commissioning documentation. I don’t believe there is such a thing as true originality, but i do believe there are more ideas and angles than we could ever cover and we will never run out. Experience dictates that competition means a viable market with demand and interest, and there is a very mesmerising cognitive dissonance in broadcasters being picky about originality when they only seem to commission programming in trends or that have similar/safer/tested themes and structures. Celebrity dog training may be funny in what appalling drivel it is, but it’s the bottom of a very short barrel that people at home are forced to drink from.

Ultimately we believe the need/hunger is for meaning, as i included with the pitch notes. In hard times like the credit crunch, we need to understand. We search for meaning. We lust for it like automatons. In all of the darkest periods, we reach out to learn why, not how or what. Understanding gives us comfort and hope, and satisfies that hunger. New ideas broaden and compel us to change our lives and communicate them to others – it’s a licence to be excited by what we are being shown. Being captivated by imagination, having new angles and topics illustrated to us and falling in love with what’s on the screen is the most compelling of all entertainment and escapism, and becoming more by being educated and feeling inspired is the greatest loyalty ticket any broadcaster can command. Ofcom may be heavy-handed when it comes to being objective, but why should we be if we are prepared to tell the audience we are making a case for one side and sparking off the debate? Daring to be masterful and stepping out to present programming in a dramatic and original way that allows us to discover and find joy in new unknown talent must be the most powerful incentive to turn keep the channel on and tune back in again. The joy of being surprised has been lost in television somehow over the last years.

I hope you will take these remarks in the humble way they are intended; 24 million disenfranchised households out there are looking for leadership and hope that only you can provide, and are qualified to release to them. I also hope that you will see that Devils Lane is a company that will give you truth in its (possibly unsolicited) counsel rather than telling you what you want to hear to get the cheque, and i say it to engender trust – i’d rather sell the Big Issue than do something we don’t believe in, but more importantly, that the audience don’t believe in. All it takes is for one commissioner or company to publish a program that does buck the tabloid trend and causes viewers to flood en masse when they are given the chance for everyone to follow suit – just as it happened with the first reality TV programs. The question is who that will be and when, and who the losers will be after they all pile in. I sent in Backstreet Kitchen against my better judgement as i want to get it out of the optioning processing at the BBC before it becomes re-shaped into another lame tabloid drugs program.

We’re in the midst of making an incredible movie called “Michael’s Resignation” inspired by the collapse of Halifax, and i would love to send you over the material once we have finished the edit as i believe it embodies all we are about and will illustrate our production kudos very well – it’s a 1hr Hollywood-style feature done ground-breakingly cheaply with the best young director in the UK that is truly innovative and unbelievably emotional and intense. I know for certain that no broadcaster would dare show it because of how wrenching and challenging it is, but from the interest we have in it already (which is getting out of control) that won’t be an issue when it comes to distribution.

I don’t know you well enough to know if you share the same values (although i suspect you do as you are as powerful as you are), but please do pass what i’ve said along if you do. I would love to get engaged in some vibrant debate and exchange thoughts, and it would be great to keep the dialogue open. When it comes down to it, we share a common interest and passionate vision – one to set the bar much higher and aim for a historical career of extraordinarily engrossing, headline-grabbing and world-changing television that affects the lives of millions of people.

I know this letter is very long so i can only thank you for taking the time to read it, and i hope it has perhaps given you a new perspective on our philosophy and why we are so different to other format houses and production shops. I didn’t get into business to give up easily and none of us have ever failed in what we set up to do because of underlining what we do with passion and integrity. I know those are central C4 values, hence why i know we’re naturally paired and ready for when you see the right time to punch through the grey skies of mediocrity that are out there now for those fresher sparkling pastures where watching TV is a life-changing experience.

Alex