Three years ago, Janet Street-Porter attacked the industry for being run by “middle-aged, middle-class, mediocre men”. Dennis Potter, the late dramatist, used his speech to call Sir John Birt, BBC director- general, a “dalek”.. IT SEEMED like a good idea at the time. Lizzie Francke, director of the Edinburgh Film Festival, organised a glitter-strewn party to celebrate the premiere of glam rock movie Velvet Goldmine.

By getting rid of the quotas, and reducing the money that broadcasters pay for the licences, Mr Bazalgette said he hoped to see the ITC “cut down to size”.Replying to Mr Bazalgette’s criticism, a spokesman for the Broadcasting Standards Commission said: “Whilst he may represent the views of some programme makers he has misread the views of the consumers of broadcasting.” Viewers supported the principle of taste and decency guidelines and the 9pm watershed for family viewing, he said.The MacTaggart lecture has become a traditional vehicle for controversial speeches. He also predicted that the 9pm “watershed” would wither away once multi-channel television becomes widespread.He argued that, because viewers will decide what constitutes quality, ITV’s obligation to air public service programming should be ended.As a condition of their franchise licences, ITV broadcasters have to maintain quotas of religious, educational and regional programmes set by the ITC. Declaring that regulators have “a compulsion to impose their taste on the rest of us”, he also called for a curbing of the powers of the Independent Television Commission, which oversees commercial broadcasters.Instead of regulators, Mr Bazalgette argued that viewers switching off will be the way to determine the quality of television programmes. He described the commission’s chairwoman, Lady Howe, wife of the former foreign secretary, as the “biggest busybody of them all” and he called the regulatory body a “toothless poodle”. Before going independent, he was a leading BBC producer.In his lecture, Mr Bazalgette called for the scrapping of the Broadcasting Standards Commission, one of the two watchdogs that monitor television output. We will please ourselves.”Mr Bazalgette is managing director of the independent production company Bazal, which has been successful with a new kind of leisure programming that concentrates on gardening, home interests and cookery shows. “In the end, with individual electronic programme guides, we will make our own selections and we will bar our children from material we think unsuitable.”From now on, the audience will decide what is quality and what isn’t.

Peter Bazalgette, the man behind Changing Rooms and Can’t Cook Won’t Cook, used the annual MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival to call for more viewer power as we move into the digital age.
“It should be up to the audience to decide what the audience wants to see,” he told a gathering of television’s senior executives. TELEVISION VIEWERS should have the right to watch whatever they like without regulatory “busybodies” imposing their tastes on the public, the industry was told last night. Although her face remains unknown to the public, her greetingd cards sell in 18 countries, and her paintings are bought by everyone from company directors to window cleaners.When Ms Lloyd presented her idea to Cook, the reclusive artist was said to have been delighted Her only advice was: “Make it funny.”. I just thought it would be brilliant to develop it into a programme.”With the exception of David Hockney, who has moved to California, there is no British artist whose work is better known than Cook’s. We are hoping it will not be hidden away at 11pm.”Ms Lloyd said the idea for the series came after she watched her parents roar with laughter every year when she gave her mother Beryl Cook birthday cards.”Every year I try to hunt down a new card and my mother bursts out laughing and passes it over to Dad and he laughs as well. America sitcoms always have teams of people working together but that has not really happened in this country.”The voices have not been confirmed but will include Ms French and Alison Steadman.Ms Lloyd, a life-long fan of Cook’s work, said: “It will be a really vibrant, oozing, boisterous cartoon but people will recognise the characters and identify with them.

It is being developed by Tiger Aspect production for the BBC and Polygram.Ms Lloyd said they had deliberately chosen an all-women team to write the series.”It works really well and it is a new approach to have a team of writers. We have spent hours building up their characters and we know them all right down to the last wart.”The 13 episodes, each 11 minutes long, are being written by Dawn French, herself a voluptuous figure, and a team of feature writers from EastEnders, Birds of a Feather and This Life. Her best friend is Stella, a medium who can get through to the other side, and drinks pints of Guinness, with her adopted daughter, Marie.”Then there’s Crystal, who used to be called Chris when he was a docker in Wales but he’s much happier as a cross-dresser. “She’s somewhat oversexed, drinks snakebite and is the kind of woman who wears a strappy top in the middle of winter.