Professor Janet Jones, Head of College of Design, Creative and Digital Industries at the University of Westminster, was interviewed by BBC Two for the first episode their new docuseries ‘Celebrity: A 21st-Century Story’.
The docuseries is a four-part history series which looks back at the explosion in celebrity culture over the last two decades, investigating how the world of celebrity had transformed since the turn of the century through some of the most notable technological and cultural developments in recent history. The series featured interviews with experts from the industry, including Westminster’s Professor Jones.
Professor Jones worked for the BBC in several different roles, including Series Editor, Executive Producer and Director of the BBC’s Canadian office in Toronto. As a BBC producer and journalist, she worked on The Money Programme, Newsnight, Financial World Tonight and Panorama. She is an active researcher and award-winning filmmaker with globally recognised publications and artefacts in the areas of serious games/newsgames, playable documentary, digital journalism, broadcasting policy and Public Service Broadcasting.
The first episode of the series looked at the dawn of reality TV with big names such as Big Brother and Pop Idol, which created a new generation of celebrities.
Talking about Endemol, the production company behind Big Brother, Professor Jones said: “Endemol were able to sell their format to well over 40 different countries globally and it was a huge money-making machine for them. They received roughly £120 million for the formatting rights over that time and essentially it established this license to print money. The format became king, reality television had arrived on our screens and it was a format that had to be taken seriously.”
She also spoke about the British music competition TV show Pop Idol, and said: “Pop Idol really paved the way for a whole future generation of talent shows master-minded by Simon Cowell and he was able to cherry pick the best talent and sign them up to his own record label, so all of this has made Cowell an estimated fortune of around £400 million. Pop Idol on its own, it wasn’t a television programme, it was a music marketing machine.”
Watch the full series on the BBC iPlayer website.
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