Jane Root: Risky business

At the Edinburgh International Television Festival, Mark Thompson chastised British programme-makers for not taking risks. But, as Jane Root reveals here, the same man opposed the cult serial '24' while he was BBC director of television. The BBC 2 controller tells Louise Jury what real risk-taking entails

A woman who had heard it all before was sitting in the audience at the Edinburgh International Television Festival as Mark Thompson, chief executive of Channel 4, made his impassioned plea for a return to risk-taking and innovation.

Jane Root, whose predecessor as controller of BBC 2 was the same Mark Thompson, points out that many of the things he was saying at the weekend were not a philosophy devised specifically for Channel 4. "He was saying the same things at the BBC," she says. "I recognise conversations we had. But it's going to be interesting to see exactly how he puts his plans into action at Channel 4."

"Risk" was one of the buzz words of the festival as hundreds of programme-makers and executives converged on the Scottish festival city. Thompson himself conceded that it was very easy to talk about; somewhat harder to pull off. In the words of Root: "You won't find a single person who doesn't approve of risk-taking and creativity. Everybody in television would love to see more, but how do you do it? What measures do we put in place to achieve it? Really risk-taking television is going beyond your comfort zone. If you think, 'Oh my goodness, things could get very difficult', that's absolutely the right feeling to have."

Interestingly, one of her own biggest hits in recent weeks, the American drama 24, was an acquisition that Thompson advised against when he was still director of television at the BBC – because it was too risky. It is not hard to see why. If you buy a series of which you have to broadcast the entire 24 episodes, each for an hour of the day, for the series to make sense, you have a big problem if you find yourself with no viewers after the first three. Cancel, and have 100,000 dedicated fans march on Broadcasting House. Press on, with dire results for the audience share.

Luckily, she triumphed: the series featured in the top 10 approval ratings for every age group – a very rare thing. But she says that she is not simply relying on instinct to get these things right. She has put £5m aside into a development fund to support riskier projects, and for work embracing different genres, because, she says, genuine innovation is hard work and takes money. "Taking risks at the margins of the schedule with not very much money doesn't get you very big results. One of my catch phrases is, 'Innovate in the middle'. Innovate at 9pm with the biggest budget you can afford," she says.

She cites, as an example of what she means, Smallpox – a drama-documentary, developed in conjunction with news and current affairs, about what could happen if smallpox broke out. It won an audience of 3.5 million, much higher than for a conventional BBC 2 current-affairs programme, though it aimed to be just as rigorous in the information it conveyed.

A forthcoming season examining issues around disability includes a drama starring Christopher Eccleston as a man who discovers that his parents had severe learning disabilities. They are played in the feature by a disabled man and woman.

"It takes longer to get more difficult ideas to work. If you want a copycat idea, you look at what was good on television last night; if you want something of real quality, it tends to take a long time," Root says.

"As an independent [producer], the best programmes I ever made, I spent years on. It took Ricky Gervais three years to perfect The Office. The Hunt for Britain's Paedophiles [in which BBC 2 followed the Metropolitan Police investigating paedophiles] took three years, and we never knew whether there would be a single moment that we would be able to transmit. That's risk-taking, and you need a brave organisation to say, 'Yes, we're going to do that'."

But she says that the new, more open atmosphere generated by Greg Dyke, the BBC's director general, makes it easier to take such risks. "It's really noticeable from where I am that people feel that Greg's BBC is a more collaborative place, where, if you take risks and they don't work, everybody says, 'How do we learn from that?', rather than having a post-mortem that makes everyone more risk-averse next time around."

Channel 4 should be able to do it, she says, because, fundamentally, it is still a wealthy and lucrative business. "Running a channel with considerably smaller funds than Channel 4 – about £100m a year less – you make every penny count, and you look at your competitors, and you can see how to make the money go a long way."

However, on one of the other big talking-points of the festival, namely, what is going to happen at ITV – a subject that provoked the most bitter debate Root has ever witnessed at Edinburgh – she feels that it will take more than money. Yet, she says, it is crucial for the whole of broadcasting that ITV be revitalised. "Everybody wants all of it to work. It's a really sophisticated ecology, television. What we all want is for the best people to be doing really challenging work. You can't break a world record if there's nobody at your heels."

The festival, an annual fixture in the broadcasting diary, is a useful way of getting to think about these issues, she says. "It's good to take the temperature of the whole industry and listen to other people's problems rather than your own."

And, for all the traumas at ITV, and the deficit at Channel 4, not to forget the accusations that the BBC is proving too aggressively commercial, Jane Root, at 41, is adamant that television is better than it used to be. "I don't believe in a golden age of British television," she says. "When I was a child, there were some great things, but there were some appalling sitcoms, and lots of terrible old talent-shows from the London Palladium, and you would lose your job now if you had the number of American imports that were on in the Sixties.

"Until 15 years ago, BBC 2 didn't show any new programmes between June and September; they were all repeats. Now, I'm very concerned if there isn't a new piece at peak time six nights out of seven."

Although Thompson has worked as Dyke's right-hand man, and moved to the top of Channel 4, Root, three years into her job as his successor at BBC 2, insists that she is in no rush to move on. She is finally relishing the long-term projects she put into place when she was appointed. "Running BBC 2 is a fantastic job," she says. "It allows you to do everything, from serious programmes about big issues, through to The Office, the funniest new comedy on TV."