The History of Knightmare
Part Four
The Day the Dungeon Died
Because there has been much speculation on Knightmare’s
demise, a proper explanation is long overdue. But before all the conspiracy theories are
laid to rest, I can tell you that none of the stated reasons, or given explanations,
carries the truth.
Instead, a number of circumstances conspired to halt the game. Some were contrived; others
were merely cock-ups.
The first circumstance came earlier in 1992, when Knightmare narrowly failed to win the
Royal Television’s Society’s award for best children’s programme. The award
went to a BBC programme (as usual), in a decision the Sunday Times TV critic described as
‘a travesty’. It would have been a very rare win for the ITV system and
Knightmare would have preserved for at least 3 seasons after such a triumph.
In the absence of such a win, the rest is down to history, the first page of which was
turned later in 1992, with the appointment of a controller of ITV children’s
programmes to replace the committee system used since the 1960s.
That first controller was Dawn Airey, a sharp young scheduler from Central TV, with almost
no programme-making experience. As a producer, I viewed Dawn’s appointment with
suspicion, but our first meeting was to change that. Even then, Dawn had precise views on
which direction she needed to take and the sort of programmes she was looking for. She was
a-brim with confidence, and subsequently had no fear about taking decisions.
Dawn’s scheduling background (a scheduler plans the best schedule and picks and
places TV programmes accordingly), would place the emphasis on research-led decisions, and
although Dawn was an admirer of Knightmare, and deemed it a quality childrens’
programme, current research into the demography of children's viewing, painted a dismal
picture.
In 1985, when I devised Knightmare, current demography (breakdown by age and other
factors) of childrens’ ITV viewing spread from 6-15. By 1994 (the last
year of the Dungeon), it was predicted to be 6-10. Older children and of course,
adolescents and adults could watch, but their viewing figure contributions were regarded
as insignificant (even ignored).
Dawn believed (as did Anna Home at the BBC), that the games-playing audience (9 upwards)
was migrating from TV to video games or niche market satellite, and that their departure
represented a battle already lost. Thought-provoking interactive products like Knightmare
might well win awards, but could not reverse that trend.
After two meetings, in which I fought the Knightmare corner as best I could, Dawn came to
a decision which blended caution with risk. Knightmare would have its 8th season, albeit
at a shorter programme run, and it would be transmit back-to-back in the autumn schedules,
against its new stable-mate, and potential successor, Broadsword’s new show,
Virtually Impossible.
The latter was to be a VR-based action gameshow, rather than an adventure game. It was a
deliberate parody of the computer game genre, and was aimed at the new (lower age group)
CITV audience. In my view however, it was never intended to rival or replace Knightmare,
it merely addressed the demographic realities that Dawn was stressing. To have addressed
them with Knightmare would have involved dumbing-down to the extent that the show would
have been reduced to a travesty of its previous existence.
A few months after this decision, Dawn Airey left her post to take up promotion as Head of
Entertainment Programmes at Channel 4. She was going places, and would not stay to see the
results of her decision. Dawn’s surprise replacement could not have been more
different.
Vanessa Chapman had been a regional childrens’ show producer
at London Weekend TV. Now she was catapulted into the biggest job in UK
Children’s TV (apart from Anna Home’s). Amongst her first tasks was to sit down
and negotiate with the (then) head of MAI Broadcasting’s Chief of
Children’s Programming, Janie Grace. MAI now owned Anglia TV, so Janie now
represented Knightmare’s interests. Janie, an experienced senior producer in the
children’s programming area, had been one of the favourites to replace Dawn Airey and
it was therefore a strained situation for both ladies. It was not a situation likely
to favour Knightmare or Virtually Impossible.
The two new series were duly transmitted that autumn: the results very much as I would
have predicted. Knightmare held up well in the viewing figures, despite the migrating
older audience, but Virtually Impossible made a shaky start. This was mainly because it
disappointed the loyal Knightmare fans who balked at having their sixteen week
dungeon-fest, reduced down to ten, and deserted CITV in protest. In ratings terms, the old
adventure game beat the new gameshow.
There were also production problems with VI, which related to the late delivery of its
state-of-art virtual games software. This meant that the points scoring system whereby you
measured the progress and performance of teams, had to be added in, after the event, in
post-production.
Early in 1995, I attended a series of meetings, sometimes with Vanessa Chapman;
sometimes with Janie Grace, sometime with both. The climax of these negotiations is that I
was asked to nominate which of the two programmes Broadsword would continue to produce in
1995. The caveat for this was that whatever happened, Knightmare would end after one more
series (series 9).
Faced with this dilemma, I nominated Virtually Impossible as our choice. The reasons were
not straight-forward. Virtually Impossible had launched weakly because circumstances had
frustrated its high technical ambition. I was not fond of VI, but I was convinced that it
was a potential winner in the new lower-aged group CITV environment.
Secondly, I was already aware that Knightmare needed to go full
Virtual Reality if its status as a leading-edge adventure game system was to be carried
forward. I also knew that affordable high fidelity VR was not ready to do the business for
us in 1995, and so ‘resting’ the programme provided a realistic, if unattractive
solution.
In the event, circumstances denied both programmes. The editorial negotiations needed to
re-launch Virtually Impossible, put a further strain on the already difficult
relationships between Vanessa and Janie, and these negotiations eventually broke down.
Neither programme was re-commissioned.
There was a brief flurry of meetings with Children’s BBC during 1995, that could have
seen Knightmare cross to the public broadcast sector, but these fell down because of a
variety of issues, including copyright problems.
To get round these a format re-write, entitled, The Sword and The
Sorcerer, was produced,
but BBC programme research was also pointing at the prospect of less viewers, and a
younger audience. There was much negotiation; much enthusiasm, but no commission.
At Broadsword we had suffered a further blow. TimeBusters, after three series was brought
to an end by Children's BBC. Suddenly, Broadsword had nothing in production, and no
production income from television.
To buy time and to pay salaries, we turned our attention, and our energies, to our
spin-off creation, Televirtual, which is today one of the UK’s most successful entertainment
technology companies. It is because of that success that Broadsword survives as a
potential force for production.
Today we all stand on the threshold of a new era for content creation. It’s going to
be at the heart of a 21st century society dominated by smart information technology and
dissolving boundaries between the computer game and the TV gameshow, and between 20th
century-born broadband media such as television, and compression-fed modern distributive
media like the internet.
We will undoubtedly cross those boundaries as Virtual Humans or Avatars, and reach new heights of gaming in competition with each other or with intelligent agents.
Ironically, it is a time that is absolutely made for
Knightmare, a gaming system that is now acknowledged as: ahead of its time.
So will that time come again?
Who can ever really tell?
I am certainly not ruling it out, and I would like to thank you all for caring about its
prospects as much as I do. So remember: in life, as in the greater game, one rule stands
pre-eminent:
The only way is onward
There is no turning back
Tim Child
August 1999
End of Part Four