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Flextech continues commissions drive

UK pay broadcaster Flextech is lining up a raft of new titles for this year, all part of new md Lisa Opie's strategy to concentrate more of her budget on original commissions.

Opie told C21 the new commissions are the culmination of a two-year move away from the production values that once reigned at the company. {In the old days, it was high-volume, low-cost. The sets used to shake but multichannel viewers didn't expect anything more,{ she said.

{Nowadays we repeat more often but what we produce is must-see rather than bulk TV. In their target audiences, our commissioned shows now rank up there with the terrestrials.{ Opie said that half of Bravo's programming budget now goes on original commissions, while the figures for Living, Trouble and Challenge stand at around 27%, 15% and 17%, respectively.

For teen channel Trouble, indie Hewland International has been greenlit to produce 15 half-hours of Date My Mate, a spin-off from its previous dating format Date My Sister. Presented by Izzie Knolles, the reality show sees mates setting up a particular friend on a blind date.

Also destined for Trouble, At It Productions is in production on Talk To The Hand (15×30'), the channel's first ever chatshow commission. The daytime series, in which host Tash Monie talks to British youth about today's issues, was ordered by Trouble controller Jonathan Webb. It airs from May 26.

Over on women's channel LivingTV, the paranormality theme continues with indie IPM's latest offering: Psychic School With Tony Stockwell, which unspools from June 17, a follow up to Street Psychic, which launched last week. Other paranormal events in the pipeline for Living include further Most Haunteds and the National Extra Sensory Perception Challenge.

From October, these will be joined by Living's first ever reality format import: StripSearch, to be produced by TWI based on the Australian show from Screentime.

Flextech's gameshow network Challenge recently started airing another imported format, its own version of the 1980s Japanese show Takeshi's Castle, in which 100 contestants are gradually whittled down via various bizarre outdoor challenges.

As far as plans for the rest of the year, Opie ruled out any new Flextech channels – having recently launched Ftn on Freeview – and said 2003 will be about improving the value of its audiences to advertisers.

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