Idea for new parenting advice TV show based on Mumsnet Talk - your thoughts/input needed

Am also thinking - 360 degree progamming and that - the web element is already in there, isn't it! That's the attraction for the programme makers....

I think it does have to be about parenting, because that's what brings people to mumsnet - even it it's not what we stay for.

If it's a roaring success you could always have spin off series "mumsnet does.... mooncups.... fruitshoots.... bumsex" etc.

I'd watch it, but only if the women who represent the "mumsnet" angle come from the interesting and varied backgrounds represented on mumsnet.

It's a big ask in terms of talent finding for the production team: first find enough families willing to air their problems without the anonymity of the interweb.

Then find enough wise and opinionated women who are prepared to spout shite share their wisdom without the anonymity of the interweb.

Themed by age group/developmental stage

Film shortish observational VTs of family/ies, intercut with footage of Mumsnet "panel" drawn from various sectors of the various debates watching it and slagging off their parenting and each other offering frank advice.

Family then chooses whose advice to take, meets the mumsnetters and we see what works when implemented - revisit 6 weeks later.

It's kind of the natural successor of Supernanny - the Expert is Dead, Long Live the Network!

You would think MNHQ might have contacted some of the talent already here when they were thinking about this stuff too given how many regular media/tv types we do have lurking around who already understand MN - the hardest part of the brief IMO.

Personally I can't imagine wanting to participate in anything TV focused, many reasons for this including anonymity for both myself and my child as well as time. One of the things I love about MN is that I can do it anytime, get advice in an instant, whilst on the train, in the bath, at work, sitting in my DD's bedroom on the floor singing her to bloody sleep (again!) etc. Wouldn't be terribly interested in watching it either unless it was going to have regular MNers on with usernames for nosy purposes, why watch it on TV when we have the real thing here?

Also can't really see the funny translating that well, half of the things that are funny are because of in jokes and the other half are amusing anecdotes or situations which don't even translate when I tell them to DP (although that could be my lack of comic timing).

which is, i should say, a general principle worth holding to. it's everyone being prepared to work for free when they are 'starting off' (a period that is stretched beyond belief in the media now) that has jiggered the system for everyone else.

they are paying, whomoved, ros and freya are getting paid. let them do the work. if i were to meet them in the pub then yes, of course, it would all be for the price of a drink, but the fact is that once again (a la Garry Lace and his housewives), people outside of MN are under-estimating the audience.

this place is chock-full of MNers who used to make docs, produce/present shows etc, and ros and freya would know that if they hung around long enough. they could just ask in the freelance/media section for formal pitches to be submitted at the going freelance rate (while continuing to ask us all to act like turkeys plotting our own christmas on here).

i'd do you all the work favours in the world, whomoved, because i know and like you. i just would expect not to work for free for a company that will do very nicely out of my idea should it be commissioned and go global.

That's a good point onesandwichshort. But if the production company were willing to pay, they probably wouldn't have gone about things in this way! :)

FYI Children's telly presenters only get an easy ride because we are generally too young and stupid to be taxed with hard things!

WMMC, you are completely right on both counts. Yes there are a million daft people out there, but whether you want to be the person that exploits them is up to you. I've always made sure that any programme I worked on gave people enough back for their contributions, and didn't make them unhappy. Should MN be associated with and make money from letting its contributors - who may not know what they are getting into - be exploited? Expecially in a situation where they don't have editorial control. I think that could be quite damaging. But I suspect that children's tv is much nice to its contributors than primetime.

And yes the advice question is all about context; I'd happily sit next to anyone in any pub or indeed on here and give them advice on how to pitch a programme idea. I wouldn't do that for an executive producer or another company, unless they were going to pay me. It's the latter case here; Studio Lambert get my ideas and format thoughts, not you, or Aitch or anyone else, and make their tidy production fee from them if it works. And as this is exactly the kind of popular factual primetime stuff that I used to develop and produce, I am reasonably confident that I could develop a format that might just be useful.

On another note, did anyone see that C4 format about thrifty people which is or was just on? Featuring a woman that they found on the internet helping out lots of people. It was truly, embarrassingly awful, and I only stuck out the half hour to find out who were the guilty parties. But the format does rather remind me of this one...

and that sounds a lot more patronising now I read it back - sorry :)

Ladies a touch of realism here please: there are a million daft people out there willing to make arses of themselves for no money on TV just to be famous.

However at which point does advice become chargeable?

If you ask my DH for legal advice in the office he'll send you a bill, sit next to him in a (virtual) pub and he'll give you the same (okay a slightly less coherently if it's in a real pub) view for nothing. It's about context.

If you ask my opinion on something on FB

well if you are looking to scout for new employees then have a look at the freelance boards, Ros, there are plenty of super-smart ex-tv types there with a wealth of experience who found that they weren't so popular when their kids started making demands on their time. They are, of course, the people who should be making MNTV.
another excellent post from oneshortofasandwich, i think. agree that the challenge is to represent us, not rip us off.

I absolutely agree that tv can be a tricky industry to work in if you are a mother - particluarly if you are working on programmes that involve filming away on location. And yes - I would love to employ women with children on this project. I think it's very important. On the other series that I'm working on at the moment two out of four of the producer/directors are mothers of young children.

I can't tell you off the top of my head how many parents there are in our company at the moment - there are so many people coming and going it's hard to tell, but I would say that (like the rest of the industry) the majority of people are young and childless. However, I can say that Studio Lambert is very parent-friendly and they try to be as flexible as possible with the hours. 5 out of 8 of the senior members of staff here have children - 3 are men and 2 are women.

LOVE that someone loves it! I think it makes me sound like an old spinster... which actually isn't far off the truth! Now what was it that whomovedmychocolate was saying about veering off on wild tangents?!!..

Aitch, me too - and I'd happily write it all out for a fellow MN'er, but give it to a production company for free? Don't think so.

What I will say, though, is that I think the wrong question has been asked. Rather than 'how do we put MN on tv?', the question should be, how can we make a programme which is as funny, compelling, irreverent, informative, opinionated and democratic as MN, a programme which reflects as much about women's lives as the site does - from feminists to slimming clubs, chicken keepers to disabled parents?

And the answer to that question is not a few mums giving their thoughts to some other mums about childcare. To me, that is such a small proportion of what MN is about, that it's actually rather belittling of the site.

While I'm not giving out format ideas for free, I would say that one thing that would be crucial for my programme is that contributors would make their own films about their problems. That would at least be a bit like it is here.

Meanwhile, two questions. Rosa/Freya: are you able so say how many people in your office have children, in particular how many women? And would you employ women with children on the programme.? One of the ironies of this set up is that tv has a truly appalling record in employing women with children, and it's one of the most child-unfriendly industries there is, with silly working hours, short term contracts and no flexibility (hence the fact that, even despite 17 years of quite senior work, I don't do it any more). It would be rather ironic if MN the programme was made on that basis.

Also, Justine: You said: "approached by the production company - Studio Lambert - to work together to come up with a pilot for the show." MN is a hot property - have you not interviewed a few prod companies to see who is a good fit with MN? At the moment the production company and the channel have all the power in this relationship and my general experience of this is that you probably won't like (or at least we probably won't like) what comes out the other end. Do you have much editorial control?

LOVE the name rosamund.

Wish my name was Rosa - that would make me sound pretty. It's actually Rosamund, which somehow got shortened to 'Ros' as a child and mostly gets me muddled with 'Ross' and assumed to be a boy.

charge 'em, whomoved. don't give them anything for free. personally i can think of an excellent way to do a lovely, ace, MN type show but will i give it up for free, will i bollocks...

Rosa/Freya (how come everyone in media companies has names ending in an a btw? ): May I suggest you head over to Mumsnet classics to get a flavour of what makes Mumsnet very special. It's that we do veer off on wild tangents and get ourselves into sticky situations but are willing to laugh at ourselves at the same time and appreciate that we are completely fallible.

To this end I don't actually see why anonymity is such an issue. Surely you could take a range of views from people on here, assign them to a stoodge who could say them, deadpan and make good interesting telly.

If people want anonymity they don't have to be directly involved, just give their consent.

To be completely honest, 95% of the stuff on here (and I am including my own posts before I get whacked with kippers for being boastful) are inane drivel. It's the 5% gold which runs down the middle that matters.

So just use that.

Anything online is open to scrutiny and anybody who posts online in the same way. I'm not saying be insensitive and chunter on through people's posts about domestic violence but for example, the really juicy bits of Mumsnet tend to be funny and irreverent and yes the posters themselves might not want to say them but they were quite chuffed when featured in the Mumsnet books, for example. (And just FYI JUSTINE where's my bloody mention eh? Do I say nothing of practical use at all hmmm? Actually no you are right, I don't, forget it )

Totally appreciate all the concerns about anonymity - we need to put a lot of thought into this because, as many of you have pointed out, we want to capture the spirit of the site which relies on people being super-frank.

We definitely want to get a wide cross-section of responses to any issues that we feature - so I think the comparison to the newspaper column is a good one.

Totally appreciate that not everyone was a fan of 'Love Thy Neighbour' but I would like to point out that we make a wide variety of programmes, so please do have a look at the Studio Lambert website if you want to know more.

And snippy is cool - I'd rather people tell me where I'm going wrong! We really don't mean to ignore anyone - we're just trying to catch up with all the posts while juggling other stuff. We are reading everything and taking all thoughts on board. It's incredibly helpful to hear everyone's opinions, so thank you to everyone for taking the time to give your feedback.

alright rosa, sorry for being snippy, it did just look like the two sl posters were ignoring a lot of people's serious misgivings.

I'd also like to direct you all to Studio Lambert's recent programme "Love thy Neighbour" and ask yourselves if you'd be happy to be one of the residents of the village featured there.

I agree with Aitch. The biggest issue is the anonymity factor. I just cannot see a way around this not being exploitative.

Apologies - I didn't mean to be rude. The newer posts popped up while I was still responding to the last two. I am trying to do too many things at once and not replying fast enough. From now on I will stop attempting (and failing) to multitask!

(it's actually a bit rude to cherry-pick who to answer on forums like this, rosa... i'd have thought you would know that, being such a long-term lurker.)

Twit - Thanks for your feedback. Please be reassured that we will not be using any posts that are currently on this site. We totally understand and appreciate that anonymity is very important to a lot of people here and we have no intention of featuring anyone's words without their permission. At the moment we are hoping to find parents looking for advice who haven't already posted their story on the site, and then we will invite people to offer their support, ideas etc. And yes - this will definitely be made for a post 8pm broadcast!

Cattledprod - Thank you too. We're hoping to feature a wide range of issues - from serious to lighthearted. I have been moved to tears by some of the threads and laugh out loud at others, and it would be great to reflect that mix in the programmes. However, we are aware that there will be some people with serious issues that are best supported away from television cameras, and we will be taking professional advice on any issues that come up involving potentially vulnerable people.