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In a TV studio on the banks of the Thames in London, a crew of comedians try — and virtually fully failing — to get fun out of a gameshow viewers.

It feels considerably unsettling at first. Studio audiences aren’t often essentially the most comically discerning. However right here, that’s the entire level. Every time an viewers member a lot as sniggers or sneezes, cash is docked from a prize pot of £250,000 ($330,000), the slightest noise costing them as much as £10,000 ($13,000) every time. Sadly for them, all 75 are on digicam and mic’d up, with a crew of stern-looking officers on the facet monitoring fluctuating quantity ranges and able to press a buzzer.

“Silence is Golden” — because it’s referred to as — launches on UKTV on Might 5. In one thing of a rarity, the format has already been offered to 4 different international locations throughout Europe and Latin America earlier than it’s even aired a single episode.

The present marks the primary out of the gate for Sure Sure Media, the indie manufacturing firm launched in 2023 that, and not using a second of televised content material to its identify, managed to draw a formidable — and eclectic — array of buyers. Amongst them are Elisabeth Murdoch’s inventive powerhouse Sister (which produced the likes of “Black Doves” and “Chernobyl”) and French unscripted TV big Satisfaction. Then there’s former “Associates” star Courtney Cox, Snow Patrol musician Johnny McDaid and pop genius and frequent Ariana Grande collaborator Savan Kotecha (an Oscar nominee for “Eurovision Music Contest: The Story of Hearth Saga” music “Husavik”).

“Silence is Golden” can be the brainchild of Sure Sure founder Richard Bacon, who just lately returned to London to spearhead his firm after a 9-year spell in LA .

Because the Brit — greatest identified within the U.Okay. as a TV and radio host for the perfect a part of 20 years beginning within the late 90s — enthusiastically explains from the Sure Sure workplaces within the well-heeled neighbourhood of Primrose Hill, the idea for the present got here to him one morning.

“I wakened with this picture in my head of [Brit comedian and TV host] Jimmy Carr standing in entrance a studio viewers who weren’t allowed to make any noise — in the event that they did they began dropping cash,” he says whereas eyeing up a bowl of croissants. “And I simply thought: that’s a format. So then I spent three hours writing it.”

Bacon, as he freely admits, lives and breathes concepts. “They make me pleased,” the 49-year-old says with a beaming smile, noting that his recently-diagnosed “sturdy strand” of ADHD permits him to take pleasure in “hyper-focusing” on each. “I’ll be occupied with concepts and refining concepts at 9pm on Saturday evening or on Christmas Day and I’ll be waking up at 4am and placing notes on my cellphone.”

It’s Bacon’s penchant for concepts — and never simply these involving an awkwardly silent studio — that his buyers (which had been, for essentially the most half, mates earlier than they turned enterprise companions) have all purchased into.

He’s a “uniquely gifted inventive” with an “extraordinary capacity to generate authentic, scalable concepts that resonate globally,” says Murdoch (who herself arrange “Masterchef” producer Shine earlier than launching Sister with Jane Featherstone). Satisfaction founder Arther Essebeg (who, like Bacon, began his profession on native radio) merely notes that, “Richard actually does suppose in another way.”

Bacon’s concepts are on the beating coronary heart of Sure Sure, which has itself blossomed from an concept right into a bustling inventive outfit the place, he proudly asserts, there’s “quite a bit happening abruptly.”

Certainly, he’s talking in entrance of a wall on which a neatly displayed grid of A4 sheets function quick blurbs for nearly 30 ideas spanning expertise, quiz, actuality, relationship and cooking exhibits, plus dwell occasions. Most are lined in colourful Publish-It notes on which updates have been scribbled.

Among the ideas are just some phrases with a screen-grabbed picture from a movie — a unfastened concept that most likely wants some main padding out, however others are fully-fledged tasks which might be transferring ahead at tempo. Three go into pilot this summer time, together with a quiz present, a serious expertise present being developed for a U.S. community and an journey actuality collection “on a Survivor-type scale, however with absurdity in it,” for a streamer. Bacon says one other expertise present and one other actuality present have simply gone into funded growth with streamers.

A sizeable variety of the A4 sheets point out the names of very recognizable figures from the world of TV and music (most of whom, likes his buyers, are, or have turn out to be Bacon’s mates). One present in late-stage growth is about to mark the primary small display outing for a serious Hollywood star, who will — hopefully — entrance a particularly high-concept recreation present straddling TV and video gaming.

Lots of the concepts sound hilarious. “We will’t do something that isn’t humorous,” laughs Bacon. “It’s obtained to have a narrative in it, and a superb story. However essentially, it will probably’t not be humorous.”

For all Bacon’s passionate descriptions of every present, be it a “hybrid of Huge Brother and the X-Issue,” a format merely referred to as “The Best Quiz Present within the World” or one other with the topline “One Girl, One Downside: Too Many Males,” plus some very spectacular sizzle reels, little can — but — be formally introduced.

However what may be mentioned is Sure Sure’s proprietary know-how, the WOMI, nonetheless in check mode and a number of other months away from its official launch.

A significant basis of Bacon’s imaginative and prescient for Sure Sure being a “codecs firm that straddles TV and tech,” the WOMI appears and seems like an iPhone in a somewhat cumbersome, military-grade case. But it surely may shake up and simplify unscripted programming by placing, as he explains, “a actuality TV crew in your pocket”.

Primarily, when the WOMI cellphone is picked up, a TV-quality digicam on the entrance immediately begins recording an in depth up of the consumer — in panorama — as they have a look at the display whereas the one on the again concurrently data regardless of the cellphone is pointing at. In the meantime, any on display exercise reminiscent of textual content messaging or video calls is captured. After which as soon as the cellphone is put down, every of those particular person recordings is changed into information and despatched to the cloud to allow them to instantly be edited remotely.

“It’s not a client product, as a result of that’s a loopy funding,” says Bacon. “What we’ve performed is a B2B factor — it’s by producers for producers, it’s for tv, it’s for manufacturers, it prints content material for YouTube and it’s going to be in numerous our exhibits.”

It additionally got here to Bacon throughout one other brainwave, this time whereas hanging out with three-time Oscar nominee Stephen Daldry. “We had been watching a Christopher Nolan movie collectively, and he advised me that the key to all display drama is the shut up,” he says. “And it simply obtained me pondering how all the most important information you study in your life is in your cellphone, so that you’re truly placing your self in shut up for all the most important information you’ll ever study.” Bacon reached out to software program engineer mates in LA, now a part of Sure Sure, and challenged them to construct one thing that would harness this.

To showcase the WOMI’s capabilities by way of actuality filmmaking, Sure Sure has produced an early check of a “self-shot” collection through which a gaggle of faculty college students got WOMI telephones and requested to go about their days. The footage provides what Bacon describes as “genuine, uncooked content material,” highlighting a scene from the promo through which we see one of many ladies writing to a boy she’s been flirting with on her cellphone as her excited mates watch on, the animated ellipses exhibiting that he was writing again and the gasps from the group studying the display as he does so.

“I checked out their reactions and I assumed, okay, with WOMI, something is a drama,” Bacon says. “The way in which I consider it’s the approach that, like ‘Planet Earth’ captured bats flying at evening, that is capturing youngsters within the wild.”

Sure Sure now plans to self-finance “The School Ladies of Liverpool” as a 10-15 minute episode size collection, which it’ll put straight onto YouTube with sponsorship, adopted by a U.S. model “The School Ladies of Miami.”

However that is simply the beginning. There are various — many — different plans for the WOMI that embody incorporating it not simply into Sure Sure codecs, however utilizing it in pre-existing exhibits produced elsewhere and providing it to manufacturers. WOMI was used within the firm’s first step into dwell occasions, the Purple Bull Tradition Conflict, a head-to-head music battle held in London’s big Drumsheds that it broadcast dwell. Utilizing the WOMI — which he says will quickly be capable of live-stream — individuals within the crowd or backstage can successfully turn out to be a part of the crew.

The “loopy factor,” Bacon factors out, is that he just lately secured the patent for the know-how, one thing he admits he wasn’t anticipating. “We’ve obtained absolutely the monopoly, via U.S. patent regulation, to construct a tool that data the display and your reactions to the display on the identical time.”

However the WOMI — which Bacon counsel is “in some methods our largest challenge, and in addition barely the slowest” — isn’t only a fancy gizmo that provides a brand new close-up private contact to unscripted TV. It’s one thing that would additionally assist drive Sure Sure’s fortunes throughout an unsure time for the leisure sector.

“I don’t wish to simply depend on getting 10% of a manufacturing charge, as a result of this can be a declining market — and people charges get capped anyway,” claims Bacon. With the know-how — if leased out to TV producers or provided to manufacturers with a income share system — the corporate will get to open up complete new income streams, because it does via discovering sponsoring for its self-made YouTube exhibits.

“It’s warning towards the truth that the business is in a little bit of a humorous place,” says Bacon. “So actually we’re simply making an attempt to suppose in another way.”

Even with little to point out for it by way of precise tangible content material on the market to see proper now, all of it genuinely sounds very spectacular (presuming you’ll be able to sustain with Bacon as he pinballs haphazardly — and charmingly — from one thought to the following). However for Brits of a sure age, turning into a hyper-creative tech-focussed innovator on this planet of unscripted TV most likely wasn’t what they had been anticipating from him.

Beginning out on BBC radio on the age of 17 within the early Nineties, a 21-year-old Bacon landed a life-changing TV break as a number on iconic youngsters present “Blue Peter” in 1997. However this might finish in infamy 18 months later, when he was sacked following a tabloid information report of him taking cocaine. “12-hour medicine romp disgrace of youngsters’ TV idol,” blasted the (now defunct) Information of the World (funnily sufficient, run by Murdoch senior). Such was the seriousness of the matter, the BBC’s then kids’s head was compelled to go on air to awkwardly clarify the firing to its younger viewers.

Bacon’s cancellation didn’t final lengthy, and just some months later he was among the many buzzy younger faces fronting the groundbreaking and anarchic 90s morning present “The Huge Breakfast” (a job he says first obtained him “into the mindset of concepts”). Many extra TV and radio gigs would observe, earlier than an prolonged run because the host of his personal discuss radio present with the BBC. However in 2014 he jacked all of it in, transferring to LA along with his spouse and two kids.

When a U.S. travelogue TV idea fell via (truly earlier than Bacon had even left the U.Okay.) what adopted was an virtually year-long interval of unemployment, damaged when he landed a gig as presenter of the Nationwide Geographic Channel’s “Explorer.” The debut present: mountaineering via Yosemite with Barack Obama within the ultimate days of his presidency. “And that was my first day’s work in America!” he says. There could be different jobs, most on U.S. daytime TV, after which, in the summertime of 2018, Bacon skilled a type of seismic life-altering moments.

“I went right into a coma — and I used to be anticipated to die,” he somewhat nonchalantly explains. A lung an infection — first felt whereas on a flight again to London from LA — compelled medical doctors to place Bacon into an induced coma, which he solely wakened from 9 days later.

“And that modified all the things. Once I got here out of that I assumed: I’m going to do what I supposed to do, which is provide you with codecs,” he says. And so, prompted by this “close to demise factor,” that’s what he did, quitting a job and over the next yr writing three codecs that went to pilot after which to collection. NBC signed him up on an general deal, earlier than he would got down to chart his personal course within the unscripted world with Sure Sure Media.

After all, it helped that by this stage the naturally gregarious and very likeable Bacon had, over a close to three-decade profession in each the U.Okay. and U.S., amassed a big circle of influential business mates. Amongst them, Elisabeth Murdoch, who “purchased into the imaginative and prescient” for Sure Sure via Sister when it was simply an concept. “They’re excellent at backing creatives,” he says.

By way of a friendship with Snow Patrol’s McDaid, he had obtained to know his associate Cox — “simply actually such a pleasant individual” — whereas additionally turning into shut with Kotecha (“we actually communicate daily”). All three additionally joined as buyers. As did Essebeg’s Satisfaction.

“Certain, I do know all these individuals, however they’re all proficient they usually’re all fascinating — it’s, selfishly, about having buyers that I get on with, that I’m snug with socially, but in addition are strategically useful to the corporate,” he says, including that he’s been writing codecs with each McDaid and Kotecha.

There’s additionally the Sure Sure creatives that Bacon has assembled round him. As he explains, with zero bravado, “all concepts begin with me, all of them.” It’s not all the way down to conceitedness or any sense of megalomania, however somewhat Bacon’s ADHD. “It’s actually arduous to elucidate, however I’m simply not that good with different individuals’s concepts, even when they’re nice,” he says. “For me to actually care about it a method or one other the thought has to start out with me, in any other case I don’t actually know what to do with it.”

Whereas an unorthodox inventive course of for any manufacturing firm, what Bacon does have is an “elite crew that deliver these concepts into life.” Amongst them are his two massive league hires, introduced on board in late 2023. Head of leisure Mark Sidaway, generally known as “Sid,” is a five-time BAFTA-winning exec producer and served as showrunner on “The X Issue” for 10 seasons. Sidaway is main Sure Sure’ “massive push” into dwell occasions. Then there’s director of manufacturing Lydia Arding, poached from Hilary and Chelsea Clinton’s label Hidden Mild. Arding was beforehand head of factual manufacturing at producer-agency big “Avalon.”

It’s this crew’s job, alongside receiving random emails late on a Saturday evening with every lightbulb second, to hone down no matter concepts Bacon comes up with right into a manageable choice of precise workable codecs. As a result of with ADHD, he warns, it’s “very simple to have a great deal of concepts and never end them.”

Bacon factors to a room on the different finish of the workplace the place they collect to enhance ideas and “construct the deck and write and refine, write and refine,” again and again till they’re pleased. “At one level there have been 4-fucking-9 in there, however now there are 12 that we’re growing,” he says. “12 continues to be rather a lot once you say it out loud, nevertheless it’s not 49!”

With its patented proprietary tech, A-list buyers, a format that’s now hitting screens and has already been offered globally and lots of extra coming down the pipeline, Sure Sure Media appears and seems like a high-concept startup that hit the bottom working and has solely accelerated since. And it completely is that.

However there’s additionally a delightfully frenzied and unpredictable power to firm, as if it may abruptly, out of nowhere — and completely casually — discover the following main globe-spanning format in leisure. It might have already got it — it might be someplace on the wall, maybe simply three phrases printed on an A4 sheet and awaiting refinement.

However no matter this subsequent main globe-spanning format in leisure is, it’s extremely prone to have first come to Sure Sure’ creatively-charged mad genius founder as an concept at 4am within the morning and rapidly written into his cellphone.

As Bacon excitedly explains, “I wish to put chaos in all the things, actually.”