What are your commissioning priorities?

Channel 4 factual entertainment is about having the very best large scale entertaining formats, on-screen talent and successful returning 9pm brands.

We have a world stable of talent featuring Heston Blumenthal, Gordon Ramsay, Kevin McCloud, Mary Portas, Jimmy Doherty, and Jamie Oliver but we are always looking for new talent to present our hit shows. Finding exciting, original and qualified factual entertainment faces is a massive priority for us and we would love indies to send us biogs or showreels of charistmatic experts who they think could cut through and be a distinctive face on Channel 4.

Our other key priority is to create returnable 9pm formats (with or without talent at the heart of them).

We want more accessible, entertaining, purposeful series like Undercover Boss and Secret Millionare. Which immersive and subversive series can we create?

What are you not interested in?

Ideas which don't feel original, distinctive or feel derivative.

Programmes which aren't entertaining in tone.

Ideas which don't push boundaries and take risks.

What are the tariff prices for programmes you currently commission?

£170K

What is the biggest creative challenge your team or genre faces?

Perhaps our biggest challenge is to find the next subject area. We have numerous cookery and property shows but what other areas in life could we explore or even revisit? We don't want to be overly prescriptive about what we're looking for but it may be helpful for you to think about 9pm ways of doing traditional 8pm subject areas - Health, Body Image, Parenting, Business, shopping, sex and relationships.

We would also like to ask indies to think about ways we could change the form and structure of fact ent series'. We are all so used to the makeover and transformational structure but we'd love you to think about completely different ways to tell a story - whether it's by playing around with format points or by altering and subverting the way we film the shows.

What advice would you give to new talent companies keen to connect with your team?

We are keen to get to know and commission new and smaller production companies. We are aware that it's very hard for lesser known indies to break into Channel 4 and would suggest that the best way to get our attention is to email one line ideas to a member of the commissioning team. If your first idea isn't successful don't let that put you off - keep sending us new ideas until one of them strikes the right chord.