20 Facts About Peter Fincham

Peter Arthur Fincham was born on 26 July 1956 and is a British television producer and executive.

Peter Fincham was formerly the controller of BBC One, the primary television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation, until his resignation on 5 October 2007, following criticism over the handling of the Monarchy: The Royal Family at Work debacle.

Peter Fincham joined the Cambridge Footlights production team as musical director, alongside a committee which included Griff Rhys Jones, Jimmy Mulville, Rory McGrath and Clive Anderson.

Peter Fincham became the company's managing director in 1986, and in 1989 oversaw the move of TalkBack into fully-fledged television production when it produced its founders' sketch show Smith and Jones for BBC One.

Peter Fincham was an executive producer on many of these programmes.

Peter Fincham helped to establish TalkBack as a noted producer in other genres, with the company moving into drama with Stephen Poliakoff's Shooting the Past in 1999.

In 2001, Peter Fincham was given an Indie Award for outstanding contribution to the independent production sector.

Fremantle merged TalkBack with another of its acquisitions, Thames Television, to form the new Talkback Thames production company, of which Peter Fincham became the chief executive in February 2003.

Peter Fincham remained in this position until he left at the beginning of 2005, after 20 years at TalkBack and its successor company, claiming he wanted "a new challenge and a new adventure".

Peter Fincham was regarded in some quarters as a surprising choice as controller, as prior to his appointment he had never worked for either the BBC or any other broadcaster, having spent his career in the independent production sector.

Peter Fincham directly initiated the creation of both the early evening current affairs and lifestyle programme The One Show and the prime time chat show Davina, the latter designed as a vehicle for presenter Davina McCall.

However, Davina was a critical and ratings disaster, which Peter Fincham subsequently admitted was personally his fault, although he defended the strategy of experimenting with the BBC One schedule.

Peter Fincham made another notable change to the schedule in January 2007, when he moved the current affairs series Panorama back from Sunday nights to the prime time Monday evening slot it had been removed from in 2000, although this decision was at least partly in response to a demand from the board of governors of the BBC for the channel to show more current affairs programming in prime time.

On 18 May 2007, Peter Fincham decided to drop the Australian soap opera Neighbours from BBC One after 21 years on the channel, when its producers increased the price they wanted the BBC to pay for it in a bidding war.

Peter Fincham was involved in a further controversy in July 2007, when introducing a press conference to publicise BBC One's forthcoming autumn season programming for later in the year.

Peter Fincham admitted the error, and initially rejected calls that he should resign from his position as a result.

On 28 February 2008 it was announced that the ITV network, the BBC's main rival, had hired Peter Fincham to be its new director of television.

At the Edinburgh Television Festival in August 2008, Peter Fincham claimed that broadcasters such as ITV were under too much pressure from industry regulator Ofcom to produce programmes that were only of a minority interest, as opposed to pure entertainment programmes for a mainstream audience.

In January 2016, ITV announced that Peter Fincham had decided to step down as director of television and leave the company.

Outside of broadcasting, Peter Fincham co-edited The Utterly Utterly Merry Comic Relief Christmas Book with author Douglas Adams in 1986.