Open Media

For other uses, see Open Media (disambiguation).
After Dark with Harry Belafonte, Denis Worrall, Breyten Breytenbach and others

Open Media is a British television production company, best known for the discussion series After Dark, described in the national press as "the most original programme on television".[1]

The company was founded in 1987 and has produced more than 400 hours of television for major UK broadcasters, including the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. It has made entertainment series and factual specials which have sold all over the world. It also produces communications and corporate media for some of Britain's most important businesses.

Open Media programmes have been nominated for many awards by the Royal Television Society and the British Academy BAFTA.

Two different Open Media productions were featured during the 25th anniversary of Channel 4 in autumn 2007: The Secret Cabaret[2] and After Dark[3] were shown again on More4 during the celebratory season.

In 2009 the British Film Institute announced that Open Media, in partnership with The National Archives, the Parliamentary Broadcasting Unit,[4] FremantleMedia and the BBC, makes programmes available online through 'InView' as "examples of how some of Britain's key social, political and economic issues have been represented and debated".[5]

In 2010 the Open Media series Opinions and After Dark were praised as "two of the best talk-shows ever seen on British television" in a well-reviewed book of social and cultural history.[6] In 2012 After Dark featured prominently in a number of two-page tributes in British newspapers on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Channel 4[7] and in 2016 The Herald wrote "Unlike reality television live feeds today, After Dark was essential viewing, with some very serious talk enlivened even more by unexpected events."[8] In 2020 The Guardian listed After Dark as one of the "jewels" in the history of television.[9]

The company recently announced it had digitised its archive to make extracts from all its programmes available to the film, television and advertising industries: "Interviews, talk shows, magic and entertainment shows featuring hundreds of hours of personalities from all over the world who made rare appearances on our programmes, rare because they did not appear elsewhere on television; or only very occasionally and not at such length; or they weren't subject to such focussed scrutiny as our formats gave them."[10]

  1. ^ Angela Lambert, 'A modern twist to an old, old story', The Independent, 15 September 1991.
  2. ^ "Channel 4 at 25 – Page 5 – TV Forum". Tvforum.uk. Retrieved 18 January 2016.
  3. ^ "Channel 4 at 25 – After Dark – TV Shows: UK – Digital Spy Forums". Digital Spy. 27 October 2007. Retrieved 18 January 2016.
  4. ^ The Committee Office, House of Commons. "House of Commons – Broadcasting – First Report". Parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
  5. ^ "Home | BFI InView". Bfi.org.uk. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
  6. ^ Alwyn W. Turner, Rejoice! Rejoice! Britain in the 1980s, Aurum Press, 2010, ISBN 978-1781310724
  7. ^ Just don't f*** it up, The Guardian, 1 December 2012, and The Sunday Times and The Observer, 2 December 2012
  8. ^ "An instinctive look at the world is taken through a glass darkly", The Herald, Neil Cooper, 5 January 2016, accessed 13 September 2017
  9. ^ Rerun the jewels, Jack Seale, The Guardian, 18 April 2020, accessed 25 November 2020
  10. ^ Jerome Kuehl and Open Media, FOCAL newsletter, accessed 18 November 2020.