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.[2] It has made entertainment series and factual specials which have sold all over the world. It also produces communications and corporate media for businesses.
Two Open Media productions were featured during the 25th anniversary of Channel 4 in autumn 2007: The Secret Cabaret[3] and After Dark[4] were shown again on More4 during the celebratory season.
After Dark has been widely praised, particularly for its subject matter and as a ground-breaking format for a talk show.[5][6][7][8] In 2023 After Dark was picked as one of the best ever tv shows in history in the centenary edition of the Radio Times.[9]
In November 2020, the company announced it had digitised its archive to make extracts from all its programmes available to the film, television and advertising industries.[10]
Entertainment series include The Secret Cabaret and Don't Quote Me, hosted by Geoffrey Perkins, an example of a panel show.
Factual series and specials include
as well as various films for Channel 4's Equinox, e.g. Secrets of the Super Psychics, Superpowers?[18] and Theme Park Heaven.[19] Another Open Media film for Equinox - The Big Sleep[20] - was the subject of a lengthy article in 2022.[21]
The company mounted an unusual discussion - Weird Thoughts[22] for BBC2 - in 1994. This was characterised in an article in 2021 as follows: "Weird Thoughts, where Tony Wilson chairs a panel of experts debating why the 1990s seem so very strange. There are a lot of familiar faces here – the late James Randi, Fortean Times founder Bob Rickard, esoteric scholar Lynn Picknett – but today the biggest name is the one hovering around the back of the gathering: a young Mary Beard."[23]
One of the company's documentary specials – The Mediator[24] – was described in the British Medical Journal as providing "a new clinical role for a community psychiatrist – namely, healing rifts between gangs of aggressive young men in two neighbourhoods...a lively and well reasoned example of what can be done by a professional with group and family mediation skills."[25] A documentary on advertising agency M&C Saatchi required two months filming: "The brief was to expand on ideas from the company's manifesto...It's the first time the Saatchi breakaway has allowed unrestricted access behind scenes."[26]