ITV somehow made £1,000,000 loss on Mr Bates vs The Post Office despite incredible reaction-Meghna Amin-Entertainment – Metro

ITV boss Kevin Lygo has revealed the hit drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office made a loss of around a million pounds.

This comes despite the roaring audience reaction and the four-part series being sold to a host of foreign broadcasters.

Starring the likes of Will Mellor, Toby Jones and Monica Dolan, the drama took the country by storm, and launched one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in UK history back into the spotlight.

It followed the story of former sub postmaster Alan Bates who lost his Post Office in north Wales after being accused of theft, and soon discovered that he was not alone, with  hundreds of others who had been affected by the scandal, but had done nothing wrong.

Dozens of innocent people were convicted of theft, lost their homes and went into debt, and 236 went to prison. Four people also took their own lives.

The programme prompted public outrage and help put the Horizon scandal under the spotlight.

Lygo, the managing director of media and entertainment of ITV, told the Voice of the Listener & Viewer (VLV) spring conference on Wednesday: ‘Mr Bates has made a loss of something like a million pounds and we can’t continually do this.

‘Of course, some things are very profitable on the channel, and some things aren’t.

Mr Bates vs The Post Office told the shocking true story of the Horizon scandal (Picture: ITV)

‘But it’s a challenge to be able to fund some of the things that aren’t, obviously, of international appeal.

‘We’re hoping this may be because it caused such a furore here that maybe sales will pick up, but there’s no evidence of it yet.

‘If you’re in Lithuania, four hours on the British Post Office? Not really, thank you very much. So you can see the challenges here.’

He said the challenge for mainstream television broadcasters at the moment is ‘getting enough audiences to turn up on the night’ to watch their shows.

Lygo explained that five or six years ago, they would have expected a show like Mr Bates to bring in around six or seven million viewers but that now an overnight audience rating of four million is as ‘good as you get’.

The ITV boss also said he knew the show was ’emotional’ and ‘well told’ after the first watch, but admitted he did not realise how much of a stir it would cause.

The show brought the issue back to the attention of the public and parliament, with the former Post Office boss Paula Vennells later announcing she planned to hand back her CBE following the scandal.

The series starred Toby Jones as Alan Bates who soon discovered he was not alone (Picture: ITV/Shutterstock)

Will Mellor played sub post-master Lee Castleton (Picture: ITV)

Lygo said: ‘These days, it is harder and harder to guess in advance now what something is going to do and whether people will turn up at all.

‘There is so much choice and competition now in your homes every night… Everything that’s ever been made, you can watch now and there is some wonderful stuff out there, it’s quite hard to find.

‘But the competition, none of us have ever seen anything like this and that’s the real pressure on the production community, on commercial broadcasters, in getting sufficient audiences and the right audiences for various commercial partners…

‘That’s the reason we’re all a bit tense and nervous these days.’

Due to pressure on the broadcaster from various angles, ITV is currently trying to save £150 million.

Discussing how ITV’s cost-saving measures will affect viewers, Lygo said: ‘In the first instance, we’re trying to find every penny that we can, not on the screen.

The series sparked immense public outrage (Picture: ITV/REX/Shutterstock)

‘So we’ve got to turn over every stone in the office, so to speak, to make cuts there. To really, yet again, re-examine what it is we should do, what we don’t have to do, how can we change the way we’re doing things.’

He also said that the broadcaster is looking at whether technology and artificial intelligence can be utilised to help them make ‘programmes more efficiently and cheaper’.

Mr Bates vs. The Post Office became ITV’s biggest new drama in over a decade, even beating the launch of Downton Abbey in 2010.

ITV confirmed to Metro.co.uk that the series averaged 9.8million viewers across its four episodes, and including post-seven day viewing, the first three episodes have been watched by over 10.6million viewers, with the launch currently averaging 10.9million after ten days of catch up.

The series, including the documentary, has had 16.6million streams so far on ITVX.

This comes after the writer behind Mr Bates revealed how ‘ecstatic’ the postmasters are and how ‘astounded’ she is by the impact of the drama.

Millions of people threw their support behind the victims after learning of the Horizon scandal (Picture: ITV/REX/Shutterstock)

Former Post Office boss Paula Vennells handed back her CBE after a petition (Picture: PA)

Having spent three years researching the story, writer Gwyneth Hughes said, according to The Guardian: ‘None of us expected this. I thought it was quite a niche story which would get respectable viewing figures but I was completely wrong.’

‘I’m thrilled about it on every level, but it’s been a massive team effort, a team that includes hundreds of postmasters,’ she added.

Since the drama aired, millions of people have thrown their support behind the real victims of the incident, and have been left devastated after learning of the true story.

A petition to strip ex-Post Office chief Paula Vennells, who was in leadership when the company wrongly prosecuted hundreds of its employees, of her CBE reached over 1,000,000 signatures and she eventually announced she will hand it back.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak also announced new legislation to exonerate and pay £75,000 in compensation to each sub-postmaster wrongfully convicted, as only 93 have so far had their names cleared.

Mr Bates vs The Post Office is available to watch on ITVX.

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