The silence over gay footballers

There are currently around 5,000 professional footballers in Britain, but none are openly gay. Amal Fashanu, niece of Justin Fashanu, asks why no gay player has followed in her uncle’s boots in nearly 25 years.

My late uncle, Justin Fashanu remains the only professional footballer in Britain ever to come out publicly as gay.

Justin broke into football as a teenage prodigy at Norwich. In 1980 he won the BBC’s goal of the season award for an incredible strike against Liverpool. I still feel a surge of family pride every time I watch it.

It’s the casual celebration which always gets me. That was Justin. Effortlessly talented, effortlessly stylish, if a touch cocky.

But what I learned about Justin is that, sadly, “that goal” marked the high point of his career.

He was catapulted to fame, when Nottingham Forest paid a million pound-transfer fee to Norwich. But it was largely downhill from there.

Justin Fashanu

• Justin Fashanu was brought up by foster parents and the children’s charity Barnardo’s
• Signed to Norwich City at the age of 14, by his late teens he had risen to the first team
• In the early 1980s, he was a rising star at Norwich City and scored a famous goal against Liverpool
• At Norwich he made it to the England B team
• In 1981 he became the first black player to command a £1m transfer fee
• Came out as gay in 1990
• Accused of sexual assault in 1998 while in US
• Took his own life soon afterwards

Forest’s manager, the famous Brian Clough – or in my family the infamous – took a disliking to Justin.

In his autobiography, Clough recounts the confrontation he had with Justin over rumours about frequenting gay clubs in Nottingham:

“‘Where do you go if you want a loaf of bread?’ I asked him. ‘A baker’s, I suppose.’ ‘Where do you go if you want a leg of lamb?’ ‘A butcher’s.’ ‘So why do you keep going to that bloody poofs’ club?’”

Those were the typical attitudes Justin faced in his profession, and very little had changed by the time he took the momentous decision to come out publicly a decade later in 1990.

These prejudices he had to endure saddened, rather than shocked, me. But what I did find surprising was the slow pace of change within football since my uncle’s courageous step into the limelight.

I learned Justin was no angel, but he genuinely believed he was setting an example to other players facing discrimination. Sadly, it’s an example no other gay player has felt able to follow in nearly 25 years.

Why? Several reasons, I discovered. Matt Lucas, comedian, avid Arsenal supporter and one of Britain’s best known gay football fans, shocked me with his description of the homophobia still prevalent on the terraces.

But I learned it’s not simply a case of the terraces frightening a gay player from coming forward. Max Clifford, the celebrity PR guru, pinpointed the role of agents and their perception that an openly gay player would be a weak commodity in the transfer market.

‘Footballers are afraid to come out,’ says Max Clifford

“If by their star coming out, it’s going to affect their earnings, then they won’t want them to do it,” says Clifford.

Clifford also told me he had been approached by gay and bisexual Premiership players, terrified that their sexuality would come out and petrified that this would mean the end of their careers.

Joey Barton, Queen’s Park Rangers outspoken captain, feels close to the issue as his father’s youngest brother initially hid his homosexuality. Barton highlighted “archaic figures” in management positions as an obstacle to gay players.

Former basketball star turned psychologist, John Amaechi, who came out after retiring as a professional sportsman, went even further.

“Football is clearly not that comfortable with women in board rooms. They’re clearly not that comfortable with black people in management positions. And so, when it comes to gay people, that just blows their mind,” said Amaechi.

Other organisations, like Kick It Out and Show Racism the Red Card and the Professional Footballers’ Association, have also added homophobia to their anti-discrimination agenda in recent times.

The Football Association, the game’s main governing body and so often the target for criticism over its shortcomings and failings, are about to launch a four-year plan aimed at encouraging more gay players to participate at grassroots level.

Barton was adamant that within the next 10 years there will be an openly gay footballer in the professional game.

However, I was left with the overwhelming feeling that progress has moved at a snail’s pace since Justin’s era. As someone from a different generation, who works in fashion with gay colleagues on a regular basis, I found this particularly hard to comprehend.

QPR’s captain Joey Barton has said within the next 10 years there will be an openly gay footballer.

As well as being a great eye opener here, my research allowed me to close a very difficult chapter in my family life, which has always bothered me. By the time Justin came out publicly, his relationship with my dad, John Fashanu had broken down.

My dad was upset that Justin had not at least consulted him before taking this step. When Justin later took his own life in 1998, following unfounded allegations of sexual assault in the US, it was shattering for my dad and family.

I think as a 10-year-old my family, rightly, tried to protect me. But I was deeply upset by watching a documentary about Justin’s life made shortly after he killed himself and discovering how my dad reacted in the media to Justin coming out.

He said his brother would have to “suffer the consequences” and that he “wouldn’t like to play or even get changed in the vicinity of him”. I also heard for the first time the message that Justin left in which he said he felt abandoned and alone.

Reliving that terrible time just made me wish I had been old enough back then to be there for Justin. I’m not saying I could have changed everything but I think he only needed that one family member or someone close to help. He shouldn’t have ever felt alone and I think that’s what most distressed me.

I spoke to my dad about his reaction at the time and asked him whether he would now have changed any of his actions.

“I’m not homophobic and I never had been, but at the time I was certainly cross with my brother,” said my dad.

“I sleep at night wondering all the time, could I have done more and I keep coming up with the answer, yes I could have done more. Does that console me? No. We’ve cried for nearly two decades for Justin, it’s enough.”

I think I’ve come to realise myself that maybe Justin wasn’t the perfect person that I had painted when I was 10 years old, and maybe he did do some things that upset our family. But having said that I still don’t excuse my dad for disowning his brother publicly.

My uncle’s death and this family episode were tragic. But this should never disguise that Justin was proud to be who he was and proud to have been a pioneer.

Discovery plots ‘World’ domination on formats

Company hypes prototype show for globalized TV

By Steve Clarke

LONDON — Even by showbiz standards, the hoopla surrounding the announcement of Discovery Networks Intl.’s upcoming five-part docu, “How We Invented the World,” seems a tad excessive.

The show, spotlighting the technological breakthroughs of the past century, including the automobile and the cell phone, and those likely to emerge in coming years, has been hyped as “the prototype for globalized TV in the future.”

“It’s epic in scale, idea and budget, but retains local flavor,” says Julian Bellamy, DNI’s new creative director and head of production and development, a role created for him.

Bellamy is the silver-tongued and boyish Brit who joined the U.S. cable web in June to spearhead what Discovery says is a “step change” in its international strategy, placing more commissioning power with execs outside the U.S. He’s is in charge of greenlighting docus and factual entertainment that can satisfy audiences across national boundaries.

Produced by Nutopia, responsible for History’s “America: The Story of Us,” the skein’s selling point purports to be the degree to which it can be localized to individual markets.

“It’s a ground-breaking creative model,” Bellamy says. “We’ll have an international master, but in key territories the show will be customized. We can swap out stories and interviewees, and swap in local ones.”

It is unclear how many countries will benefit from these hand-made versions, but Bellamy reckons it will be around 15 of the 210 territories in which Discovery Intl. is distributed.

Bellamy’s experience is extensive. He ran the U.K.’s Channel 4 programming team, where he was commissioning editor for “Big Brother” and greenlit breakout hit “My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding.” He also headed youth-friendly digital webs E4 and BBC3, and was regarded as being groomed for even bigger things in the British TV hierarchy.

Bellamy is one of the chief beneficiaries of Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s recent decision to up global programming spending from about $650 million to $1 billion a year, though the company declines to specify how much will be spent outside the U.S. Bellamy, however, gives the impression of an exec with money to spend, a rare bird these days.

With History and other channels in the international game, Discovery will need to depend less on U.S. shows and more on fare commissioned from outside the mother ship in Silver Spring, Md. Bellamy believes the Discovery brand and its association with quality storytelling will give the cabler an advantage over rivals.

This outside commissioning strategy has already borne promising results in Russia, with shows like “Daughters vs. Mother,” and in Poland with “Don’t Tell the Bride”; Poland is Discovery’s third biggest revenue source outside the U.S., after the U.K. and Brazil.

“The international division is at a point where to drive growth, we have to invest in more international production,” Bellamy says. “This is in addition to what we commission from the U.S. and our acquisitions.”

Bellamy, who reports to Miami-based Luis Silberwasser, DNI’s executive VP and chief content officer, oversees four production hubs — London, commissioning for Western Europe, Central Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa; Miami, commissioning for Latin America; Singapore, commissioning for Asia, Australia and New Zealand; and New York and Washington, D.C., for American companies pitching to the U.K.

Bellamy says there will always be a role for shows that work in a small number of markets, such as “Don’t Tell the Bride” and “Daughters vs. Mothers,” but that in the future, the emphasis will be on shows that are universal enough to work in many territories.

“Our big push is in funding that ambition in areas that we know work very well for Discovery,” Bellamy says, pointing to science, engineering, survival and adventure programming as key genres.

Some British producers have been reluctant to work for Discovery, which drives a hard bargain when it comes to retaining the backend rights producers share when their shows are bought by U.K. broadcasters. However, Discovery maintains it is already working with 70 U.K. shingles, including those involved in development deals, and Bellamy says compromises can be struck on rights.

“If there was a spectrum with the standard U.S. model at one end and the standard U.K. rights position at the other, we’re going to be somewhere between the two,” he says. “We are in the international television business. That means we are not in the game of taking rights for one market. We can be flexible.”

Much is riding on “How We Invented the World,” due to air in the second half of 2012, and Bellamy’s other early commissions. In the past, when DNI commissioning power has been ceded to London, it has not lasted long.

Bellamy maintains he will hold real autonomy at DNI. “Luis (Silberwasser) and Mark Hollinger (DNI’s prexy and CEO) hired me in to run it my way,” he says. “Everyone is on the same page. So long as people feel that we are commissioning great shows, we’ll get loads of space.”

To prove his point, Bellamy cites a recent documentary on last year’s mass shootings in Norway produced by ITN Factual in the U.K.

“That was commissioned after a quick phone call with Eileen O’Neill who runs Discovery TLC in the U.S. She said the U.S. wanted to come in as well. Three weeks later, the program went out in 200 countries in 25 languages in addition to the U.S.”

Contact the Variety newsroom at news@variety.com

To a casual observer, Jane Root’s 30-year television career seems a classic tale of success. She rose from being a freelance to founding a successful independent producer, then sold out to move to the BBC, encouraged by her longstanding mentor and friend Michael Jackson.

She then joined an exclusive group of British broadcasters – including former BBC colleagues Jackson and Jana Bennett – by moving to America for a spell, where she ran the Discovery Channel.

But after that she took a different route from her peers. Instead of returning to a UK TV executive job, she left the corporate broadcasting life in early 2008 – and despite a tilt at the Channel 4 job last time round – she has since tested her creative and business vision by returning to independent production. The plan was to make and sell costly mega-documentaries – which would act as standout marketing events – to US cable channels. The problem was that by 2009, recession had arrived. Surely TV channels wanted bargain basement shows, rather than to blow 10% of their budget on one big gamble?

Root says she just wanted to apply an amalgam of lessons from her career. As BBC2 controller she’d found “if you had three big things a year you were talked about” – she cites Restoration, Great Britons and The Big Read, all relying on audience participation.

At Discovery, she says, “we wanted programmes that worked around the world”. She also was astounded at the way the BBC’s epic Planet Earth, which Discovery screened under her watch, was embraced by American viewers of all ages. When she discussed it with Jackson over dinner in New York, the gap in the US TV market for mega-docs just seemed obvious – to them.

So after leaving Discovery, Root wanted a UK production company staffed by British producers, to make these shows for Americans. “I think Britain is the world leader in premium, high-end, factual programmes,” she says. “It’s to do with the culture here. The Americans are very good at drama series and movies.”

But she recognised that she needed a business partner in the UK to free her, as chief executive, to dream up projects in America for her new company, Nutopia. A producer friend introduced her to Laura Franses, who worked in the sector, and had done an MBA at Harvard Business School. They now seem joined at the hip.

“It sounded such a crazy, crazy idea, I thought it was slightly lunatic,” confides Franses, who helped write Nutopia’s business plan, and is now its managing director. “But Jane has a visionary instinct about what the market wants.”

This was shown in late 2009, when Root called Franses to confirm she had landed a huge deal with Nancy Dubuc, the president of the History Channel, to make America: The History of US, a 12-part series costing three times the average budget an hour.

Screened in 2010, the series did what Root promised. The History Channel gained sponsorship from Bank of America, which booked every advertising slot as well. Forty million people watched it, and the icing on the cake came when Barack Obama agreed to contribute an introduction.

The History Channel then followed this up with an even bigger order for Mankind: The Story of All of Us, which will run for 12 hours later this year. The archaeologist and historian Ian Morris who penned Why the West Rules – for Now is series consultant. It is designed to show what made humans the dominant species, to have global appeal, and features the Pyramids, the Great Wall of China, the Easter Island statues, technology breakthroughs, and even a super-volcano. It is said to be costing around $36m. Production started a year ago.

This first mega-deal with the History Channel was enough to set up the company, and recruit some of the leading British factual producers Root had previously worked with – and start developing “taster tapes”, visual treatments of proposed new series she stores on her iPad. She has no investment bank breathing down her neck, as no startup capital was required.

In two years, with a core team of 15 staff, Nutopia’s turnover has doubled from £10m annually to £20m. Root owns a controlling stake, in excess of 50%, in the UK-registered private company, with shareholdings distributed around several key executives, including Ben Goold, showrunner of The History of US, the current affairs expert Phil Craig, and her non-executive directors, Jackson and Peter Bazalgette.

She and her team have created a distinctive style for their mega-docs, which is not to everyone’s taste. They mix computer-generated imagery – to recreate events such as the building of the Hoover Dam or New York – and dramatic reconstructions for, say, the discovery of oil in Texas. The programmes are paced for audiences who also watch superhero films – “we make our shows visceral, exciting”, says Root.

Root wants series with “emotional warmth”, and defends The History of US’s use of celebrities, including Donald Trump, Michael Douglas, Meryl Streep and Colin Powell, commenting on American achievements, on the grounds that “you have to work for your audience. Not make a big British production for Americans. They are very patriotic.”

Sky Atlantic, staffed by former BBC executives Root worked with, was last month the first broadcaster outside America to announce an order for a version of The History of US, titled Great Britain: Our Story, sweeping across the centuries from Stonehenge to the second world war. Versions are being considered for three other territories.

Discovery has ordered How We Invented the World, about great engineering and science breakthroughs, designed for global broadcast later this year, with 16 versions and sets of local presenters. But, as Franses notes: “Making mega-docs is stressful. It is good to have some other things.” So Nutopia made a documentary about people from the West Country (as it happened) who cover their houses with Christmas lights, broadcast by Channel 4 last month. It also has programmes about rogue sharks, and topical current affairs.

“On TV there’s a place for lots and lots of programmes,” says Root, “not only big and expensive. We’re keen for things that become part of a network.” She has had one semi-disappointment: The House That Made Me, in which celebrities go back to their reconstructed childhood home, has so far not been reordered by Channel 4.

But Root has already moved on. Nutopia is embarking on a big historical drama/doc project. She points to a 2004 BBC2 series, Dunkirk, which recreated the 1940 evacuation, as a template.

In explaining her decision to order a second mega-doc, the History Channel’s Dubac said: “Mankind is a brutal fight for survival.” That could also describe the struggle most British independent producers face. Nutopia seems to have found a way through, creating a company that may work in television but almost has something approaching the ambition of film.

However, when you are responsible for programmes with budgets of $36m, it is imperative that the hits keep coming too.

• This article was amended on 10 January 2012. Barack Obama’s name was deleted from this subheading: “The former controller of BBC2 is now producing multimillion-dollar mega-docs with Barack Obama”. That wording gave an impression of collaboration significantly beyond how the article portrayed Obama’s role on a series for the History Channel – entitled America: The History of US – where he contributed an introduction only. The name of the History Channel’s head has also been corrected to Nancy Dubuc, instead of Dubac.

By Maggie Brown

See the full piece on The Guardian website!

LONDON — Nutopia, the shingle formed by former Discovery and BBC topper Jane Root, hopes to cement its reputation for ambitious docus aimed at the international market with its new commission for History, whose working title is “Mankind: The Story of All of Us.”
Greenlit by the U.S. web, the 12-hour show will debut later this year, with different versions made for individual local markets, a first for History.

The channel, which has reinvented itself by screening more reality shows and fewer traditional history programs, claims worldwide distribution of more than 300 million homes.

The new project kicks off with the Big Bang and traces the development of humans on a planet where most species end up extinct, said Root.

She described the show as a “real action-adventure,” encompassing astronomy and geology as well as the history of mankind.

Planned as a 12-hour, six night TV event, the docu is produced by the same team as “America: The Story of Us,” led by executive producers Root and Ben Goold.

Screening is planned for later this year.

Filming is up and running in such locations as China, South Africa, Morocco and the U.K.

Root said: “There is a huge appetite throughout the world for documentaries such as this that tackle the biggest subjects on our planet in an entirely new epic style that combines extraordinary drama, CGI and interviews.”

Nancy Dubuc, prexy and general manager, History, added: “‘Mankind: The Story of All of Us’ has the same spirit of bold storytelling that made ‘America the Story of Us’ such a phenomenal success. But this time we’re going even bigger.”

Nutopia is currently prepping upcoming Discovery skein “How We Invented the World,” a five-part show examining technological breakthroughs such as the automobile and the cell phone, and also localized for individual markets.

By Steve Clarke

Contact the Variety newsroom at news@variety.com

The full article by Steve Clarke can be found here!

Nutopia’s latest mega-doc will be a 12-hour series for History detailing the building of the Pyramids, the construction of the Great Wall of China and the creation of Easter Island statues.

History said Mankind: The Story of All of Us would be its “most in-depth television series ever” and it is thought the budget runs to millions of dollars an hour. TX details have not been fully confirmed, but it will air as a six-night event in the final quarter of 2012.
The series follows the indie’ Emmy-winning America: the Story of Us for the same broadcaster and is part of Nutopia’s plans for “a sense of global scale and ambition that has hitherto rarely been applied to factual”, according to chief executive Jane Root.
History president and general manager Nancy Dubuc said the series would “redefine how history is told, how it’s watched, taught and how it is experienced”.

Dubuc said: “We are traveling to every corner of the earth in order to portray the heroic story of man. Mankind is a brutal fight for survival.

“The odds were against us at every turn – over 99.9% of all species of the earth have gone extinct. This series examines what is unique about us to have made humans the dominant species on the planet.”

Global approach
The series will use CGI and dramatic reconstructions in locations such as Shanghai, Cape Town and Morocco.
It will focus on landmark events and step changes, such as the birth of agriculture, the Vikings landing in America, and revolutions in military technology. Mankind will incorporate geology, astronomy, meteorology, and physics, and runs from the Big Bang to the modern day.

Ben Goold, who is just back from shooting in South Africa and will executive produce alongside Root, said the series would run chronologically but throw forward to draw links between history and contemporary times.
“It’s about the human stories behind history’s big tipping points and it takes a completely global view. People tend to learn the conventional history of the part of the world they grow up in, but this is about linking different regions.
“For example, we explore the time when there were two great empires, China and Rome, which didn’t know the other existed – and reveal the moment they meet.”

Hollywood epic
Goold said the plan was to engender the film with the feel of a Hollywood epic, and Root said she learned the value of event factual TV as controller of BBC2, citing the likes of Great Britons and Restoration.
“We’re about innovative, surprising, big TV, with high end visuals, and we’ve tried to shake up the production timescale. There used to be a sense it would take five years to make something epic like this, we’re doing it in two.”
The executive producers for History are Julian P. Hobbs and Paul Cabana.
Mankind The Story of All of Us still has several months of production to run and has just moved in to edit. The CGI is being developed in conjunction with a number of different companies

From Broadcast Magazine
4 January, 2012 | By Chris Curtis

Nutopia, the documentary and reality production company founded by Jane Root, Laura Franses, Michael Jackson and Peter Bazalgette, has significantly expanded its senior management team.

The Televisual post can be found by clicking here

Nutopia has hired five senior executives across the production and commercial arms of the business, in a move to bolster the company’s growth.

Click here for the Broadcast article!

“How We Invented the World,” to be produced by Nutopia, is a five-hour docu that will be customized for four international regions with local stories and experts, setting a template for the cable web’s global strategy.

Click here for Variety cover of this exciting story

The cable network, overseen by president Eileen O’Neill, has given the green light to a project exploring the most iconic inventions and breakthroughs of the modern age — from the cell phone to the airline black box.

Click here for The Hollywood Reporter article!

Nutopia has reached 20th position in the Production 100 rankings, Televisuals annual survey of the UK’s independent sector!
Please click here for the story by Michael Deacon