Coronavirus: ITV creates indie development fund
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Editor
| 06 April 2020

Looking to support the indie sector during lockdown, Kevin Lygo, director of television of the UK’s largest commercial broadcaster, ITV, has announced a £500,000 development fund targeted at the UK’s independent sector to help producers during the Covid-19 crisis.

The fund is designed to accelerate the search for new ideas and content for the channel to play in the later part of 2020 and in 2021. "ITV's success is based on the ideas that are brought to us by indies from across the UK and we don't want that to stop,” Lygo said, announcing the fund. “We have this money specifically available to ramp up development over the next few months so we can hit the ground running when current restrictions are lifted.”

Lygo added that ITV’s commissioning teams were willing to increase the number of virtual meetings they have in order to build up an exciting slate over the next few months. He advised indies who may have an idea that ITV could use, especially in the unscripted space, that ITV was in a position to help fund that immediately.

“We want to reassure the indie community - small or big, regional or London - that ITV is very much open for business and we have the resource to invest in ideas for the channel,” he concluded.

The fund is the second set up by a major in the industry to help producers now that work has come to a halt in the coronavirus outbreak. On 20 March Netflix announced that it was setting up a $100 million fund to help creatives who had been forced out of work due to the Covid-19 outbreak. $15 million of the fund will go to third parties and non-profits providing emergency relief to out-of-work crew and cast in the countries where we have a large production base.