I was going to blog today another of the '10 things on my mind' miscellany-type posts (see here and here). I'm intensely curious, for example, about when the BBC is planning to transmit Macbeth (I really don't know). More immediately, I'm fascinated to see who will triumph in Art of Survival which comes to an end in Edinburgh on Saturday. But as I started writing I realised that there's one thing on my mind that at the moment that is elbowing other questions aside. Although it might seem rather parochial, this is the question of how, now, to develop a sustainable business model for a small independent production company committed to the arts.

The problem is a perennial one, but part of the reason it feels significant now is because these few days are somehow like the start of another television year. Everyone is coming home from Tuscany and Edinburgh and starting to shape up for the season ahead. Also, Illuminations is, thanks for your concern, in reasonable financial shape at the moment, and it's always better to think hard about the future when your fiscal back is not against the wall.

Twenty-five years ago, when we were starting out, Illuminations and a host of other small companies could work for Channel 4 with some expectation of a continuing supplier relationship. We put forward ideas, the broadcaster turned most of them down (some things never change) but commissioners would pick up one or two. We negotiated a reasonable if not munificent budget with the channel, often for the full amount, and this would include what was called a 'production fee' or profit element over and above the direct costs of making the programme. In return, Channel 4 secured the programme and most of the rights in its future exploitation.

This was essentially the model with which we and many other companies worked for the next two decades. It was extended as the framework for commissions from the BBC and it worked well -- for us at least -- until the late 1990s. At that point a whole host of changes came down the pipe, including the partial withdrawal of the broadcasters' commitment to arts programming and the reining in of budgets. The larger production companies took the lead in renegotiating the basis of working with television and secured a much greater share of rights, albeit with the recognition that funding for individual projects, and particularly perhaps those with a more marginal place, would be reduced. Commissions became harder to secure.

Our response included exploring both publishing and what we called 'services'. For the former we began to make films, like theEYE series, with our own resources, and then sought to exploit these with sales to broadcasters and on DVD. In parallel we established the successful DVD distribution system that we continue to develop. 'Services' was everything else, but was mostly the production of short films for education, including for the Open University, and for museums and other clients, like Tate, English Heritage and the NPG.

Publishing continues to be a central part of what we do, but increasingly cultural organisations are making short films internally, as Tate now does very successfully. In contrast to our productions for our DVD list, we retain few if any rights in the services commissions, and although we continue to undertake work of this kind -- currently for Strawberry Hill and The Hepworth Wakefield -- it's not central to how we operate as a business.

Having spent a lot of time in the 1990s working with new forms of digital media, we've focussed over the past decade -- and this was a conscious choice (but that's another blog) -- on linear film and video production. Funding for such work, at least in the arts, continues to be almost exclusively in the control of the broadcasters, and so the BBC, Channel 4 and now -- in very welcome ways -- Sky Arts remain essential as potential partners.  

Is it feasible, however, to continue to work like this? The future feels fragile, and over-dependent on a handful of relationships. But then of course it always has. Or can we imagine a different model? Are there other ways of working that might produce stable revenue streams? Can we find other models that might give us direct and income-generating relationships with audiences? Might online distribution be one answer? What might the company look like in three years? In five, or ten?

Lest you think otherwise, I don't expect the answers to be posted in short paragraphs in the Comments below (although one can always hope...) But as television starts its new term, these are the questions that we're thinking about -- and I guess you'll know whether we've found some answers as long as the blog keeps being regularly updated.

Image: once again courtesy of the LIFE archive hosted by Google, this is a shot of an American stock market taken by Yale Joel in 1962; © Time Inc.