Lunch with a Commissioner: Sarah Lazenby, Head of Features & Formats at Channel 4

Grab your homemade sandwich of choice and get ready to dine with a different commissioner every day. At 1pm from Monday to Friday, participants will be able to join a commissioner and listen to their insights as well as ask questions at the end of the hour.

These are great sessions for our freelance community who don’t normally get the opportunity to chat to commissioners. So, if you’re a head honcho who normally has all the commissioners on speed-dial this session isn’t for you! Please keep this in mind when booking. Thanks for your support and understanding.

Speaker

Sarah Lazenby currently heads up the Features & Formats department at Channel 4 responsible for a diverse range of non-scripted programmes particularly focusing on returnable lifestyle series, youth-skewing formats and broad talent-led shows. The department commissions the entire Bake Off franchise, iconic features shows like Amazing Spaces and Escape To The Chateau, innovative formats like Flirty Dancing and Joe Lycett’s Got Your Back, noisy documentary series like Mums Make Porn, social experiments like The Restaurant That Makes Mistakes and E4 reality series like Made In Chelsea and Celebs Go Dating.

Prior to that Sarah worked as a commissioning editor for 3 years across a variety of factual entertainment and entertainment programmes including Naked Attraction, Derren Brown, Chatty Man and Cats Does Countdown. Most notably she won a Broadcast award for the live Paralympic entertainment show The Last Leg: Live In Rio and was responsible for securing the new line-up of hosts for The Great British Bake Off which redefined the show as a Channel 4 proposition, winning critical acclaim and a BAFTA nomination.

Prior to working as a commissioning editor Sarah spent 18 years working in TV production & development. She started her career working on The BIG Breakfast and produced across multiple genres from live primetime entertainment to multi-layered feature formats, children's shows to reality, chat shows to factual entertainment & comedy entertainment including hits such as Make My Day, Banzai, Big Brother, Dick & Dom In Da Bungalow and Gordon Ramsay’s F Word.

This event is supported by the ScreenSkills Television Skills Fund which invests in training for the freelance television workforce thanks to contributions from the BBC, Channel 4 and Channel 5.

It is part of a ScreenSkills programme managed by the Indie Training Fund to support freelancers to upskill and stay connected, helping keep the industry resilient in these difficult times.

This session will take place online via Zoom. Click ‘get ticket’ to reserve your place: you must login or register before you are able to get a ticket for this event. A booking confirmation with a joining link to the session will be sent to you via email.

If you are no longer able to use your ticket, we ask you to please contact support@screenskills.com so that we can release your place. Our sessions are often oversubscribed, so we’d like to give other freelancers the opportunity to fill available spots. Thank you for your consideration.