This first programme looks at the Cinderella of the British Motor Industry - Leyland's Truck and Bus Group. It has always made a profit but over the years most of it has been handed back to the ailing car division. Then the Ryder report made the Truck Group a profit centre and Ron Ellis, the Manager of Truck and Bus, can move into battle in Europe with some of our best young engineers. The Risk Business lifts the covers on Ron Ellis's biggest gamble, the still-secret plans for the truck he hopes to launch in 1978.
Even the biggest and best companies can be hit by the capriciousness of the High Street. For example the run-flat tyre which, after the worst puncture, will still carry you safely at 60 mph for a further 100 miles. But can the tyre makers persuade the car men to adapt their designs to take the new wheel? The answer lies, partly at least, with the customer. Again, the drink-in-a-tube is a brave attempt by a major plastics company to break into the enormous fizzy drinks market. But that scene is already hotly contested by the makers of bottles and cans. The result is a fierce three-way battle for the thirsty customer. The Risk Business this week discovers that some very unfunny things can happen on the way to market.
How does the pioneer know how much his work is going to cost when he's operating at the frontiers of knowledge? And when the project stands 70 feet in air, 530 feet in water, drilling through 9,000 feet of rock below that, the costs can be appalling. Raymond Baxter , William Woollard and Andrew Neil report on the struggle to win oil from the Thistle field, which is proving to be one of the most innovative projects the oil world has ever undertaken. Burmab's North Sea team, headed by executive director MIKE LOFTING and Managing Director DON SHIM -MON, are struggling to get the oil and the money flowing in a war against time, inflation, and the unpredictable North Sea. The Risk Business talks to them about their decisions and gambles.
William Woollard and Raymond Baxter look at the human gamble of worker participation and industrial democracy. What do they hold in store for industry? Management by committee? Shopfloor control? Worker directors on the board? Or simply giving people a greater say in their own jobs? The Risk Business visits several companies who have put worker participation into practice in a variety of ways. Giants like ici rub shoulders with worker-owned companies like Scott-Bader; advanced technology plants are learning the same lessons as old-fashioned factories. The Government is committed to legislate on industrial democracy-an issue which could radically alter our working lives.
The struggle of a lone inventor to convince the world's glass manufacturers that he had made a discovery of crucial importance. Michael Rodd and Judith Hann tell the story of Glass Reinforced Cement, the world-beating all-British breakthrough. The Chairman of Britain's largest glass manufacturer, Sir Alistair Pilk. ington, describes how he almost missed this discovery and the best way to use large research teams in the innovation business.
Can you miss the boat - and end up better off? Shipbuilding everywhere is facing a severe crisis, yet Britain, left behind in the 1960s, is now strongly placed to build the ships the world needs. Michael Rodd , Raymond Baxter and Andrew Neil examine why the world's shipbuilders got into such a mess and the opportunities now waiting to be taken. Reporting from the Far East, as well as at home, the programme shows how the shape of both ships and the industry is changing. If Britain's shipbuilders, nationalised or not, are to survive, they must react to these changes. Opportunities exist, but risks are substantial.
Star Wars, Hollywood's most successful film ever, was largely filmed in Britain. So was Superman. So was Alien. Making money-spinning box-office films for foreign companies has become a habit with the British film industry, but it enjoys very little of the profits. In Hollywood (USA) Michael Rodd investigates what brings American producers to film in Britain. In Elstree (UK) he meets Han Solo, C3PO, Luke Skywalker and the creators of Star Wars. As they work on the film that is trying to follow that £400-million success, The Risk Business discovers how big-time moviemakers are also reducing the chances that they will lose their shirts, in an industry where eight out of ten productions are flops. But what's in it for us? When the price of shooting in Britain forces the Americans back home, will we have a film industry left?
To most of us the only important property of sugar is its sweetness, but to the two huge companies which dominate Britain's sugar industry it means power, profit and jobs. Tate and Lyle dominated the British sugar scene until we joined the Common Market. Since then it has suffered a drastic reversal of fortunes, and power has shifted to home-grown beet sugar and the British Sugar Corporation. This year Tate and Lyle has grasped an opportunity to fight back, and the two are locked in a private battle to decide who is to dominate Britain's sugar in the future. Judith Hann and Kieran Prendi ville report on the fierce in-fighting and on some of the likely victims in this struggle.
According to one researcher ' You can invent three new devices for getting energy out of the sea before breakfast, and two more after lunch if you're awake enough'. But will they work? Britain, at the moment, leads the world with more than ten designs for harnessing wave power. Kieran Pren diville and Judith Hann talk to researchers up and down the country who believe their ideas stand a real chance of success. But the Department of Energy and the Central Electricity Generating Board seem dedicated to a nuclear future; so is alternative energy just a dream or could we one day be switching on electricity that can never run out? In the end it all comes down to money: to how much it will cost. We do not know whether wave energy will ever appear to be as cheap as nuclear energy, but it could simply be that we are doing our sums the wrong way.
The cheapest and apparently the safest way to set up in business on your own is to buy a franchise - the licence to operate one part of a chain of shops, service companies, plumbing businesses, or even hotels. The masterminds behind the operation have done the groundwork for you, developed the product, advertised it nationally, even assessed the chances of your operation making you the fortune you desire. In theory, all you have to supply is the blood, sweat, and a cheque for a few thousand pounds. But is it so simple? Michael Rodd meets the American millionaire who pioneered franchising in Britain, yet still works as a flight engineer for Pan Am. He meets some highly-satisfied franchisees ... but then discovers that dreams can melt away when the franchisor isn't doing his job properly. Even franchising can be a Risk Business, and it pays to know exactly what you are doing when you plunge your life's savings into someone else's business.
Two years ago, Sarah Harrison was an unknown housewife living near Royston with an attic full of unpublished manuscripts. But since then she's become the author of what her agent and publisher claim will be a massive best-seller. They are attempting to get the book into the shops by hyping it - a process on which the success of all mass-market books depends. Tonight's programme investigates just how close ' The Hype' can come to conning the booksellers and the public. Judith Hann and Sophy Robinson guide you through the world of schlock, bodice rippers, hot historicals and sheer adulterated commercial publishing!
The double-decker bus is as British an institution as fish and chips or cricket, and, as the Empire expanded, so did the market for these peculiarly British products. Today, the United Kingdom satisfies 90 per cent of the world's demand for double-decker buses. But, as the world energy crisis expands, Britain's supremacy in the market is under threat. At home, Government policy looks set to reduce demand for new double-deckers and whilst British manufacturers work out how to handle that crisis foreign manufacturers are gearing up to challenge us in the rest of the world. Confident that everyone needs more rather than fewer double-deckers, both the Swedes and the Germans are even developing plans to bring their double-deckers to Britain. Judith Hann and Michael Rodd investigate why Britain's new generation of super double-deckers face problems, report on the new tactics of our foreign competitors and meet the British bus operators who say they may have to buy foreign to ' gee up our own
Japanese companies are bursting out of their saturated home markets and are not only sending more and more goods to us, they're exporting their factories too. Over 200 Japanese businesses now have a base in Britain, and in some of the fields where they've set up, like zips and colour televisions, they show signs of dominating the market. Kieran Prendiville and Bill Brcckon discover that they're bringing with them some startling new ideas in the way they manage British workers. So how much can we learn from them? Or are whole industries in danger of being swamped by this Far Eastern invasion?
This autumn sees the launch of two cars vital to the survival of Britain's car industry. BL's long-awaited Metro is the first all-British volume car for a decade arriving at a time when two out of three cars sold here are imports, and when there are severe doubts that Britain can sustain its own car-making company, The new Ford Escort is the result of years of collaboration between Ford in Britain, Germany and the USA. This multi-national car will determine the fate not only of Ford's European companies, out also of its debt-ridden American car operation. As Michael Rodd reports, 1980 will be the turning-point in Britain s car industry, whilst Andrew Neil reflects the view from Detroit where today's American crisis could well spell trouble for Europe's small-car makers.