David Rose

David Edward Rose (22 November 1924 – 26 January 2017) was a British television producer and commissioning editor.

At the BBC Following war service flying on 34 missions in Lancaster bombers, he trained as an actor at the Guildhall School of Drama, but following graduation pursued a career in stage management. He became an Assistant Floor Manager for BBC television in London in 1954, Broadcast live at Rose's insistence thinking the excitement generated by avoiding pre-recording was integral to the production. Rose was responsible for ending its original run thinking the format had become exhausted. Softly, Softly (1966–69) was a spin-off series also produced by Rose. Issacs wrote in 2017, that Rose's first suggestion to him was to commission a soap from Phil Redmond, the result Brookside ran for 21 years until ending in 2003. Originally, the project's films were intended for television screenings alone; the "holdback" system prevented investment in theatrical films by television companies because of the length of time (then three years) before broadcasters could screen them. An agreement soon concluded with the Cinema Exhibitors Association though, allowed a brief period of cinema exhibition if the budget of the films was below £1.25 million.

During his time at Channel 4, Rose approved the making of 136 films, half of which received cinema screenings, investing in a third of the feature films made in the UK during 1984. By 1987, Channel 4 had an interest in half the films being made in the United Kingdom. Rose remained in his post as Commissioning Editor until March 1990. Rose is credited by many as being a significant figure in the regeneration of British cinema and particularly remembered for films such as My Beautiful Laundrette, Wish You Were Here, Dance With a Stranger, Mona Lisa, and Letter to Brezhnev. Mike Leigh told writer Hannah Rothschild around 2008 that Film on Four had saved the British film industry: "This is a non-negotiable, historical fact of life and anybody who suggests that this isn’t the case is simply either suffering from some kind of ignorance or has got some terrible chip." This was followed by the gold medal of the Royal Television Society in 1988