Claudia Rosencrantz: The hit-maker

Claudia Rosencrantz is behind some of ITV's must-see programmes, but she remains resolutely low-profile. Louise Jury meets her

If Claudia Rosencrantz were the kind of person to frequent bars or pubs or clubs ? which, it emerges, she is not ? she would have been dancing on the tables last week. She launched Popstars: The Rivals, a series she has every reason to believe will follow Popstars and Pop Idol into the nation's affections. She saw the climax of I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, which became grimly compelling viewing by pitting the likes of Tara Palmer-Tomkinson against Christine Hamilton in an Australian rainforest. And, in perhaps the biggest triumph of all, nearly 23 million Americans tuned in to the final of the US version of Pop Idol on Wednesday, a further vindication of Rosencrantz's ability to spot a potential hit.

Yet 43-year-old Rosencrantz is herself resolutely low-profile. This interview is, she thinks, only her second since joining ITV as head of entertainment from the BBC in 1995. "I'm very, very anti-social," she says. "I'm not out there constantly saying how brilliant I am. That's not what gets me up in the morning. But I will acknowledge that I'm behind a lot of mainstream hits. I can be judged by my results."

Of course, it would be easy to be sniffy about her results. Kids Say the Funniest Things and Celebrity Stars in Their Eyes are not cutting-edge television. "But we're a commercial channel," she stresses. "After drama, entertainment is the most important driver of the ITV schedule. It's not about analysing society, it's there for people to relax and enjoy themselves." But she slaps down any suggestion that entertainment has to appeal to the lowest common denominator. "There is nothing unintelligent about it," she says.

She finds it strange when newspapers such as The Guardian devote articles to why bright, middle-class people might like a show such as I'm a Celebrity.... "There's a broadsheet perception, and a British middle-class perception, that we shouldn't be watching entertainment, we should watch documentaries and serious drama. But people don't; they watch a huge amount of entertainment. It's not a dirty habit."

What is happening in America proves the power of entertainment when you get it right. The three biggest shows in the United States in the last three years, she says, have been Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, Pop Idol and Survivor.

Millionaire transformed the fortunes of the ABC network and Idol has just done likewise for Fox, the network she worked with for several years. When she was there in the early Nineties, nobody in the States was even dreaming of broadcasting entertainment shows during the evenings. The genre had died. "But the same person I was working for then, Sandy Grushow, is now seeing his network, Fox, revitalised by Pop Idol," she says with evident pleasure.

This is not to say she is without failures. Man O Man, where the losing men were pushed into a pool, was not a winner. Slap Bang, Ant and Dec's first foray into Saturday–night television, was slated by critics. She still maintains Survivor was good television scuppered by the insane boast by Nigel Lythgoe, the executive producer, that it would get 12 million viewers. (It peaked at around eight million.)

Talk to Rosencrantz and the most highbrow intellectual could be won over to the joys of entertainment. She has been approached by American networks about returning to the States but has turned them down because she loves her job. Similarly, she was sounded out about replacing David Liddiment, ITV's departing director of channels, but said she did not want the post.

Part of it is a desire to retain some degree of family life with her husband, a writer and director, and four-year-old daughter. But she also adores what she does. She first worked in newspapers after training as a secretary, but thought television seemed more exciting. "When I got my first job [as a researcher with LWT] I felt like a fish that had found its tank to swim in," she says. The excitement continues. "I wake up every morning and I can't wait to come to work."

Out of the office, she watches entertainment shows for pleasure. She does not go to bars or clubs, theatre or comedy. She gets her views on television from talking to people – in taxis, in the street. And she is proud of her gut instincts. When she discovered that the independent producers behind Pop Idol were going to take it to the BBC, she cleared her diary to see them. They thought she would not be interested in their show after Popstars. But Rosencrantz accepted the 21-week proposal straightaway.