ITV has been facing up
to some major problems recently, and arguably, it has not been coping
very well with them. In what has been a tough time for the
commercial broadcaster, the ITV companies have faced major problems
with ITV Digital, falling revenues from advertising, falling audience
figures with BBC1 and Multi-channel TV benefiting the most and a
greater than average number of new programme failures, including some
very high profile ones such as Shafted. The question is, what
happened to ITV to allow it to fall so far?
There are a number of
potential reasons why ITV’s fall has been so bad. One potential
reason can be traced all the way back to the creation of Independent
Television back in 1954. Originally, the Independent Television
Authority was supposed to have created 2 commercial networks, each
with additional licenced programme providers. But it ended up being
only one commercial network, and no additional programme providers,
which made things difficult for Associated Rediffusion and ATV London
in the initial months of Independent Television. These days, such an
arrangement with additional programme providers licenced for ITV
would undoubtedly have seen more of the old franchisees become
production companies, and also some good companies that never quite
made it to being franchise holders, providing programming. It would
also make for a more competitive ITV in terms of programming.
Another potential
reason why ITV is in possible crisis goes back to the 1990
Broadcasting Act. In the act, it allowed the ITV companies to merge
with each other, and potentially be bought by other companies too.
Why was this a bad thing? Well, ironically for the same reason that
lack of additional licenced programme providers was a bad thing.
Instead of having a competitive ITV with 15 companies and the threat
of losing their franchise if they didn’t perform up to scratch, you
now have just 5 companies, who know their licences are pretty safe,
and therefore less competitive, less challenging and less satisfying
in terms of programming.
Another potential
reason lies in what has been recently a major situation in
broadcasting terms, and that is the situation between ITV and Sky.
In 1998, ITV decided not to launch on Sky Digital, despite the fact
that BBC1, BBC2, Channel 4 and Channel 5 were all launching on both
Sky Digital and On Digital. On Digital, nowadays know as ITV
Digital, is owned by Carlton and Granada, the two biggest ITV
companies. Granada have some history with Sky as Granada was
involved in the British Satellite Broadcasting venture of 1990, which
ended with BSB merging with Sky. Carlton had channels of its own
that it didn’t want on Sky, and had previously restricted them to
just Cable. Carlton and Granada felt that On Digital needed an
advantage over Sky Digital, and they felt that ITV would give them
that advantage. So ITV refused to launch on Sky Digital, and also
refused to launch ITV2 on Sky Digital. This move was to prove costly
in financial terms with many millions of pounds of advertising
revenue missed because of this one move. ITV1 and ITV2 were to
launch in 2001 on Sky Digital, but the damage had been done. The
move had cost them advertising revenue, and it had cost them viewers
too, and the longer they stayed off Sky Digital, the more it was
going to cost them in terms of viewers and advertising revenue. So,
they finally put up and launched on Sky Digital.
Another potential
reason lies in the fact that On/ITV Digital always looked to compete
with Sky Digital. Alongside the fact that ITV had been having
something of a tiff with Sky for many years, going back to the lack
of agreement between Sky News and ITN, over ITN acting as programme
producer for Sky News, in 1988, and continuing through Sky’s failed
attempts to replace ITN as ITV’s news provider, when you put all
that together, you see ITV trying to compete with Sky, one by not
providing ITV and ITV2 on Sky Digital, also by trying to use ITV’s
advantage as a terrestrial broadcaster to persuade people to go to On
Digital, owned of course by two of the biggest ITV companies. Put
that very complicated mix together, and what do you have? You have a
channel provider on Digital Terrestrial, trying to compete with a
channel provider on Digital Satellite, where really they shouldn’t
be competing at all. On Digital was the only licenced digital pay-TV
provider for Digital Terrestrial, and Sky Digital was the only
digital satellite pay-TV provider. In theory, they shouldn’t have
been competing with each other as they were two different markets.
However, in practice, people were comparing the Sky/On situation to
the Sky/BSB situation of 1990, long before either side were actually
transmitting digital programmes, and this wasn’t helped by On
Digital themselves, whose advertising was at least initially quite
blatantly stating their competitive agenda.
Whichever reason it
was, and whichever way you look at it, it comes down to competition.
Sky had had no real competition in the Multi-channel arena after
their merger with BSB, and ITV in itself was less competitive because
the number of ITV companies had dropped from 15 to 5, and because the
franchises were no longer being seen as under threat every whit and
while, so there was no pressure on ITV to perform. Now ITV is in
this situation. To this writer, it looks like a crisis, a crisis of
ITV’s own making. They wanted the ability to merge stations, to
eventually become 1 giant national ITV. They wanted the franchises
to be easier to renew, therefore creating less pressure, and
supposedly more time for increased investment. They wanted the
greener, less regulated grass on the other side of the fence. Now
they’re there, they are finding it’s leaving a foul taste in
their mouths, but instead of backtracking, ITV seek to blame the BBC
and Sky for their own problems. There’s an old saying. It says,
“You reap what you sow”.
So, how can ITV get
themselves out of this predicament? Well, the only way they can do
it is to go back to being more regulated, and back to being a
commercially funded, not commercially driven, public service
broadcaster. They must waste less money on unnecessarily extravagant
set designs, cut down the amount that is just given away to
shareholders, and start re-investing in the people who really count,
the viewers.
