ITV needs to make its sports coverage distinctive.

Originally posted as part of LinkedIn Pulse, as I am now an author there as well.  Keep up with my postings there by clicking or tapping here.

In these days it's very rare for competing channels to both show the same thing, but Sunday night, 13th July in the UK, that's exactly what happened, as both BBC1 and ITV went head to head with competing coverage of the FIFA World Cup final. How is this possible you ask? BBC and ITV are both members of the EBU, the European Broadcasting Union, who actualy have the rights to show the World Cup across Europe, which they do via their various member stations.

Now, there is a history when it comes to BBC1 and ITV both showing the same event at the same time. Usually ITV loses, and it was the same here, although the margin in terms of viewing figures is huge.

According to a report on the BBC News website, the overnight figures showed that BBC1 had an average of 12.1 million viewers for the World Cup final, against 2.9 million viewers for ITV. The peaks for both channels were 16.7 million for BBC1 and 3.9 million for ITV.

This is becoming so routine for ITV, that you'd think they'd either give up, or try something else, but no, they seem happy to take the hit generally. However, this is a mere symptom of a much bigger problem at ITV Sport, and it is this. ITV Sport generally underperforms against similar BBC Sport coverage. If you were to look at the averages of live football coverage on BBC against similar live coverage on ITV, BBC is more watched, more often. But why?

It's a weird thing really, but in general terms, ITV Sport has a major image problem. It's too often seen to be style over substance, where BBC Sport is often felt to be more substantive. Is that a fair criticism? Not really. At one time, back in ITV's heyday, their coverage of sports was often just as substantive as BBC's, even though sometimes they'd have to settle for lower profile sports and events. But ITV's image took a general hit overall from about 1993 onwards. The hit was mainly in News and Sports coverage and Comedy, which had been areas that various ITV companies had excelled in. It was painful at times to watch what had been a great broadcaster slowly decay.

But in 2000, the rights for Premiership highlights went from BBC to ITV, and ITV announced what they hoped would be their saving grace for Sports coverage. "The Premiership" was to be the first time that Premier League football highlights were to air in PrimeTime, indeed, airing at 7pm from the start of the 2001/2002 season. ITV hoped that this would make them the new goto company for sports coverage. At around the same time, ITV launched the ITV Sport Channel on their digital terrestrial subscription service, ITV Digital, previously known as On Digital. ITV Digital had acquired the Football League rights at around the same time, and were showing these games on the new ITV Sport Channel. For some baffling reason, ITV, in the form of Carlton and Granada, decided that the ITV Sport Channel should not air on Sky, to try to give ITV Digital a competitive advantage.

It was a mistake. One of many that ITV did around that time. I should know. I was covering the whole ITV Digital debacle at the time for Transdiffusion. It was one of the lowest periods in ITV's history. A news service that was pretty universally derided as being style over substance; a failed platform in ITV digital, and a failed sports channel. 2002 was a low point for ITV, and their Premiership highlights were not helping matters. Instead of being at 7pm, the highlights had gotten relegated to a 10.30pm slot, due to low ratings, and would remain there until the end of the rights package in 2004, where upon the rights for Premiership highlights returned to the BBC, and have stayed there ever since.

But why did the Premiership highlights programme do so badly? That truly was style over substance. A typical 75 minute programme contained just under 30 minutes of highlights, far less than BBC had given to highlights previously, usually almost an hour out of an 80 minute show.

Since then, ITV has learned their lesson about substance, although some high profile automation problems that interrupted live football coverage at key times, have not helped their reputation. But now, ITV need to do something rather more radical if they are to undo all the years of damage and neglect that they have done to their Sports department. They need to be as radical as Sky Sports was when they first appeared on the scene back in 1991. But again, they mustn't over-emphasise style over substance, as substance is what wins ratings, something Sky Sports knew about in 1991, although they had their own style, they backed it up with substance.

ITV needs to create their own style, and back it up with substance, something ITV News has had to relearn to do since their 1999-2004 low point. Now ITV Sport needs to do the same. At the moment, they don't really do a lot to distinguish themselves, and sacrificing substance for style just isn't an option, not with the state of the sports broadcasting industry today. EuroSport, BT Sport and Sky Sports are all big players these days in the world of sports rights, along with the BBC. ITV do have some major events, such as The Tour De France, The French Open Tennis, and some Darts and Snooker tournaments, but most sport now is relegated to ITV4, rather than on the main channel. If ITV want to make themselves a sports powerhouse, then they need to have coverage with a lot of substance, in a strong authoritative style, that defines ITV, the way ITV News is now defined by the greater emphasis on human interest news. Maybe ITV Sport should emphasise the match coverage, rather than analysis. It would differentiate them from BBC and just about everybody else in sports broadcasting. Such a strategy would be a radical departure from ITV's long time emphasis on celebrities and personalities in sports coverage, but it would be enough of a departure that might get them noticed again in the sports broadcasting world.

ITV have been stuck in a rut for too long. They say a change is as good as a rest. ITV certainly need to make some major changes.

Good Morning Britain to return, but is it the change needed?

Earlier this week, we had perhaps the worst kept secret in broadcasting revealed to be true.  Good Morning Britain was indeed to return to ITV, although this time the hosts would be Susannah Reid, joining from BBC Breakfast; Ben Sheppard, former GMTV host; Charlotte Hawkins, joining from Sky News; and Sean Fletcher, joining from Sky Sports News and previously with BBC News Channel.

But this is not the first time ITV has changed the name of their breakfast programme.  In fact, Daybreak came about as a result of perceived problems with GMTV. 

But is another change of name and personnel what is required, or is it a case of moving the deckchairs on the Titanic?

In my analysis of Daybreak, and it's competition, BBC Breakfast, I noticed that whilst Breakfast looks like it comes from a BBC News studio, the look of Daybreak contrasts quite wildly with ITV News, despite having ITV News branded bulletins as part of Daybreak.  If anything, ITV needs to make it more like ITV News.  At the very least, the news bulletins every half hour should come from the ITV News virtual studio, albeit the colour scheme of the studio should reflect the Good Morning Britain look, to distinguish it from other ITV News bulletins, in the same way that ITV News at Ten does from the other bulletins.  

Editorially, the ITV News agenda has improved massively since the days of the 1999-2004 editorial debacle that was the excessively tabloid ITV News, which had replaced ITN News, even though the new look ITV News was still produced by ITN.  But the morning agenda, which has been carried through GMTV and Daybreak, hasn't caught up quite.  At times, it does catch up, and at other times, it seems to go backwards to being more tabloid again.  GMB needs to be popular, not tabloid.  There is a distinct difference, and it needs to be explained.

Tabloid is what you see in the red-tops, over-hyped, editorialised, and generally overdoing everything kind of news.  Another form of tabloid agenda is one that has been popularised by some local US TV stations, 'If It Bleeds, It Leads'. That's tabloid.  Shock value over News Value.

Popular News, as I call it, is the kind of news that actually isn't overhyped, isn't sensationalised, and isn't necessarily showbiz-based, but it is based on what people actually need to know.  It includes news about the economy and consumer related items, essential news about politics, mostly about real issues rather than the endless debates about Europe in the Westminster bubble; and it would also include some news about crime, although not in the hyper-sensentionalised 'if it bleeds, it leads' way that tabloid news does.

If ITV wants Good Morning Britain to be more successful than Daybreak, then it needs to totally embrace the current ITV News agenda, which is more like what I call 'Popular News'.  

But more than that, it needs to avoid the trap of going for competitions through the morning. Competitions are not required at that time of the morning, because most people who have the TV on at that time of day, can't stop to think about what the answer is, so don't bother with them.  Radio is learning this, and slowly moving away from competitions during their breakfast shows.

More than that though, GMB needs to cover things like Sport, which seems to get very little coverage currently on Daybreak.  Having Sean Fletcher as part of the team seems to indicate they are taking that angle more seriously.  Another angle that needs more coverage in the mornings is regional news.  6 minutes of regional updates across 3 bulletins, one per hour, isn't enough, when your competition is running 18 minutes of regional updates across 6 bulletins, twice an hour.  The contrast is stark, very stark.  If anything, even just a doubling of the number of updates, making theirs twice an hour, would be an improvement, but more than that, they do need to make their updates longer, and do something with them that makes them not just a copy of what the BBC does, but distinctive.

Some showbiz news will be a part of the programme, especially around the time of the awards ceremonies, like The Oscars.   But overdoing showbiz news is not a good thing, especially in the mornings.  ITV News has a lot of resources across the country, and using those resources wisely for the right stories, is going to be part of making GMB a success.

If they make a few changes of substance alongside the returning name and the new presenters, then it could help turn ITV's fortunes around.  If not, then it will simply be moving the deckchairs on the sinking ship.  Only time will tell us, if that is what happens.

US Election Analysis and Coverage.

This election cycle in the US has been the most divided and one of the closest in recent memory, certainly the closest since 2000.  But an improving economy and the most unwelcome of October surprises in Hurricane Sandy, handled brilliantly by President Obama, may have swung the election away from Mitt Romney.  Obama had the easier path to 270 anyway this year, and Mitt Romney looks like he has had just too much to do to turn it round.

However, don't expect the declaration of the winner to be made by 11pm ET / 4am GMT.  This will be a lot closer than the 365 to 173 electoral college votes that we saw in 2008.  Indeed, it's quite possible that Mitt Romney may get more votes overall, but lose the election due to the particular quirks of the US election system.  I am fully expecting the declaration of the winner, to come after Midnight ET, maybe closer to 1am ET.

However, just as interesting as the final result, is just how many people will vote for the third party candidates, as two debates featuring only the 3rd party candidates have aired or are about to air on RT America, one of those debates was actually produced by online TV operation Ora TV with Larry King, former CNN host moderating.  RT America can be seen by over 50 million people in the US, which is still far less than CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, who can all be seen by at least 200 million people, but still means that candidates that have not been seen on more mainstream media outlets, have gotten more exposure this time around than in previous years.

Also, likely to possibly change things around a bit this year, is the Occupy movement, which the right wing media have done their best to downplay or ignore, calling it a spent force or a dead movement.  Now, by contrast, nobody has refered to the Tea Party movement on the Republican side as a spent force, which says to me that the Republicans are genuinely scared of how the Occupy movement could have a major impact on the political scene, especially after the movement changed the discussion framework of the debate on government spending in the US in 2011. 

Another factor that could be an issue is Roseanne Barr.  Whilst the actress and comedienne was unsuccessful in getting nominated for the Green Party, she has used her twitter feed to actively campaign on Green Party issues, to her over 174,000 followers.  It does mean that we are in for a much more interesting time in this election cycle, rather than just who's gonna win.  With Ron Paul backing Gary Johnson, the Libertarian party candidate, it will mean that there are more stories in this election than in 2008.  The only story in 2008, was how much Barack Obama would win by, it was that obvious. 

There will be a lot of coverage of course, on TV and radio, across the world, as this story has global impact.  In the UK, the BBC will have coverage on both radio and television.  Radio 5 Live will start the ball rolling at 10pm GMT / 5pm ET, with Richard Bacon hosting coverage for 8 hours, with 5 Live Breakfast taking over at 6am.  Radio 4 will also have coverage, anchored by James Naughtie and Bridget Kendall, until 6am when the Today programme will continue the coverage.  BBC1 and BBC News Channel will have coverage starting at 11.35pm, and continuing into Breakfast.  Outside of the BBC, ITV is anchoring its own coverage also starting at 11.35pm and going on into Daybreak.  Commercial radio however, doesn't seem to be covering it outside of news bulletins.  LBC, the UK's only news/talk station, has no speciall coverage planned as I write this, although I expect the overnight hosts will talk about it, with a full roundup expected in The Morning News with Susan Bookbinder at 6.30am.

Satellite viewers can expect to find a lot of coverage.  One of the more unexpected sources this time is PBS America, who are airing the live PBS NewsHour coverage from Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff, starting at 11pm GMT and going on until at least 5am.  Sky News are starting their coverage at 10.30pm, and going on until 9am.  Bloomberg's coverage starts at Midnight and runs until 5am.  CNBC is providing their own coverage after the live NBC Nightly News at 11.30pm, and the coverage goes on until 7am.  Al Jazeera's coverage runs from 9pm to 7am, whilst FOX News Channel's coverage starts at 11pm and goes on until 10am.  But CNN International take the award for the most coverage, starting off at 11am, including a special hour long edition of Amanpour at 8pm, switching to a simulcast of CNN USA at 9pm until 7am, when they resume coverage until 3pm, when they switch to a modified normal schedule, with an additional hour of International Desk at 5pm.  Although Piers Morgan Tonight is scheduled for 11pm, I expect that to be replaced with an edition of World Report from Hong Kong.

Over in Ireland, TV coverage is the order of the night, as radio seems to be giving live overnight coverage a wide berth.  Neither RTE Radio 1 nor NewsTalk have any scheduled coverage outside of daytime and news bulletins.  NewsTalk's George Hook is presenting his drivetime programme, The Right Hook, from America all week, but there is no overnight coverage scheduled.  On television RTE 1 has their own anchored coverage from 11.35pm until 3am, then they join CBS News for their coverage at 3am, switch to EuroNews at 7am, before RTE return to their own anchored coverage at 8am until 9.40am.

TV3 on the other hand, are doing something weird.  Undoubtedly, the story will feature in the regularly scheduled Tonight with Vincent Brown at 11pm.  TV3 will join CNN's live coverage at 2am until Ireland AM starts at 7am.  However, betweem Midnight and 2am, TV3 are showing Psychic Readings Live.  I don't need to be psychic to know that TV3 will basically have given RTE the ratings victory in that timeslot.  Also, Ireland AM is not known for its news coverage, so that could be an interesting programme.

As we get closer to Election Day in the US, I will be finding out more about how other broadcasters around the world will be covering the story, and I will update the blog with those details as I find them.  Also, if I get any word on internet streams of coverage, and I expect there to be such streams from Politico and Democracy Now amongst others, then I'll bring that information to you as well.  On the night, I myself will be live tweeting on @cityprod.  It should be a fascinating night.

Global buys Atlantic FM: There are no winners here.

I am disappointed at the recent news that Global Radio is buying Atlantic FM and rebranding it to Heart.

Programming will no longer come from Atlantic's studios in St Agnes but from the old Gemini FM studios in Exeter.  Programmes from Exeter, for a Cornish audience.  That's really going to get an audience... NOT!

You see Heart's owner, Global Radio, is a combination of all the worst parts of UK broadcast history.
It goes all the way back to 1980.  Back then, a radio station called Radio West started broadcasting in Bristol.  By 1985 though, it and nearby station Wiltshire Radio were losing money hand over fist.  The IBA, the regulator at the time, examined the situation and was presented by the stations with a proposal.  Allow the two stations to merge, and broadcasts could continue, otherwise, both stations would have failed and the licences would have to be readvertised. 

The IBA knew that re-adveritisng licences for areas where stations had failed could be problematic.  The IBA had previously disallowed a takeover of Centre Radio in Leicestershire in 1983, and the station had gone off air.  The owners of Radio Trent offered to start a new station in Leicestershire, called Leicester Sound, and 11 months after Centre Radio went off air, Leicester Sound signed on.  So the IBA had previous experience of the difficulties of re-advertising a licence.  They were determined not to make the same mistake again.

So the IBA basically allowed the merger to go ahead.  But in the process, a monster was born, that thought that expansionism was the way to go.  Once the IBA had been replaced by The Radio Authority and the ITC by Margaret Thatcher's government, GWR began expaniding it's reach.  GWR teamed up with Capital to buy Plymouth Sound and DevonAir Radio.  DevonAir was replaced by Gemini FM in a franchise auction, and Capital basically sold the rest of Plymouth Sound to GWR.  GWR continued to pick up stations including the Chiltern Radio network and would begin the process of slowly eroding localness from it's output.  First, all the AM stations were replaced by a networked Classic Gold service with just 4 hours of local output per day for 6 days out of 7, a total of 24 hours of local programming a week.

Then GWR tried to get local programming cut down to just 13 hours a day across their network, but the regulator said that it had to be 16 hours a day.  As a deliberate move, they made 3 of the local hours 3am to 6am in the morning, at the most unprofitable time of the day.  It was as though they were trying to send a message to the regulator that local doesn't work.  Network programming ran from 7pm till 3am.

Eventually, OFCOM backed down and basically local programming has been slashed on Heart ever since.  There is now only 7 hours of "local" programming on Heart on weekdays, and 4 hours at weekends, a total of 43 hours a week.  The company behind Heart, Global Radio, basically these days is a mixture of the GCap attitudes and the attitude of Charles Allen, who basically oversaw the downgrading of ITV from a serious regional broadcaster with a unique selling point, to a company that is little different from the myriad of digital TV broadcasters.  In short, it is the worst of all media worlds, joined together in one place.

People have said this will increase choice.  It won't.  Heart were already broadcasting in Cornwall via DAB Digital Radio, relaying the Devon service with Plymouth ads.  The least I can hope for is that on the Cornwall mux they arrange to playout the Cornwall ads instead.  Other than that, there would be no discernable difference in output, and we have lost the Atlantic FM sound on FM, to make way for Heart.  Jermey Scott called this an upgrade for Atlantic.  it is not, it is a downgrade, and most listeners in Cornwall will know this.
Expect the listenership figures for Atlantic/Heart to plummet from the current 71,000, to a level nearer 17,000 or even maybe nearer 7,000.

Pirate FM and BBC Radio Cornwall will undoubtedly be the beneficiaries.  There's enough history as well to back that up.  In 1999, Plymouth Sound AM was replaced by Classic Gold.   The figures dropped from 67,000 to 20,000.  Pirate FM picked up most of the listeners who deserted.  Now, history will repeat itself, and Global Radio haven't learned the lessons of the past.  If you don't learn from the past, you are destined to repeat the mistakes of the past, which is what Global will do.

The worst part is whilst Atlantic FM never made a profit, they were almost as well respected as Pirate FM.  They knew they were coming into a tough market with both Pirate FM and BBC Radio Cornwall being long established and successful stations.  That Atlantic FM couldn't be profitable despite their best efforts is regrettable, and understandable.  But the fact that Global haven't understood the dynamics of the area they are proposing to move into and are going to output to Cornwall from Exeter and London, shows how much the company is out of touch with actuality. 

Global Radio haven't even been profitable the last 2 financial years, yet Ashley Tabor has taken home about £6million in bonuses.  Bonuses for failure.  Failing to grow in terms of listeners, and failing to grow in terms of credibility and respect.

Global is about as hated as GWR Group and GCap Media were before them.  That sort of baggage only weighs a company down.  Global is a company that needs to change it's whole direction and priorities.  Being overfocused on cutting costs, does not lead to making profits.  Their whole mindset, has to turn towards growth, growing the company and investing in its future.  ITV know all about that.  Since Charles Allen left ITV, they have been trying to grow their business, but the market does not have faith in ITV.  It was in 2007 that ITV last saw their share price above the £1 level that indicates market confidence in a company, and even though they have recovered from their March 2009 lows of around 18p per share, they have still yet to recover above the £1 level.  Global is not a plc, unlike ITV, so it's shares do not trade.  But I would imagine that if they did trade on the stock exchange,they would similarly trade below £1.

This move is not good for commercial radio as a whole, and further reinforces the image that Global, through their actions, are slowly destroying local radio, in the same way that ITV decimated regional television.  And whilst that definitely isn't what they are trying to do, that is the perception they are giving off, and as I always say, perception IS reality.

ITV finally gets something right.

Today, I noticed that finally, ITV1+1 shows the correct region. Until recently, in the South West of England, you couldn't guarantee that every programme that aired on ITV1, would air 1 hour later on ITV1+1. That was because whilst our ITV1 region is Westcountry West, our ITV1+1 region was Wales, and there were several notable differences. Regional news was different and there were minor variations in the schedule.

Now, we have the right region on ITV1+1, Westcountry West, on both Freeview and Sky. Knowing ITV's past history as well as I do, and having only heard about changes happening on the Sky platform, I was half expecting to find ITV1+1 had been changed to Westcountry East on Sky, and to still be Wales on Freeview. Thankfully, ITV managed to surpass my low expectations, so congratulations ITV for managing to do that.

Unfortunately, I have even less expectation of ITV doing anything that would make me think they would be getting anywhere close to providing a proper regional broadcasting service.

Disney buys Marvel - more corporate conservatism?

Imagine this: you are webslinging across the New York city skyline, just like Spiderman. You swing round to see the famous Baxter Building, home of the Fantastic Four, twith its big "4" rooftop landing pad. But as you swing by, you notice something unusual. The circle 4 logo, has suddenly got Mickey Mouse ears!

Okay, this is not likely to happen! But, it does highlight the strangeness of this whole deal. Disney is buying Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion. Sounds like a lot of money for a comic book company. But when you look at this in detail, like I have, you notice there are things about this whole deal that seem to be totally wrong here.

First off, is a simple one. The reputations of each company. Disney is well known for it's family friendly image. It's not well known for edgy, controversial and rosky storylines, like Marvel does in its comics. Will we end up seeing a Disney-fied Marvel as a result, with comics more aimed at younger children than at the current teen market? Only time will tell. But that must be a worry for the artists that work for Marvel.

Secondly, when you look at the indivdual properties that Marvel owns (most of these being characters and their related franchises), it would seem that Disney has got somewhat of a bargain, maybe even significantly underpaid the real value of Marvel. Marvel has over 5000 characters across its multitudes of comic books, and many years of history too.

Spiderman for instance, has been around since 1962. He made his first transition to television in the late 1960s cartoon, with perhaps the most memorable sung theme tune lyrics in history. "Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever a spider can...". He made his first live action appearance in 1978 TV specials, which were actually very well produced, and filmed, managing to achieve the effect of having him crawl up walls and make it look good. He had since also appeared in another 6 animated shows, including two running simulataneously in 1981, and the hit "Spiderman:The Animated Series" which ran from 1994 to 1998.

But it's been the recent Spiderman films that have made Spiderman a huge franchise. Since 2002, Tobey Maguire's Spiderman has catapulted the character into the stratusphere. Without doubt the Sam Raimi directed films have done more for the character than all the previous versions put together, taking almost $2.5 billion in box office revenues worldwide. Two films featuring another Marvel character, The Incredible Hulk, in the same time period, have taken over $500 million. Two films featuring The Fantastic Four in 2005 and 2007, grossed over $600 million. Put together the earnings from these three franchises alone, and it comes to $3.6 billion. Put that next to the $4 billion that Disney is paying, and it doesn't half look like Disney seriously underpaid for Marvel.

But the biggest concern I have in all this, is will we see the taming of the risk taking Marvel, by the more conservative Disney? It's been a growing trend across news media, broadcast media and entertainment media over the past 20 years. Corporations do not like taking risks. But Marvel had taken many risks over the years, including the purchase in 1981 of DFE Films, the company that produced the Pink Panther cartoons, which then became Marvel Productions.

The 1994 animated Spiderman series was a big risk, as they used a lot of new techniques in order to achieve the look that they wanted. But it cost a lot of money. So they started resorting to all the usual tricks to save money, such as repeating animations, a favourite trick of Filmation. Also, multi-part stories became the order of business, in order to cut down on the number of characters that they would have to animate.

Despite the success of Spiderman, Marvel went bankrupt in 1996. The fear of bankruptcy is what makes corporations very conservative. They will not take a risk. We've seen corporate conservatism at work already. In 1993, there were 15 ITV companies, each with their own ideas. Now, there is 1 dominant ITV company - ITV plc, and 3 smaller ones. ITV companies used to take risks with shows they had no idea if it would even work. Now, everything has to be in profit before it even aires. 15 diverse broadcasters have been replaced by 1 large broadcaster that seems scared of its own shadow.

Then there is the GWR/GCap/Global situation in commercial radio. In the late 1980's, commercial radio was forced to split FM and AM programming, creating two stations where there had previously only been one. The ILR heritage stations remained on FM< whilst new oldies stations were created on AM. GWR created Brunel Classic Gold on AM and as GWR bought up stations, they imported the Classic Gold name and format. In 1998, GWR sought the approval of the Radio Authority to network Classic Gold for 20 hours a day. They were granted this, and so began the process of creating a semi-national network, cutting expenses and local programmes, because of their growing corporate conservatism. Classic Gold is now Gold. But of course it didn't stop there.

They increased their networking arrangements on FM. Evenings and Overnights became the first easy targets for FM network programmes. It was understandable. In the early days of commercial radio, some neighbouring stations would get together to provide a mini network for evenings and overnights. The Yorkshire Radio Network, combinig Pennine Radio, Radio Hallam and Viking Radio, provided programmes most evenings and for a bit longer at weekends. Other little networks also emerged, so it was an easy target for GWR, or as they would later become, GCap.

But it took until Global had taken over GCap, for FM network to reach into daytime, with OFCOM allowing a rule change that allowed stations to broadcast just 10 hours of locally originated programming a day on weekdays. The Heart FM network would simulcast Toby Anstis between 10am and 1pm, in order, as they would say, to allow a big name personality to generate revenue across the network. Unfortuantely, Toby is such a bad radio presenter, that the only thing keeping him on air is his supposed star power.
That's the root of the thinking of corporate conservatism. Big names + big audience = profit. But it doesn't always work that way.

Now corporate conservative Disney is going to buy Marvel, and will we see the same corporate conservatism infect Marvel, like it has infected many other media corporations over the years? I hope not, but I'm not confident.

Granada Industrial Dispute in ITV's Future?

Media Guardian reports that staff at Granada Media belonging to the NUJ, Bectu and Amicus will vote on strike action in a pay dispute after Granada imposed a 2% pay rise.

If the strike went ahead, it would affect output across all seven of Granada Media's ITV franchises.

This is a large blow for ITV and Granada, coming just a couple of months before the merger between Carlton and Granada takes place.

This highlights the danger of allowing ITV to be consolidated into one company. ITV's strength lay in the fact it was not one comapny but many companies. Such a strength should be particularly obvious now. Under the old-style ITV, you had 15 major production centres, and 15 companies that could have by now been working separately to create a myriad of channels in the multi-channel arena, alongside network ITV's efforts.

Instead we've had 3 companies trying to enter multi-channel arena, Carlton via cable channels and OnDigital, Granada via GSkyB and Scottish TV via Sky Scottish. Of all of these, mainly lacklustre efforts, only GSkyB remains with Plus and Men & Motors, alongside ITV2 and the ITV News Channel. GSkyB may not survive much longer as there are plans to transfer the material that Plus uses into an ITV Gold channel, and Men & Motors is hardly able to run by itself as a "primary" channel without Plus to pull in some prestiege advertisers for the prestiege programming.

Add to this, that this industrial dispute could take out, temporarily, half the ITV network in one go, and the ever present possibility that this new ITV plc company could fail, and by doing so take out not only most of the ITV network, but about a third of all new production in this country, and we are talking serious consequences that very few people seemed to have noticed. It could mean the end of the UK as a major television producer, with the US becoming more dominant than ever before.

ITV in crisis

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.

Regional Rollercoaster

Out of all the channels that currently exist, only 3 channels provide a terrestrial regional service to the English regions, BBC-1, BBC-2 and ITV. Every other service available is national, pan-European or even international in focus.

So why are there so few regional services? The short answer is money. To provide a basic regional service, for instance to the West, South, East, Midlands, North, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, you have to find eight new locations for studios. To run the entire service from your broadcast headquarters, at least eight new transmission suites need to be built and suddenly we're talking hundreds of millions of pounds. Currently only Sky could even consider something like that.

The BBC offer a 14-region terrestrial service, covering the South West, West, South, South East, East, East Midlands, West Midlands, North West, North, North East and Cumbria, Channel Islands, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, and are in the process of carving a 15th region out of the South East for London. A comprehensive service like this is the most expensive route to take, with the pick of the regional bunch, ITV, having 27 regional divisions operated by 15 licensees in 14 regions. A 27-region service requires 27 transmission suites, at a time where ITV tries to consolidate into a single company.

Even without consolidation, regional output has already suffered. The BBC used to produce some great regional feature programming, including "Floyd on Food" and "Secret Nature", both from the Southwest. The BBC picked up these shows nationally as well as many other programmes from the regions. The three main regional production centres for the network, Bristol, Birmingham and Manchester, specialise in certain types of productions. The only things the individual regions produce are local news, weekly topical news documentaries and a regional parliamentary programme. All are news based with no feature-based material at all - no fun stuff.

You might have expected ITV to pick up the slack here but the picture is similarly bleak. For instance, Westward and TSW had been great providers of regional programming, some of it being shown on the network. Successor company Westcountry, however, have produced only news and factual programming, with a tiny amount of entertainment-related material produced by local independents. Even after Carlton rebranded Westcountry, things did not really improved. Although the "Carlton Production" slide is seen a lot, the great majority of these productions are from London and the Midlands.

So regional programming has already suffered on television, and it looks like it will continue to suffer under a single ITV company coupled with light-touch regulation. Because being regional eats up money and profits, expect to see even less in the future.

Brand X

ITV has become ITV1, SkySports.comTV has reverted to being known as Sky Sports News - two recent examples of just how important the correct brand is to television stations and networks. But branding isn't just the station name, it's also everything that identifies the station as being what it is. So, just why is the brand so important?

One reason is to help viewers build a familiarity with the station. Westward's brand was a very strong one in the South West of England, and indeed still is, despite the fact that it disappeared from our TV screens at the end of 1981. Why is it so strong?

One reason is that although Westward changed their idents a few times, they never changed their symbol - it was always the Golden Hind - and the continual use of this symbol for 20 years meant that people built a familiarity with it. Every time that ship appeared on the screen, you knew you were watching Westward.

Another thing that helped build familiarity was the regular team of station hosts, otherwise known as Continuity Announcers. When Roger Shaw told you that now on Westward was The Avengers, again, you knew you were watching Westward, because his face and voice became associated with Westward, and many years later, TSW as well. Familiar faces, familiar voices and a familiar symbol, amongst other things, helped to create a very strong brand for Westward, one which survives almost 20 years of disuse.

By way of an aside, in the United States, consumers regularly rate General Electric second out of 10 manufacturers for Blenders. The company stopped manufacturing white goods of this type more than 20 years ago. A powerful and quality brand is self-perpetuating.

Another reason why brand is so important is that it helps identify the sort of programming you can expect. Cartoon Network shows nothing but cartoons, Discovery Channel is all about documentaries, Disney Channel is children's and family entertainment, brands like that are familiar and give a good idea what the station is about.

But what about a brand like Boomerang? Now what kind of channel is that? It sounds like something to do with Australia or thrown weapons. In fact, Boomerang shows classic cartoons, such as Tom and Jerry, Droopy and Barney Bear. But again, if you'd never heard of the channel before, would you know that it showed classic cartoons? Possibly not, which is why it was initially introduced to the viewing public as a strand of programming on Cartoon Network, before it was launched as a separate channel.

Getting brands associated with whatever the channel wants you to associate it with, has always been a problem. Before 1956, would anyone have associated the word Granada with the North or North West of England? Possibly not, but it is now, and has been for quite some time, associated with the north. On the other hand, could you associate Rediffusion with any particular part of the country? Possibly not, because in the station name, there is no geographical indication of where the channel broadcasts or in this case, broadcasted, to. That's why from about 1964, you saw the words Rediffusion London on screen, in order to build that kind of association.

EuroNews or EuroSport have a similar kind of association, but this time you know they broadcast right across Europe, because of the Euro in their name. Other station names, such as Thames, Southern, Grampian and Ulster, are geographic names, in order to gain the respect of the local audiences. Names like that have a distinct advantage over names without any such geographic reference, such as Rediffusion, ABC, ATV or Carlton.

Also names that are based on the programming that's on the channel, such as Sky Sports 1, UK Gold, Travel Channel and BBC Knowledge have an advantage over channels where the name of the channel has no immediate reference to the programming, such as Q, Hallmark, Trouble and Bravo.

So, if you want your brand to stand out from the crowd, especially in today's very crowded multi-channel market, you need every advantage you can get. Just having your logo permanently on screen all the time won't cut it any more. Not distinctive enough, everybody's doing it. You need to make your station symbol, ident or logo very distinctive, something that will grab your viewers attention.

You need to have your announcers present it distinctively, you have to promo your station and programmes consistently and judiciously, so that you're viewer doesn't think they've seen everything the programme or channel might have to offer.

But most importantly, the brand has to become familiar in people's minds fairly quickly, and the brand has to be respected, otherwise your potential audience might not turn to your channel and that will prove disastrous.

The Avengers

The Avengers was produced from January 1961 to September 1969 and during its run it had two theme tunes, 5 main characters, countless strange villains and some very weird situations. But above everything else, it had some great chemistry. It was that chemistry between the main characters that made it the success it still is today.

The first season started out with two main characters, Patrick MacNee as John Steed and Ian Hendry as Dr David Keel. Johnny Dankworth, who would later write the music for Tomorrow’s World as well as much else, was commissioned to write the theme, and the music he wrote symbolized the more serious nature of the plots of the original few series.

The opening titles were striking - a series of clear black and white cards, sometimes mixed over the stage where the opening scene would take place. Ian Hendry was given top billing in the first season and the series firmly revolved around him ‘avenging’ the murder of his practice nurse girlfriend. Hendry had previously starred in a short series called “Police Surgeon” for ABC in 1959 and was playing a very similar character in the new series. The first two episodes, which served as a pilot, were filmed on videotape, while the next seven were transmitted live. The rest of the season was recorded on videotape.

After 26 episodes had been produced, a strike by British Actors Equity halted production temporarily. Still at the start of his career, Ian Hendry took the opportunity to leave the series to pursue film work. When production restarted, producers hired Honor Blackman to partner Steed in the role of Cathy Gale. This was reflected in the still-serious and stark title sequence.

Cathy Gale didn’t appear in every season 2 episode, with either Venus Smith (Julie Stevens) or Dr. Martin King (Jon Rollason) partnering John Steed to fill the gaps. The opening titles in these circumstances would just credit Macnee. The Dankworth theme music remained in place but the plots slowly started to develop towards the quirkiness that was to set the series apart.

By season three, the bit players had been removed and Cathy was the full-time partner. Importantly for ABC, the show was now being exported worldwide – except to the United States, where 405-line monochrome standard videotape had become unpopular with the networks as they moved to 525-line colour. ABC did export season three, but the US ABC network as buyers demanded in return that the next season was recorded on film, and that the show would become colour. But season four was to see the loss of the second lead actor: Honor Blackman had secured the role of Pussy Galore in the next James Bond film, Goldfinger and departed to begin filming at Pinewood.

ABC began searching for someone to take her place. The character was re-written in anticipation of a new actress, and even Howard Thomas, MD at ABC, was engaged in the casting process. A name was chosen on the basis of what they were looking for in the new character and the new actress: she must have Man Appeal – ‘M’ Appeal – Emma Peel. The ‘M’ appeal was found in actress Diana Rigg, and the show was on its way from being a success to being a classic.

Season four marked a relaunch for the series. The Dankworth theme no longer suited the mood of the stories, which were quirkier than ever before, and Laurie Johnson was commissioned to compose a new theme. The opening titles also changed to a series of still pictures of the two stars, Macnee & Rigg, in typical Avengers-like poses. Whilst season four was in black and white, the next season would see the programme being filmed in colour, despite ABC Weekend and the rest of ITV still being in monochrome themselves.
Season five also saw another change in the opening titles, with a filmed sequence involving the two stars.

During the season, the ABC endcap was significantly different. It would start “ABC Production” minus the famous triangle logo and end showing that ABC stood for Associated British Corporation – a name invented by ABPC to fill the letters and avoid confusion with US ABC.

Diana Rigg decided to leave the show at the end of the penultimate season and producers brought in Linda Thorson to play the role of trainee Tara King, a character she created and named herself. But NBC scheduled the popular ‘Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In’ against the new series on ABC-US and the ratings went into freefall.

The production team was replaced and the character of Tara King was toughened up but that didn’t help ABC-US’s ratings and the show was cancelled in 1969.

ABC Weekend had also moved on to become Thames Television, and the show was no longer networked in the UK, ABC’s parent company having chosen to hold on to the rights rather than deed them to the part-owned Thames.

Since coming to an end, the show has received many plays in syndication worldwide including showings in the UK on Channel 4 and Granada Plus. The show can be found playing in its Blackman, Rigg and Thorson variants in all Francophone countries where it has become a popular cult hit. The series has been released several times on sell-through video and is known for being the height of British style and eccentricity throughout the world and in its home country. The Avengers has become a continuing legacy of ABC and all it stood for.