aberdeenboy's posts, page 9

Scottish pres discussion Thread

I thought Jamie McIvor's BBC piece was much more fair and balanced than anything I've read in the Scottish press. There's a difference between knocking STV, as some of them have done, and acknowledging how some people may be feeling about the schedule. Nor did it paint STV as the villains in the ongoing row with ITV.

It took the legitimate concern of a disappointed viewer who had seen publicity for a programme he would have enjoyed (on BBC Breakfast or in a national paper as the report seemed to indicate?)... but balanced this by pointing out that STV's financial results and ratings suggest that the company's going the right way strategically.

It's lucky though that Taggart is the replacement programme on this occasion - not The Best of Now You See It - as this gave a good impression of STV's strategy and meant that there was no way they could be derided or accused of showing inferior productions.

I was a bit surprised, but not disappointed, to see the 993 demonstration. First the Radio Times, now the most watched news programme in Scotland. Gulp! The wider public are really getting to hear about it now. But I can't help but wonder if the reason for pointing out 993 was to demonstrate to the critics what we all know... If you don't like what STV are doing, do something positive - nobody's forcing you to watch. The problem, of course, would be if 993 ever eroded STV's own audience and there's no sign of that happening.

Scottish pres discussion Thread

I wonder, I wonder...

Has STV scored a real own goal dropping Downton Abbey? It may have been the right commercial decision, in the short term at least. But I fear it could backfire badly. Here's why...

Downton Abbey, if it's successful, is exactly the kind of prestigious, event television which attracts a lot of people who aren't natural ITV viewers. It was even being plugged on BBC Breakfast the other morning.

More seriously, it's the Pick of the Week in most of the quality UK papers and the Mail on Sunday and there's been lots of advertising in the UK papers too. A classic example of "overspill" marketing in Scotland.

It's also been the straw that broke the camel's back in the Radio Times which this week published details on how to watch ITV1 London in the STV area TWICE - on the letters pages and in the editor's column on Page 3.

So, for the first time, middle class telly viewers have been told explicitly how they can bypass STV to watch a programme which almost seems to have been made with them specially in mind.

Scottish pres discussion Thread

I've just been watching This is Scotland on the STV Youtube channel. I've seen so many clips over the years but it was a delight to finally see the whole show for the first time. Not only the entertainment but James Robertson Justice's links and even Jimmy Nairn's announcements going into the breaks! (At least I think it was Jimmy!)

What a shame there is no surviving recording of STV actually coming on the air for the first time though. The first playing of Scotlandia, the first announcement and the introduction to This is Scotland. But the remarkable thing is that there is a complete recording of This is Scotland. For many years, I believe, it was thought that no recording still existed. Or at least that's what I read in the Sunday Post once....

Daybreak

Am I being cynical, or could the breakfast bulletins be getting sidelined for a reason? Figures go down... ITVplc goes off to Ofcom and seeks permission to cut them.

Daybreak

The One Show has only attracted significantly more than 6m viewers once... on the day in January when the country came to a standstill. That same night the regional programmes together got more than 9m so the ratings were truly exceptional. (That's not being nasty about The One Show, by the way, which has much to admire.) The average was always somewhere between 4.5m to 5m.

Networked ITV - 1990s and before...

Grampian's studios at Queens Cross were demolished c 2003. There are now flats on the site.

In general, the smaller ITV companies tended to have facilites in excess of those they actually needed. The IBA more or less required it.

Grampian had two proper studios - one for North Tonight and Crossfire, the other for just about everything else. (Obviously there was the continuity studio as well.)

I can't think of any attempt by Grampian or Border to do drama. Grampian's strengths were always in factual programmes and education although their local entertainment was very popular. It was hard enough for middle ranking companies like STV and Anglia to get programmes networked far less Grampian and Border. The smaller companies really did have to develop niches to get material screened nationally.

Daybreak

TV-am in its first few weeks can hardly be compared to the programme it quickly became.

As I say, GMTV lost viewers.. but relatively few of them went to BBC Breakfast. They just went. BBC Breakfast became the market leader by default.

Also, this is a daft point, but how many of GMTV's viewers ever watched The One Show so really know who Adrian and Christine are? They'd only know them second hand from the papers. I'd have thought the bulk of GMTV's core audience were likely to have been Emmerdale fans and certainly core ITV1 viewers.

Daybreak

I'm not saying Blair is a bad booking... but he's on the plugging circuit just now. I watched the Andrew Marr Interview last week but can't say I'll be breaking my habits to watch him sitting on the sofa tomorrow.

I can't imagine Blair drawing in the curious viewers or saying anything really newsworthy after last week's genuine revelations. It's also worth remembering that when New Labour was at its peak, Government ministers and Blair himself routinely went on GMTV (supposedly to reach the housewives of Britain and others who were not political animals) but would avoid Today and BBC Breakfast.

You realise what every tabloid paper is waiting to do just now don't you? Even if Daybreak gets some extra viewers tomorrow and starts to close the ratings gap (which it may or may not do) there will be stories claiming the programme has flopped as long as the BBC remains in front.

The challenge for Daybreak once the initial momentum is spent will be enormous. Getting people to change their daily viewing habits is a big ask. When BBC Breakfast pulled ahead, a lot of that was actually down to GMTV losing viewers to other channels - not to people switching over to BBC1. Indeed common sense suggests that a large proportion of BBC Breakfast's viewers are the kind of people who would be naturally loyal to the BBC when it comes to news.

History is not on the side of Daybreak. Changing breakfast tv programmes radically has always alienated loyal viewers even if the revamp proved right in the longer term. Remember the oppostion to the Breakfast Time revamp in 1986 when it moved towards hard news? Dwarfed only by the disaster of GMTV's first few weeks before it became TV-am Mk 2.

Scottish pres discussion Thread

To change the topic slightly... and, Gavin, you may wish to relish this moment as I don't often change my mind.

I was sure that dropping so much high profile network material would damage STV. I've come round to accepting that it is proving more profitable and has allowed an increase in Scottish production. It's true that overall ratings have dropped but that should not be confused with a bad business strategy.

As I've said before, I think it's clear that STV and ITV are heading for a divorce. ITV is going to find a way, eventually, of broadcasting ITV1 directly to the whole UK if not on C3. If STV hadn't started making moves towards independence it would have been absolutely stuffed when this happens.

My only issue - and this is not an issue with STV but an observation - is that in this day and age, the success of one broadcaster or channel should not mean artificially excluding someone else from the market as a historic legacy. I just wish an amicable -and maybe staggered - divorce would hurry up and happen. STV could be C3 here and continue to be the master of its own destiny and play a significant role in Scottish life. ITV1 could be openly available on all platforms too- not hiden away and available through a loophole - and able to make money out of the viewers it can pick up here.

STV's competition would not be ITV1 - but, as at present, ALL the other commercial channels of which ITV1 is but one.

Scottish pres discussion Thread

The clue may be in the date and the reporter...

George Reid unexpectedly stood as an SNP candidate in the February 1974 election and was elected.

Clearly this programme would have been unsuitable for broadcast in the election period and might have been hard to show after Mr Reid had resigned from STV and was in parliament.

Scottish pres discussion Thread

Well spotted... and to think I had always thought The Alexander Brothers' Show was the first colour programme made in Scotland. I think I even gave that as the answer when I wrote questions for a charity quiz once!!

Interesting to see that STV, like TWW, were making films in colour well before any date was set for ITV moving into colour.

I must also say that seeing this film made me realise something else. I'm a bit too young to remember this era and I'd always assumed that STV only got it's act together and started spending money on decent programmes after it narrowly retained its franchise in 1968 and Thomson reduced its shareholding. I'd been brought up to think that in its early days STV made little but cheap and cheerful (and very popular) output like the One O'Clock Gang and fulfilled the rest of its requirements as economically as possible - how John Grierson could show documentaries but could never make them. Presumably then STV started to up its game ahead of the franchise round rather than after it?

Tony, I'm assuming that by December 1969 the Gateway was making studio programmes in colour and that Master Control was equipped for colour - but that the parts of the Theatre Royal itself which could still be used after the fire were still in monochrome?

Networked ITV - 1990s and before...

I think it's important to distinguish between the quality and relevance of regional news in the South of Scotland and questions about whether viewers in the Border region are missing out on the Scottish national picture.

On regional news, it's obvious the situation is difficult. Just as it is in the former Westcountry region, the former Central East region and various other parts of England which lost sub-opts. Surprisingly though the viewing figures across the Border/Tyne Tees regions have apparently held up - at least according to Ofcom, though I have not seen any BARB ratings.

On the Scottish national picture surely it was ever thus with Border - the situation was brought into sharp focus with devolution but did it really get any worse when the enlarged Border TTTV programme began? I'm sure you know about the arguments going all the way back to 1960 about whether Selkirk should have gone to STV.

I cannot help but wonder how many viewers in the Border region would actually prefer STV though - and how much the idea of giving the south to STV is really more of a poltical point by people sympathetic to the SNP, or at least Scottish nationalism generally, but who don't watch much commercial telly. Arguments about the legal system and the established church are irrelevant to a day's entertainment on a mainstream commercial channel. And in news they reflect the kind of issues far more likely to be dealt with on Reporting Scotland and BBC Scotland's other output than on STV News or the rest of the station's current output. Are viewers in the Border region somehow missing out bon Scottish life because they can't watch Postcode Challenge and The Hour but can watch all the superb ITV1 dramas which STV doesn't show on 103 rather than 993?

Interesting hypothetical. Imagine if Grampian had actually been bought by Carlton Or Granada and ended up in ITVplc like Border while STV had remained independent.