A question.

In a recent report, the BBC's Director General Greg Dyke spoke of how the government should stop the licence fees that itv has to pay. He claimed that these fees were collectively a total of £300 million.

My questions. Is this the collective total for regional licenses?

Why do they have to pay so much; in fact, why do they have to pay this?

How often do they pay this? Is it annually? Every ten years?

Who do they pay for these licenses? Is it the Government? And could they drop them?

What sort of benefits (bar the obvious) could you see if these charges were dropped from itv?

I'd much appreciate some answers as I never knew they had to do this, and would like to find out why please!

Someone I am sure will provde all the details, but the Regional companies had to bid a price for the right to broadcast. When this happened 10 years or so ago I remember Yorkshire bidding £10,000,000 for their licence. Scottish Television on bid £2,000 and WON the licence. This was due to no other company having such a strong application.

So when it comes for bidding for them again, it'll mainly be carlton & granada bidding, and if they merge it will be itv bidding for them all; they may even bid for utv, scottish & grampian.

Given the large amount of specifically local programming, I dont think ANY other group would successfully bid for region, unless they bought SMG out lock, stock and barrell.

Don't forget that this would include GMTV since they pay as well for the right to broadcast on ITV between 6am and 9:25am.



If I'm right, this goes back to the 1990 Broadcasting Act which introduced cash bids for regional ITV franchises (and a national one in the case of TV-AM/GMTV). It basically meant that you couldn't rely on past performance alone but also that it wasn't a case of bidding the highest amount either. Think of it as "boosting the treasury".



Annually, I believe they pay it directly to the treasury. As an example, Central Television bid only £2k for their license for the Midlands and thus pay £2k a year to the treasury for the right to broadcast to the Midlands.



See above. The new regulator, set up as part of the 1990 Broadcasting Act, has the power to strip a company of its franchise but while it has revoked the odd licence for a few satellite channels (including ITV Digital), I don't believe it's ever done such a thing for an ITV franchise.



Well they'd save money for a start, some companies pay more than others. As I said, Central TV (the ITC does not view it as "Carlton for Central England") pay only £2k annually. Others pay several thousands. GMTV (previously Sunrise TV, renamed after Sky complained) pay £36m annually, outbidding TV-AM (interestingly enough, Margaret Thatcher was friends with Bruce Gyngell. She wrote to him later apologising for what her new legislation had done to his company).



They've been doing it (only without the cash bids) since ITV started in 1955. Previous franchise renewals happened in 1968, 1980 and 1991. In theory we should be having another one around about now but the new 1990 Act allowed the franchise holders to renew in advance, I forget how far though but most regions are now secure franchise wise until at least 2008.

Each region pays a percentage of its annual revenue to, well, the treasury I suppose, as a condition of its licence. Some regions pay a greater percentage than others, so I guess Granada and Carlton (and to a lesser extent SMG) can shift money around the regions they own in order to pay as little as possible.

EDIT: Actuallt, seeing Neil's post makes me think I may have misunderstood this. Anyhow, you might be interested in this. It's a list of the winning bids in the 1991 franchise round:

Sunrise £34.61m
Border £52,000 (unopposed)
Channel £1,000 (higher bidder failed Quality Threshold)
Scottish £2,000 (unopposed)
Anglia £17.8m
Carlton £43.17m
LWT £7.58m (higher bidder failed Quality Threshold)
Central £2,000 (unopposed)
Ulster £1.03m (two higher bidders failed Quality Threshold)
Tyne Tees £15.06m
Grampian £720,000 (two higher bidders failed Quality Threshold)
Granada £9m (higher bidder failed Quality Threshold)
Meridian £36.52m (incumbent TVS's higher bid deemed not viable)
Westcountry £7.82m (higher bidder failed quality threshold)
HTV £20.53m
Yorkshire £37.7m