Areas where ITV is 'missing a trick'

bring back the regions

Like STV or UTV then?

Yes, I had hoped for responses of a more practical nature, but then I suppose this is a presentation forum so "bring back the regions", "rename ITV to channel 3" and "bring back Maggie Mash" were always going to make an appearance. Nevertheless, those things won't make ITV any money.

well its simple ITV have to start making proper programmes, I mean where's the quiz shows, the sitcoms, variety entertainment, quality regional programming, kids shows, nature programmes, dramas (I mean series, not one offs!), that is the real trick they are missing, they need to make better use of ITV3 as well.

Again, regional programmes and children's programmes have been shown to be very unprofitable for ITV. They're not 'missing a trick' by cutting down on children's programmes, they're saving money.

If they want to profit from children's programmes, they could have a CiTV tour or something, with popular kids acts performing on stage, and charging for tickets. CiTV would arguably get away with cloning a format like Hannah Montana. Children are totally into that type of show and Disney has been making them for years - such as Hilary Duff a long time ago - and yet no British broadcaster has jumped on the bandwagon yet.

For a company like ITVplc, of course making 12 sets of regional programmes is unprofitable. They don't divide up their revenues on a per-region basis, so "local" is really out of the question.

However, one local station making a programme for their region wouldn't necessarily be unprofitable - depending on the nature of the programme.

According to your take on it, it sounds like ITV would have to become the Disney of the UK - with money spinning live events and tours of their populist programming. We don't have the climate for a theme park, sadly, so its Corrie on Ice and Emmerdale-capades all the way, yes?

ITV are stuck trying to be a general entertainment channel, but staying on C3 means they are burdened with PSB commitments to local output and news provision.

Perhaps they should have considered that more fully before they got into this mess.

I think there'd even be some value in making a new quiz show to take 'on the road'. Imagine a new quiz, which would be arriving at a venue near your house. If you go to the shopping centre to watch, you could become a contestant live on air, just by being in the audience - and win a cash prize. And each week it would move to a new city.

It would generate a bigger buzz than a quiz based in a London studio, and the cost of running it would be similar as it wouldn't require a studio. Whilst not a 'regional' programme, it would feature a different city and different people every week, it would get local audiences excited, and would get the ITV name out on the road.



Disney has a very sound business model, and takes its acts on the road with great success. The Jonas Brothers, Demi Lovato, Hilary Duff, High School Musical, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez; all are Disney stars who have had sell out tours. Disney's stars were launched on their TV sitcoms, then did huge stage shows, which were subsequently rebroadcast on TV; it's a very profitable cycle.

I don't think ITV should just make a half hearted attempt to emulate Disney. That resulted in Britannia High, which was so ill conceived and poorly executed, I'd hate to think it scared ITV off from trying anything similar. Nor do I think they should be tagging their name on any venture they think might make a few quid such as "Dancing on Ice Skating Lessons by Gail off Coronation Street, £30 an hour".

ITV should be looking at formats that are true to its roots - making quality programmes. Taking shows 'on the road' is just a small part of that, but one that could be tried. If not music, then perhaps comedy. People traditionally pay to see comedy in comedy venues, so why not exploit that; although obviously ITV would need a comedy format first and I can't recall them having any, but if they developed a good show with popular comedians, people would probably pay to see the recording.

Exciting? Maybe.

Cost effective? No way.

I've got more than a little experience of the events market - which is costly enough when its in your own town - but they would be accommodating production staff as well as the contestants; third party power/distribution, LX, OB trucks and staging, all with haulage costs and the headache of risk assessing every "public" venue you set up in.

Nice idea though - but would serve a cash rich customer better I think.



Indeed - if you have the programmes to start with. ITV don't - and they don't own the massively popular Cowell formats.

You're right about Britannia High. It was the worst thing to hit TV for years. "Fame" it was not.

What might work well is a return to variety - proper variety like Sunday Night at the Palladium. They could contract the most popular acts for end of season tours - but forget about OBs from the venues. That would be a total money pit.

Getting people to pay to watch TV shows being taped is less than likely though. It just doesn't happen.

Gameshows on the road might not be cost effective, but how about link ups with Xbox Live or PlayStation Network? 1 vs 100 online is pretty good although not currently associated with the BBC TV version. WeDigTV did some very interesting things with ITV owned gameshow formats, surely someone needs to put the pieces together here and revive 'participation television'?

It can't be any worse than the embarrasingly wobbly satellite links of 'Come and have a go...' or tacky bingo cards in the Mirror.

In a loose connection to that - I was watching Oprah the other day - first time in many years. In that particular show she appeared to have no guests in the studio, but sat interviewing people via Skype (complete with lots of mentions of it, including a logo on screen).

The shots were nicely set up and lit, but were clearly domestic video messaging quality. The images were being upscaled nicely and projected into pieces of the set (not big 4:3 screens - rather cut-outs in the flattage that were large enough for the guests to fill the frame).

Surprisingly it looked pretty darned good, and allowed her to interview what seemed to be 8-10 guests (maybe less), where even for Oprah that would be an expensive set of video links or booked studios; and as they were online throughout, the guests were able to chip in at will.

In the commercial break they cut to a behind the scenes shot of their "communications area", where you could see all the Skype lines cued up and ready to be cut to.

Now that could be an interesting way to set up a gameshow - with perhaps 10s of contestants lined up from their own home. It would require the costs associated with that amount of internet connections, and a presenter in a studio. Plus the risk assessments and health and safety would be down to the householder!

Perhaps I should have developed that idea myself.

Oh well, if you see it on screen soon, you'll know who had the idea first.

I think a gaping hole was missed with Top of The Pops going, so if you placed a bit of money into it, There could be a start, give it some faces and make there own, there's a host of talent brought on by X Factor and it could be a thing, that it would have a live performance, also an alternative music show has a hole in the market, and that could make it more credible, also some quality dramas, with decent writers, if they could make some good documentaries, they could make themselves look like the quality channel again.

At the company I work for, every development round has a request from the commissioner to come up with some sort of 'interactive' show featuring webcam linkups from people at home. By the time it gets to commissioning, the webcam bits are always dropped, without fail.

The one time something got commissioned, the technology wasn't up to it, and so single camera teams were sent to participants' houses and the footage was deliberately 'digitised' to look like it had come from a webcam.

It's a great technology to be able to link up with celebrity guests from their own homes, but where is the excitement watching poor quality footage of some bloke in his living room play a game show? Surely that's only exciting for the one person taking part. That would also limit the participation to people watching the show on their computer or laptop, and exclude the majority audience watching on TV at home from joining in.

The one thing I think would be quite exciting is having a segment on Saturday Night Takeaway, where they link up with all the users who have connected their webcams to itv.com/takeaway - suddenly all those smiling faces from around the nation are live on TV, and then one of them is selected to play a game.

But then you open yourself up to people holding up messages, or exposing their breasts, and a time delay is out of the question on a live show. And if it's not done live, then the low quality result of using webcams isn't really excusable.