Channel 3 breakfast license - GMTV - Page 4

Neil Jones Founding member 13 July 2007 11:17pm

Jez posted:

Alexia posted:

So...........what happens in order for ITV to show things like the Malaysian Grand Prix at 6am, and the Rugby World Cup at 8:30am?

The airtime is giving back to GMTV so sometimes it may be on until 10am or something to make up the time.

According to what's been written on the Wiki, ITV have had to get permission from Ofcom to broadcast their own programming (such as covering Formula 1 racing for example) during GMTV hours and they get the time back in lieu the Sunday after next. Depending on how the races fall you can quite easily find a five hour GMTV "marathon" around the time of the Chinese, Malaysia and Japanese F1 events.

TedJrr 14 July 2007 12:34pm

markstewart posted:

brotherton sands posted:

markstewart posted:

TedJrr posted:

The only serious contraint that might come into play would be SMG getting p***y if ITV tried to put its own branding about.

I thought ITV had bought SMG's stake from them though?

I think what TedJrr was actually getting at was...

If ITVplc owned GMTV outright, and therefore effectively owned the "channel 3 breakfast" licence (for the whole UK - even STV and UTV land), and decided to introduce any "ITV1" branding into the 6:00-9:25am slot (which they would be at liberty to do), then SMG might be annoyed that this would mean "ITV1" gets mentioned on channel 3 in central and northern Scotland.

So if SMG would get so shirty about ITV1 being mentioned on their precious channel, how come almost all of their output is ITV1?!

Quite so - thanks. I'm usually fairly muddy about these things. If ITV subsumed GMTV (at 75% or 100%) then ITV's sales house would be in direct competition with SMG for Scottish airtime, albeit only at the margins - but still unhealthy given ITV's (regulated) supply of networked output to STV.

Perhaps the present position should be the subject of one of OfCom's famous reviews? Should the separate breakfast licence be abolished, breakfast output being normalised with the de facto state of ITV? Thus one of three things could occur :

ITV sell the value for money GMTV product to SMG at the regulated price, SMG pop in their own adverts, news and content to taste without picking-up to many extra shift costs in the process.

ITV sell the airtime slots and then supply STV with a complete package comprising ads and local news segments (bought in from SMG), perhaps SMG get a little network compensation as a sweetener.

SMG appeases the new Government (both of them!) by scrapping GMTV and running its own show, which it does on the cheap but still comes out with Channel4esque suggestions that as a new PSO the SMG breakfast service should attract public funding.

I was goung to make some silly comment about Disneyesque characters taking over both the British and Scottich governments, correcting myself by saying that that had been done already. But I won't because I've obviously been reading too much Private Eye. Anyway, the markets and the private equity people presumably have a few more plans for ITV anyway. Michael Grade has clearly signalled that the licence regime neets rationalisation, presumably with this going on some changes to the share structure will occour as well - lots of people are predicting the BSkyB/RTL ITV/Channel5 swap. So if GMTV and ITN were absorbed, would ITV emmerge with cross-media shareholdings alongside the normal city players?

Disney (ABC) 4% ?
RTL 17.5% ?
DMGT 5% ?

Channel 3 breakfast license - GMTV

(July 2007)