ITV - Cutbacks & Proposed merger

I think it is lazy journalism, remember everyone usually says the Express prints a load of rubbish, unless they print something you want to believe

I'm sure all the papers will each be picking one programme each to say they are being axed

Having said that though, Takeaway is likely to naturally end soon anyway, recession or not, but the tabloids will associate everything with the money related cutbacks now, like Heartbeat.

well at the rate its going everything is getting axed and ITV will only be showing adverts and test cards at this rate!

It's worth remembering that merging and rationalising ITV wasn't suddenly thought of in the 1990's. Dismantling the regional structure, cutting back on out-of-London production always would have made sense to the bigger ITV companies, each of which would have loved the opportunity to merge with the big stations, buy up all the smaller ones, and broadcast a single service to the entire country whilst gradually close down everything else (this essentially is what has happened - the entire country now gets LWT, 7 days a week), thus bagging more advertising money for themselves and making short term gains through asset-stripping away everything they've acquired. Indeed, ITV could have just been set up as a single service from London with very limited regional output in the first place - after all, BBC TV has always been like that.

The regional system was created and then held together because the ITA and then IBA believed it ensured the best quality of service for the viewers and because it was more concerned with the long-term interests of the network than pandering to the whims of the bigger companies wanting to merge for short term gains.

The standard argument to justify what has happened to ITV is that the old structure was created in a broadcasting age where there was only 1 other channel and so it had to 'modernise' (read: merge and rationalise) in order to compete in today's market.

To me that's just an excuse. Firstly, broadcasting may well have changed, but multichannel TV has been around in a big way since the 1990's, during which ITV was still something pretty amazing. The last significant change came when Freeview launched in 2002. At that time, what is now ITV plc was still Carlton and Granada, and ITV then was noticeably stronger in terms of it's output. Since the endgame merger in 2004, which was supposed to make things stronger and better, things have just got worse.

And let's consider the strengths of the old structure - you had each franchise controlled in it's own region by it's own separate company with it's own broadcast infrastructure and it's own production facilities. It meant that there was a creative drive amongst the big stations to come up with the best ideas because other stations would have something else to offer. All stations had their own agenda and could make informed decisions about what was best for their particular patch in terms of regional output, giving each region it's own flavour best tailored to the needs of the area it served (admittedly some stations were better than others at doing this).

In business terms, I'd also argue that things were more secure. Because each operation had a limited patch, only committed people would be attracted to the top positions. They would understand how and why the station did things the way it did, understand what needed to be done to best serve their area (and thus maximise viewership and advertising revenue), and above all else, they wouldn't make silly rash decisions because they'd still have to be there to face the music (and where bad decisions were made, they'd learn from them). Also, because you had 15 baskets with 1 egg, rather than 15 eggs in 1 basket, it made the ITV system financially more robust in that no single company, no matter how significant, could fundamentally break the system.

If Westward Television went bust, then they'd just be replaced with someone else (a hard fact to accept maybe, but true nonetheless). If anything happened to Granada, then it might have meant the end of Coronation Street and World in Action, but they too would be replaced and in the meantime you still have ATV, Yorkshire, Thames and LWT able to cover empty network slots.

Today, the entire operation revolves around ITV plc as a company. And it's not a company interested in providing a service, it's just a generic city company, attracting generic city boys into it's top positions - people who run it, cut things back to save some money (largely negated by their own salary), claim that as a great move, and promptly bugger off 3 years later to do the same thing somewhere else. It has no stability, no continuity of policy, and no long term outlook - because none of the people running it are in it for the long term.

And what's worse is that ITV as a system is now entirely dependent on ITV plc continuing to exist. They make/control all significant network programming, they own every station in England and Wales along with the infrastructure to keep them broadcasting, and although STV, UTV and Channel are independent, they now have such limited output of their own that they couldn't run for a day without ITV plc around. The end of ITV plc really would be the end of the road for ITV.

It might well be the case that ITV's much vaunted 'licence to print money' days were over and things would get tougher in commercial broadcasting as the 90's and 2000's moved on, but to my mind the old system, being completely unique in it's product, and with a stabler business model, would have been in a much better position to stay competitive than the road we have gone down.

The 'new' ITV may have made a select few a lot of money, but it's also put hundreds of people out of work, destroyed the only true local broadcasting system we have ever had and with it pushes (what is often extremely valued) regional news provision backwards, a crippling lack of creativity has ruined network programming, and now it's very existance depends on the fortunes of a single, ailing company. I fail to see this as progress.

Brilliantly put cwathen - completely agree with you. I just hope however tough things get the regulators learn from past mistakes and realise that mergers isn't the way forward to solving this problem, and it shouldn't be used as an excuse to remove all regulation as well. The long term benefits (and potential pitfalls) all have to be considered too.

To me it is absolute madness ITV effectively pulling out of the regional business - there is a market there to exploit and in many ways ITV effectively have a monopoly on it, commercially at least. As I've always said (I'm sick of using that phrase, but hey, it's the price I have to pay for being right on such occassions ) the concept of the general public no longer being interested in regional content once the analogue signal is turned off is nothing more than a myth. Indeed as everything increasingly becomes globalised, having a regional perspective on things is probably even more important, especially in a recession when people want to know how it's affect them and people around them, not for example bankers in the City.

The HBOS situation would say not, mergers is seen as the way forward

Assuming digital multi-channel tv had still happened, I can't see individual regional companies being in a better shape now than ITV PLC.

But regionalism is VERY string still.

STV, although now covers the whole of scotland, is still more highly regarded and viewed (perscentage wise) than any part of the ITV plc network.

Then the major successful "Regional"" channel which is gaining a slot of freeview is Channel M (TV for Manchester!) they have 3 hours of news at breakfast, a 90 minute evening news show and a 60 minute 9pm news show the inbetween programes made in and around the area Channel M covers.

Shopws that regional televison is as strong today, if not stronger, than that what ITV tries to not-promote ever since the late 90's

You can't really compare Channel M to the ITV Regions, although it's a superb service, they're two completely different services. Channel M is an all local channel that basically exploits the uses of the Manchester Evening News/ MEN Media empire, they're simply extending on that. The rest of their output is simply News, Sport or factual, so most of the time all they need to do is to send out a few cameramen and then edit it later on, ie they don't hire any actors, writers, they don't have any of the costs going for them like ITV do.

Don't forget alot of Channel M's output is simply 30 minutes of a new programme which usually gets repeated several times in one week. And they have at least 2 or 3 commercial programmes such as The Home's mine and The Jobsmine (both extensions from existing MEN Media output) Overall in comparion to an ITV Region, Channel M is a rather cheap operation to run, it doesn't even have expensive studios to maintain, they hire out the Urbis, they have a small office there and their Newsgathering and second News studio comes from the MEN Building down the road on Deansgate.

As for STV, AIUI they're not in much better shape than the rest of ITV are they? You can argue they've opted out of more ITV Network programmes, most notably The FA Cup coverage, they haven't replaced this with "top notch regional programming", they've filled it with repeats as they refuse to pay for it, it's obvious to them showing a repeat makes them more money than showing The FA Cup.

IMO, having 15 Regional individually independently owned ITV companies in this day and age isn't sustainable at all, for a channel that's getting less than 19% average audience share now, it simply doesn't make sense having 15 different agendas, in an age when ITV was a monopoly, it's a great idea, sadly those days are long gone and are never coming back.

For me I'm happy with one big ITV that can provide good British made programmes, a good National News service and a Regional News service aswell. We've been lucky in the UK, in most European countries they have one PSB and the rest are utterly commercial, if ITV is going to survive, then it sadly has to go commercial.

I'd rather have an ITV in this situation than have no ITV at all.

Thankfully the Government have seen sense and are continuing with the product placement ban. Obviously Michael Grade is crying and screaming like the incapable fool that he is.

On what evidence do you base that opinion, Brekkie?

Michael Grade may be facing a difficult (if not impossible) task at ITV, but he hasn't suddenly become a completely inept businessman after 30+ years in the media trade. I doubt he's a fool by many peoples' estimation.

Having a system of several companies was, first and foremost, to prevent there being a single powerful and rich organisation. Being regional was just the way they decided to split it up, there were other ideas of how to to it including time splits which of course did happen in 4 cases (London, Midlands, North and Breakfast)

I can imagine a regional channel on the EPG of Sky!

I think that is channel three' s context. Perhaps it is all owned by one, or a couple of, companies, but perhaps 'Meridian' would be more watched than 'ITV1'.

BBC1, BBC2, Meridian, Channel 4, Channel 5, Itv (or Meridian)2, &c.

I think ITV have lost their USP.

You don't have to imagine it, take a look at 203.