Do Granada productions count as London? Is this more a case of ITV being careless with their whole "ITV Productions" instead of just pretending that things were still made by yorkshire and central?
You accusing ITV of being too honest ?
It's explained in the article what the criteria is before it can count as being outside of London
1) Is the production base outside of the M25
2) What proportion of spending occured outside of the M25
3) How much of the behind-the-camera and on screen talent are from outside London.
> I personally think that a fitting punishment would be a one day suspension of the broadcasting license, meaning that ITV would be literally unable to broadcast anything from midnight to 23:59:59 on one day. Perhaps a saturday.
Or, even better, prevent them from showing anything other than regionally-produced programming for however long it takes for them to catch up with their minimum requirements. And not just shunt programming to dead slots either.
Don't just fine them for not doing something -- make sure they actually do it.
Mark is entirely correct of course -- this issue goes far deeper than a simple quota.
> I personally think that a fitting punishment would be a one day suspension of the broadcasting license, meaning that ITV would be literally unable to broadcast anything from midnight to 23:59:59 on one day. Perhaps a saturday.
Or, even better, prevent them from showing anything other than regionally-produced programming for however long it takes for them to catch up with their minimum requirements. And not just shunt programming to dead slots either.
Don't just fine them for not doing something -- make sure they actually do it.
A day of Emmerdale and Coronation Street? I'm sure they'd like that
You are aware this story is about networked programmes?
The idea put forward would cause considerable disruption though -- because this coming year they'd have to put out 56% regionally-produced programming instead of 50%, as a result of draining their existing tally.
6% of a year's production would take considerably longer than one day to run through.
Having just read the MediaGuardian article, this now becomes clear, whereas ITV are supposed to make 50% of their programmes out of London, The BBC and Channel 4 only need to make 30% and Five only 10% which seems a bit strange
Not when consider that ITV is
supposed
to be the regional broadcaster.
Not when consider that ITV is
supposed
to be the regional broadcaster.
Indeed so, but don't forget they also have a quota to take comissions from Independents, most of which are probably based in London and usually use Location filming.
I think Granada and Yorkshire's Network contributions have probably been the same as what they have been, if not increased, but consider the gap that was left when Central ceased Network Production. The amount coming from STV has also gone down too, the only thing they seem to make these days is Taggart.
Usually filming outside of London is usually cheaper, it's getting the talent going in that direction is one of the problems.
Let's hope they do get their backsides kicked again -- the arrogance of ITV PLC is incredible. They see rules as guidelines, and guidelines as there to be broken. It's time they were put in their place.
We're old stalwarts at this rant, Jason, so apologies in advance if I go over any ground you've allready considered. But the arrogance of ITV plc has come about purely because OFCOM (and the ITC before them) have allowed them to end up in such a dominant position.
ITV plc is just a business trying to generate the maximum return for the minimum outlay - the ultimate aim of any unrestricted commercial operation, and one cannot blame them for that.
The problem does not IMO lie with the company itself, it lies with 15 years of deregulation which has allowed this situation to happen. The ITV system before the 1990's, and previous once-great smaller regional stations like your own beloved Tyne Tees and my own TSW did not operate as they did because of any kind of different ethos or different broadcasting climate - they operated the way that they did because they were forced to because previous governments had the bollocks to admit that free for all capitalism is not necessarily in the best interests of the general populace and that certain businesses need to operate within fixed guidelines and be controlled rather than be allowed to become a free for all.
The ITV system of old is one of the biggest examples of this - and rather ironically, the 'nasty', 'controlled', 'uncompetitive', 'incoherent' ITV that used to exist, with all it's 'redundant, 'unnecessary' and 'duplicated' positions made more money collectively than ITV plc can ever hope to in a million years.
Whilst I agree in principal that if ITV plc's franchises no longer provide the level of service which they agreed to provide then they should be stripped of them and the franchise re-advertised, the reality is that ITV plc is now so powerful that this will never happen because there is nothing to replace them.
This was the fault of the Thatcher government for introducing the 1990 Broadcasting Act in the first place, but Labour must also accept their part in creating this mess - they came to power in 1997 just about in time to reverse the rot that had allready set in within ITV, but didn't, and when the eventual 'endgame' merger between Carlton and Granada happened, Tessa Jowell even put in an appearance at the official knot-tying to congratulate 'the union' - IMO a wholely inappropriate person to be involved considering she was the
culture secretary
at the time.
Quote:
I think the reason this would be a fitting punishment is that a fine dealt to a company with -profits- of over £100m (well over, i imagine) of £5m is only going to cause a downsizing of the sales execs fuel budget within the year at least.
As with any bad decision in big business though, the M25-bound tosspots who fielded and implemented the policy won't feel anything from their paychecks - instead some menials earning £15K / year will be axed to cover the initial outlay. And then when said bigwig gets a 6 figure payoff to walk away from the mess he created, yet more joe bloggs on £5.52 / hour will suddenly not have a job any more.
As much as I despise ITV plc for everything it stands for, I don't support fining them - it won't hurt them or their senior appointments, it'll just hurt the poor ******* with no status who work for them.