I doubt ITV would screen the funeral of the Pope actually - the BBC might, but it's not really a big enough event IMO for ITV to take up coverage!
You might be right, but I doubt it. I would have thought all news organisations are gearing up for significant coverage of any possible papal funeral. He is the spiritual leader one fifth of the world's population. His death would be big news.
Considering the amount of kids channels available it's a sensible choice. When I was young and without dozens of kid channels ITV only offered an hour of kids programmes a day - and I guess it'll go back to that. Remember GMTV also have kids programmes at the weekend.
What sort of an excuse is that? BBC1 and ITV may not be able to provide the same AMOUNT of children's programmes as a dedicated channel, but what sets them apart is (or should be) the quality. How can anyone compare a full day of Nickelodeon, with endless Sister Sister repeats to pad out the schedule, to the diversity offered by CBBC on BBC1?
While not surprised by Ofcom's decision I am saddened; look at the quality children's programmes ITV once produced. This is a license for CITV to die a slow, humiliating death (some might say it has already!). It just proves Ofcom is there only to serve the broadcasters' business interests and not the viewers.
The argument of "others do it better" or "more choice" are absolutely rediculous. What's next? Charles Allen will be saying "Well actually Sky and the BBC do the news pretty well so I think we'll cut all news output from the schedules."
What next? What hope have we got when we've got a poor broadcast regulation authority. And I know it may seem stupid but it will lead to poor standards from other broadcasters like the BBC. Why bother competing if there's nothing to compete against?
A fine example is BBC London News - now London Tonight is crap, BBC says they can get away with more sensational tabloid pap.
That way, they won't have to spend a penny on anything at all (i.e. no longer take the p1ss).
Let's look at it logically and from a business point of view.
Making any worthwhile television is a loss maker. Also for EVERY type of programming ITV1 does still make or transmit, someone "does it better" (or so it's claimed).
Therefore, ITV1 can dispense with Antiques Hunt, Better Homes because those sorts of shows can be seen almost anytime on UKtv Style or Home & Leisure, and Airport and Holidays from Hell can be seen on Sky Travel.
And before anyone shouts "BUT NOT EVERYBODY HAS DIGITAL!" then I'd remind them that, for families that don't have digital, they're not going to have access to the very channels that ITV and OfCom are giving as the reasons for the cuts.
Let's face it. ITV is incompetent at managing to produce a quality TV schedule in any sustainable form, since it has snookered itself into a position of having to take smaller and smaller slices of a multinational advertising pie, instead of relying on not just that but a once-thriving regional advertising market, which although smaller, was enough to get programmes market-tested in a single region and that could get picked up by the rest of the network if advertising from a national/multinational could be secured to justify a larger budget.
If ITV hadn't turned its back on regional advertising and the sponsorship and promotion of regional events, that could have helped sustain a quality, across-the-board mixture of all types of programming.
Also, if ITV could produce more internationally marketable formats, like "Millionaire", or stop relying on internationally marketed material from yesteryear, they could raise money for continued quality production from said overseas sales.
I mean, come off it, Lew Grade was able to make ATV into one of the most profitable organisations known to man at the time, selling shows the world over and which still turn in a decent income now. Despite that, he was able to work into the home schedules nights at the opera, variety shows, theatre productions, serious studio dramas, game shows and even some stuff that was seen as "tat" at the time, yet had far higher production standards than anything you'd get today. Lew knew either how to make them ratings pullers or, for stuff that wasn't a ratings puller, make sure that the company was healthy enough to survive a dip in audience at certain times of day.
Can I just say one more thing - Granada Productions actually produce some damn good shows from time to time - mainly in the drama and documentaries strands. However they will always be sold to another channel, mainly 4 or five, or maybe one of the Sky channels.
If ITV plc's production business is something in which they want to take pride, why don't they screen those productions on their own networks? OK, so in the short term they may make more money by selling it to another broadcaster, but in the long term, screening it on their own network would add prestige factor (something which dear old Lew was keen on) and also act as an advertisement of not just the network(s), but also the programme material itself, which then could viably and reasonably be repeated ON one of those other channels - at which point the other channels, it could be argued, could be forced to pay a higher price if the show had been given pride of place on its "home" network, and picked up a mainstream, and not a niche, audience.
While it was a shame that we lost our regional ITV stations I believe the merger was needed because its the only way ITV can compete in the digital world. I do agree on Charles Allan though I think he is only their to make money and I hope the shareholders come to their senses and get rid of him and replace him with Greg Dyke he is the only man who can save ITV.
There is no evidence to suggest that a regional ITV would find it harder to compete with digital/multichannel than a national one.
It has been pointed out and explained many times, in both cultural and business terms, that a regional setup provides not only a Unique Selling Point, but a financial buoyancy which keeps the various companies afloat - a case of "look after the pennies, and the pounds look after themselves".
In effect, the regional ITV of old could be likened to the smaller, lower budget broadcasters that have emerged to fill up Digital Satellite and, to a lesser extent, Freeview.
Imagine that abc1 were Anglia, ITV1 of now was Thames, Sky One were Central, and so on. Each competes for a "mainstream" audience and to build viewer loyalty by providing a 'balanced diet' of various types of programming. Then, each of these channels themselves competes with one another, for business prestige. The difference is if these stations were running as ITV regions, that the competition would be purely at a business level, and not on a viewer level because viewers wouldn't have access to all of them - just one (or maybe two).
However where a major success was had by one, a syndication arrangement could be reached whereby advertising revenue collected by all three (say abc1, ITV1 and Sky One) could be pooled together to throw a larger budget at a show which was produced at a smaller budget by one of the three.
The problem you have when you stipulate that all channels, new and old, must be national and national only, is that you take national advertising revenue and slice it down into unmanageably small chunks.
As I said above, regional advertising CAN bring in valuable income, if it is offered, but no-one offers companies that are not national or multinational the chance to advertise, because there are only ever national rate-cards - by that I mean that even though there are regional splits, these are just there to show how much of the charge covers the transmission of such advertising in the various regions. But advertisers IN a region can't just buy advertising in one region, or are discouraged/priced out from doing so. This again leads to a steady, if slower, trickle of money to be turned away with a toffee nose, leaving the broadcaster to wait for big fish that take longer to be caught.
ITV1 has been given permission to reduce the amount of hours it dedicates to children's and religious programmes.
Media regulator Ofcom granted the reduction in public service broadcasting because of the choice of programmes available on other channels.
ITV1 applied for the reduction to allow it to boost ad revenues and cut costs.
The network now has to provide a minimum of eight hours of children's programmes a week and one hour of religious output.
Channel 4 and Five are both required to offer only one hour of religious programming each.
Across the board
Despite the drop Ofcom said ITV1 was still "committed to the maintenance of high quality religious factual programmes, including acts of worship shown in full".
In allowing the change to the amount of children's programming, Ofcom took into account the proliferation of digital channels that catered solely for young audiences.
"Even though it might be reduced by an hour or two on ITV, across the board it remains basically the same," said an Ofcom spokesman said.
Hmm - fine for digital viewers, especially those with full Sky subscriptions. What about those who haven't, or can't, switch to digital... Sounds like another excuse for ITV to ditch un-commercially attractive shows... Inevitable, but annoying, given that they have the huge commercial advantage of being one of only 2 commercial broadcasters (3 if you include Channel 4) - surely they should have some responsibilities.
Whilst I accept that not everyone is religious - the religious public service requirement is an interesting one. The people who benefit most from weekly worship shows are likely to be the elderly and the housebound, who can't attend church, synagogue, temple or mosque in person, and these are often the poorer members of society who may not have moved to digital yet.
There is also the issue that the religious broadcasting on Sky Digital is almost universally of the "Televangelist" variety - there is very little overlap with BBC and ITV religious broadcasting, and there is no additional religious output on Freeview that I can see...
I suspect ITV will continue with an hourly Sunday worship show for the moment - but it will be interesting to see for how long...
One question though - do you think that ITV should be allowed to cut their obligations on ITV1 in return for moving output to ITV2 and ITV3 (if that makes sense!)?