ITV Ideas

Okay so how would you improve ITV?

You may or may not have heard about Charles Allen's latest move: if ITN shareholders don't sell their shares to him, ITV will break away from ITN and stop using it for their news.

But if ITV do claim full control of ITN, he will rebrand the entire ITV News network with the ITN branding.

We've also heard about the idea of moving the late news back to 11pm.

With news so uncertain, and ITV1 in such a state, how would you improve it?

Use this schedule template, open it in your graphics suite and create an ITV1 weeknight schedule.

Download: Schedule template

Remember the news, decide what outcome of this economic situation you think is most likely and brand it as appropriate, as well as soaps, dramas, and regular fixtures in the prime time schedule.

Leave any other notes on what you think is necessary to improve ITV in general.

This should be interesting, to see everybody's views. I'm working on mine and will post them a little later.

James

That's quite old news. The latest is in fact the suggestion ITV will take "Granada Productions" in house, which would mean Granada only producing programmes for ITV, so the end of programmes like University Challenge on the BBC and Countdown on C4.

Ah, my mistake.

Could you do a quick schedule? I've read your posts and they are usually very good so it would be interesting!

Something I just threw together:
http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/myschedule.jpg

I would also have ITV2, 3 and 4 schedules complementing ITV 1 whenever possible.

I think ITV1 is a good place to start with improvements and the above would be a start. I would still like to hear other people's ideas.

ITV needs at least a gameshow or two on a friday!

Actually way ahead of you on this - just dug one out I posted quite a while ago, but I pretty much stand by it.

Regular:
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y163/brekkieboy2001/mocks-other/primetime1.jpg

Football weeks:
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y163/brekkieboy2001/mocks-other/primetime2.jpg

The biggest change is Emmerdale and Corrie are stranded across the week in the 7pm hour, with special double episodes of Corrie on Mondays when there is football on Tuesday. Otherwise the Monday 8.30pm slot is filled by something like Mr Bean during the season, which isn't really affected by regular interuptions, with more permanent programmes on during the summer and winter break.

Regional programmes are moved to regular hour-long slots on Sundays at 6pm and Thursdays at 11pm, hopefully giving them the chance to build up an audience in less competitive slots. Scotland, Wales and NI would also use the Monday 11pm slot for regional programmes.


One thing I would say is without any major changes to the schedule ITV1 would improve it by just playing out their films at the weekend in uninterupted (by news) 9pm slots, rather than sticking them on midweek while the 9pm slot on Saturdays is generally just filled with rubbish fill-ins like Discomania!

There's a template in the first post on this thread. Fill it in with your ideas.



Yeah the film thing is a good idea. You say you "pretty much" stand by it, what would you change now?

Also moving Corrie to Mon-Fri might anger some veteran fans...

Wouldn't change anything really - just note that where programmes are named specifically (like Today with Des and Mel), I generally mean something like Today with Des and Mel - aka The Paul O'Grady Show!

As for Corrie, the idea is for the ITV schedule to be more agressive than defensive, so basically scheduling against EastEnders, rather than around it.

I feel that five episodes a week for a soap is about right, but it needs to be scheduled in a way that doesn't intrude on the rest of the schedule. Moving Corrie to weeknights 7.30pm effectively frees up an hour on Monday nights and an hour on Sunday.

On Monday I've filled it with a quiz and fillers like Mr Bean (which are dropped for Corrie doubles), while on Sunday "Heartbeat" moves an hour earlier (to hopefully keep the soap audience it inherits) with The Bill moving to Sundays to free up an hour on Thursdays for new primetime comedy, something ITV1 hasn't done seriously for years!



More than that though it's not so much the weekly schedule, but the annual schedule that needs revamping. ITV need more ratings bankers rather than relying on the soaps and short two-week series like I'm a Celeb to prop up ratings.

A good drama series can pull in the ratings for ITV, but the problem with drama on ITV (and the BBC for that matter) is alot of programme are either one-offs or just short six-part series.

A shorter series first time around makes sense, but returning series need to be longer, at least 12 episodes - and even up to 24 episodes like US series - the only UK series that long is Heartbeat! That way rathe than guaranteeing ratings for six weeks, your talking more like six months!


So to clarify, basically ITV need to change their attitude from "The soaps do well, lets do more of them!" to "The soaps to well - let's find something else that can do the job as well".

Can he do that? I thought ITN was the "nominated provider", appointed by the ITC and presumably now OFCOM

My idea's for an ITV1 schedule re-vamp, pretty self explanatory.

http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/nbuitvsched.jpg

No need to spread out the words. ^^

Seeing as I have nothing else to do...i've shuffled things around quite a bit.

http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/schedule.jpg

Let me know what you think.

ITV would never move Emmerdale to 6pm. However I you have Corrie 3 times a week, thats what I like to see!