ITV Regional licences - an idea!

An idea - hopefully this makes sense to you...

The idea of companies competing for ITV licences every 10 years or so has disappeared now with the formation of ITV PLC.

However, with regional television under threat, I do think a change to the way ITV1 is licenced would be a good idea.

ITV would continue to run the national network (certainly in England!), but with dedicated regional slots (for example, I've suggested before hour-long slots on Sunday 6pm, Thursday 11pm + Mon 11pm for Wales/Scot/NI) along with the regional news.

These regional slots would be licenced seperately, opening up the possibility of competitors running the regional slots on ITV1 - kind of like the affiliates to US TV networks.

As the national licence holder, ITV1 would be obliged to run these slots if no one else wanted them - and could bid for the licences themselves - but rivals could also bid to run the regional slots on ITV1. If companies other than ITV won the regional licences, ITV would still be able to provide programming if required.

Also, if ITV did win the licences for certain regions, they would have to make them distinctive from the main ITV1 network - so for example, regional programmes in London would run under the brand "ITV London" rather than "ITV1". Alternatively, if Mersey Television won the North West regional licence, the slots wouldn't require any "ITV" branding - although I doubt they'd use the name Mersey Television or MTV!

I like the idea a lot. However the economics of the operation has to be questioned - The infrastructure required would be considerable and how would it be financed?

I think they if they bring back the regions [and big brother gets interesting] i've made names for them:
ITV1 Central
ITV1 Dragon [new name,solving the ITV1 HTV problem]
ITV1 Tyne Tees
ITV1 Carlton
ITV1 Granada
ITV1 Meridian [completely new logo]
ITV1 Westcountry [maybe new logo]
Channel
ITV1 Scottish TV&Grampian TV
UTV1
Tell me if i've missed any out!

ITV1 West/HTV West - No dragons here however, ITV1 SS Great Britain?

Re: the economics of my idea - I haven't got a clue, but with hundreds of digital stations and regional slots often said to perform relatively better than the network, I think they could be viable.

The main advantage would be regionality - I could see regional companies being very interested in running it, especially now ITV is so London centric.

I chose the name ITV1 Dragon because there are welsh dragons!

The idea actually stacks up quite realistically, I'd have thought. This is actually a very neat solution to the challenge of keeping commercial TV regionallity in place. Intact, the idea could even extend to C5 (possibly even 4).

Look at it this way - ITV does have a licence commitment to regional and sub-regional broadcasting. Whatever the economics of a national ITV, this is what they contacted for and this is what has to be provided. If ITV weren’t willing to provide the regional content - then licence someone else to do it, always providing that they could be funded. ITV could even be allowed to keep some of the regions.

In theory this could work in one of three ways

The sub-regional licence holds the broadcast licence and contract with ITV as an affiliate to the network. As done in the US, and as done over here in terms of the agreement between Channel TV and Meridian Broadcast (as was)

The affiliate relays network programming spots and sponsorship, and as a result is paid "Network Compensation". The affiliate runs its own local spots.

The ITV/Channel deal gives Channel access to ITV programming, they have an allowance of local spots, essentially opt-outs of the Meridian regional break parts. As for money flowing ITV -> CTV, don't know but I would bet that they are paid a (small) amount for the value of national advertising in the Channel Islands, over and above the apportionment of content cost?

ITV hold the broadcast licence, but are forced to contract with local providers (effectively nominated sub-contractors) who do the news, some other programming, and get to sell local spots. The terms of trade between ITV and the locals would be subject to economic regulation.

Of COM defines a series of licences based not just on region, but a clock-face. This is rather as GMTV / TV-AM worked, p to 0926 it’s not ITV but a separate licence. This could port into a local model, giving say 1700 - 1900 to the locals, plus a number of bulletin slots at other time of the day.

The economics would be that the advertising around the local programmes would belong to the local licensee, even if a syndicated programme ran for part of the time. Given that ITV were abrogating the responsibility for the local provision, it’s reasonable to expect it to compensate a local licencee rather generously.


A local licencee, of course may have interests in newspapers or radio, the newsgathering cost may therefore be shared across a local base in a way in which ITV can't operate. Reductions in both technology and relative labour costs also all act to make an idea such as this much more feasible.

There would have to be some rules though - I'd suggest

No involvement by Local Authorities, political parties or religious groups, or indeed the BBC - at all - this is essential!

Rules on political bias maintained - or even strengthened. Voluntary organisations discouraged, or tightly monitored. This has to be professional.

National Newspaper owners’ interest strictly controlled, and rationed, but otherwise press cross-ownership not discouraged.

ITV national licensees (ITV and SMG) allowed to retain at least some sub-regional licences. (They'd probably grab London, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow)

Somebody to arbitrate between them all - rather than relying on Of COM or the Courts.

Local airtime to be granted on at least one stream in addition to ITV-1

technical and quality standards to be maintained at a high level.

Local licensees would have duty to act in the event of national or local emergency, and hence retain the right to opt-out at any time, given a pre arranged set of circumstances.

Thanks - that's a brilliant idea. It would be nice to test it out on a few Parliamentry Candidates.

Rgds/


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You missed out London, Yorkshire, Border and Anglia! Tsk tsk!

How would these programmes be paid for though? Regional programmes get hardly any audience at all, if they're coming from a diffrent company from the programmes that create the big incomes (those with high audiences such as Coronation Street and Emmerdale) there's no subsidy for them



Not really, the affiliates are a very diffrent system to anything the ITV would ever become

The 1800 - 1900 audience is not inconsiderable, nothing like the 1900 - 2000, but shoulder-peak none the less. Surely, the big problem that ITV1 face in the 1800 to 1900 hour, is competition from BBC1, not least because the BBC regional news beats the ITV equivelent hands-down on a large number of measures. You could argue that this in part due to ITV's lack of regional commitment, and hence conclude that a locally rooted independent would be driven by a more local ethos, and hence take the BBC on effectively.

The question of funding and cross subsidy is largly resolved by refrence to ITV's overall remit. Suppose you did have a seperate licencee for the local segments, the big money for all the network revenues would naturally contuinue to accrue to the network operator, in this case ITV and SMG. But, in order to gain (justify) the network licence, and the right to trade during the 1900 - 2000 slot where spot rates are cosmic, one has to accept the social obligation for less profitable activities at other times of the day. That means, having a broadcast licence of that order involves (expensive) obligations as well as licence payments.

ITV have publically issued a rough cost of £m200 per annum to cover regional obligations. Projecxting therfore, f you addd this to a cost of £m100 for other obligations and (say) £m400 for licence costs and an discount of £m-200 for the "digital divedend", then in order to secure their right to trade as a commercial braodcaster on that scale, ITV has to pay the spectrum owners, The Crown (ie the citizenry) a rough £bn.5 per annum.

This half a billion per annum would strike me as a fair price. If the locals were actually seperate licencees, the issue of ITV's social obligation still remains, and naturally any cross subsidey would be paid out of the £bn.5. This could take several forms

ITV pays the local contractor generous network compensation

OfCom charges ITV a levy, and divvies it oul amoungst the locals (analagous to the rail industry here)

The locals are allocated nominal air-time in excess of their programming strips. This air time allocation could then be traded, posssibly even creting a market, and a routeto national Channel 3 air-time independent of ITV.

But why not just make the current ITV companies broadcast this sort of programing? If they would be forced to hand-over time and money to these local franchises they might as well be forced to do it themselves.

It would be a lot cheaper with a lot less beurocracy involved

What, you mean force them to provide the service that the applied for and are contracted to do, rather than allow the regulator to continually re-tool the contracts to fit in with what the licencee wants and turn the ITV network into something which it was never meant to be? I doubt OFCOM would be happy with that.