When you look at the way in which ITV has gone in recent years, Michael Grade promised to bring ITV back to its traditional roots. The only posituve thing he has done is bring News At Ten back, although it should be every night and not just Monday-Thursday.
The recent merger of some ITV regions to create Nine news regions has cost long-standing well respected reporters and presenters their jobs.
The announcement two weeks ago about the suspension of Heartbeat and The Royal has also angered people that watch the programmes. I personally am not affected by that as I think Heartbeat needed a modern kind of look anyway.
There is also a rumour that Yorkshire TV studios in Leeds may be closed and filming of Emmerdale may be moved to Manchester, for indoor sequences. Coronation Street could be sold off to another company.
So, I ask a question, what about the vision of putting ITV back to its roots, the way it is going, it could come off air.
No question about it he should go IMO - but considering he has the sort of background you'd have assumed would be interested in protecting ITV and it's regional heritage, I can't see anyone coming in really being any different. Unfortunately nowadays ITV is all about the shareholders, not the viewers.
No question about it he should go IMO - but considering he has the sort of background you'd have assumed would be interested in protecting ITV and it's regional heritage, I can't see anyone coming in really being any different. Unfortunately nowadays ITV is all about the shareholders, not the viewers.
Yes, because in the old days making money was the furthest thing from their mind.
The trouble is in years gone by an ITV franchise was pretty much a licence to print money, so cutting costs was not really an issue.
It's a sad and regrettable inevitability that ITV nowadays is going to be run on a shoestring compared to how it was, as the revenue simply isn't there anymore.
Whoever's in charge has to make sure ITV remains a viable company which unfortunately means no room for sentimentality. Grade could have tried to turn ITV back into the company it was with lots of regional centres duplicating roles and functions, but the company would have gone bust before you can say Woolworths.
We're living in extremely tough times, and commercial broadcasting is feeling the pinch more than most. If Grade was replaced, whoever took over would have to continue ITV's fight for survival, which involves many tough decisions and cutbacks.
So why does US and other EU countrys have the operation skills to provide local tv?
The model for local TV is different in the states, with "affiliates" to networks. The potential audience reach for, say, Orange County, Florida or Los Angeles is very large - as compared to Tyne Tees or Granadaland.
Its not about having "operation skills" - which ITV undoubtedly does - its about the advertising revenue you can gain within your territory, versus the cost of the operation. The numbers don't stack up here in the same way they do there.
Absolutely not. Grade (or whoever makes the decisions at ITV) is clearly responding to the way the industry is going, not because he FEELS like cutting all these jobs. At the moment companies are having trouble just staying afloat! A lot less companies now have the spare funds to spend on big advertising campaigns, so less advertising revenue, less profit for ITV. Not to mention the digital channels stealing audience share. Changes have to be made! While it's not a nice thought knowing that all these regions are disappearing, i can understand why it's being done.
I bet even Lew Grade would be making these exact changes if he was a ITV now (oh yes and alive). It's all very well saying yes lets keep things exactly as they are and keep people their jobs, but if ITV carries on losing money staying the way it was, then nobody would have a job as ITV would probably go bankrupt. It's the lesser of two evils.
