Ofcom's report into Ch3 and Ch5 Licence renewal

In my opinion if it is a PSB they should have to provide a news service on a regional scale for the country. If they can't or don't want to then they should hand their licence over to someone else. People want, need and enjoy watching local programmes and most people would still say (even though there is now satellite and 1000's of channels) that they tune in at 6:00pm for their local news programme. I don't get why people think that regional television is all in the past (it can still work now, and into the future too for a much smaller cost than in the past!).

James - this is exactly what the DCMS wants to do with local tv. Whether it all proves viable is an important question. But it is increasingly clear - and has been for some time - that it will be impossible to FORCE the Channel 3 licence holders to do many things which aren't in their commercial interests.

What are the advantages of being on C3?

Prominence... and the fact you get on Freeview everywhere. Except how many people actually have Freeview Light on their main sets? I'm not aware of any stats but, anecdotally, the majority of people in Freeview Light areas went for Sky or Freesat long before switchover. Only the people who were happy with four channels in 4x3 stuck with analogue until the end - remember they are the people who weren't even bothered about not having C5.

Common sense suggests they will mostly be the elderly, the vulnerable or people who don't watch much tv.

It's worth remembering that - outside hilly, remote areas like the Highlands, rural Wales and parts of Yorkshire - a lot of relay transmitters existed to make reception easier or to improve pictures rather than bring television to an area. Some of the relays in Central Scotland were built to deal with, say, ghosting or weak signals behind a hill. In other words, analogue problems. People served by these relays may well be able to get an acceptable signal from the nearest main transmitter now that the digital signal's been powered up.

That would probably be the best opinion, and would sort out the mess around Scottish borders.

I still don't believe ITV2,ITV3 would be able to be kept if there hand back the CH3, and sky would just pump the channels away to channels 130 or 140...

NO Chance there would be 15 new licences, I get the feeling it would only be about 6?

* Scotland
* NI
* Wales
* Channel isle
* London week day, and Southern England and Anglia area.
* Northern England and London weekend


But biggest questions have not been asked,

* Would this also get rid of the awful ITV network Centre?
* Would the Advert revenue rates be killed off
* Would there finally get rid of 25% opt put by Indep compaines..

Not quite right...

Ofcom's preferred option is to reform the licences amongst the existing owners without any need to open them up to other bidders.

One for England - owned by ITVplc. (Given the noises from the UK Government, there will be no regional commitments within England and ITV will be able to get out of regional news completely if they want to.)

One for Wales - owned by ITVplc. (Which presumably would still have some commitments to Welsh news or other programmes.)

One for ALL of Scotland - owned by STV.

One for NI - owned by UTV.

Presumably they also need to look at a licence for the Channel Islands??

The question of the RELATIONSHIP between the licence holders may come up. One intriguing possibility is that the different licencees will no longer be obliged to form a network if they don't all want to. This could mean that ITVplc could be Channel 3 in England and Wales but go to market by other means in much of Scotland and NI without an arrangement with UTV and STV.



How ITV is structured internally - the Network Centre and the like - is of no concern to Ofcom and the UK Government. Nor should it be. It's not for government to tell a business how it should run itself within the law of the land.

But it was the 1990 Broadcasting act that brought all that in, would it not need government involvement to get rid of?

As far as I can recall, the ITV Network Centre was a consequence of the 1990 Broadcasting Act - not a creation of the act as such - but in practice the centre is now simply the central way of running ITV1.

The whole idea was to create a body owned by all of the franchisees - but independent of them - which commissioned the network programmes and created the central schedule though, of course, regional variations continued for a long time afterwards.

This replaced the old system where the Big Five worked out most of the network schedule for themselves while medium sized companies like STV and Anglia got some opportunities and the small stations like Grampian were completely marginalised.

Of course, over the years the ITV Network Centre has become very closely alligned with ITVplc.

But, to get back to my point, a lot of this people on this forum appear to have seriously misunderstood Ofcom's submission.

Ofcom has long been clear about what it, broadly, believes should happen when the current C3 and C5 licences expire in 2014 but the final power rests with the UK Government.

It was asked by the UK Government to explain what the options were and the arguments for and against each one. This is common practice when advice is given to government ministers.

Does anyone seriously imagine for one moment the UK Government is planning to potentially deprive ITVplc of what is still the biggest single part of its business? Or that if this was the case, that it would not have been all over the papers by now? This is not the old days when everyone understood ITV licences ran for fixed period of time and gave the franchisee something quite unique.

Ofcom's preferred option is ultimately a tidying up exercise in England. The only question for viewers there is whether the regional news will continue and that's been in the air for some time. It's what has driven the DCMS and the arguments over the creation of local tv.

In Scotland it's more interesting because of the Border question and the ongoing question of the relationship between STV and ITV.

I will bet my house on the following: There will be no franchise round unless ITV decides to walk away from Channel 3. And even then, STV and UTV's licences won't be advertised.

I think I've said enough on this for now!!!

SO There would only one a single ITV English License? I wonder if Itv plc would be happy to loses the Scottish borders?

There is some unanswered questions needing to be resolved as I said.

Yes, that will be interesting. In commercial terms the loss of eyeballs in the Scottish part of the Border region hardly matters to a company the size of ITVplc - especially if there are trade-offs. But that doesn't necessarily mean they'll be happy about it.

Indeed, come to think of it, it won't really be the loss of the Border region as such - only Selkirk and the relays. Caldbeck would be transmitting BOTH STV and ITV1 presumably.

Incidentally, it's been reported that Jeremy Hunt is considering whether to remove the obligation that a certain proportion of network ITV programmes have to come from outside London. But, in practice, Emmerdale, Corrie and the fact that Manchester remains such a big operation make you wonder if this would have any practical effect in the short to medium term.

This will be a question for the Communications Bill, rather than licence renewal, I think.

CRR is a different issue as it came about from the undertakings made to allow Carlton and Granada to merge - it's about wider business regulation rather than how C3 is licensed.

DCMS's objective is to create 'ultra-local TV stations', although that is destined to fail whilst C3 exists, as a regional service was their original remit. If they wish to become a national-only broadcaster, then let them go ahead: they have the capacity on Freeview to do that on the D3&4 mux, and can easily purchase another slot on DSat and DCab for ITV1.

It seems pointless to just allow ITVplc to renew their licences, when they are clearly not abiding by the commitments they gave last time. Their pathetic attempt at regional TV, together with 'macro regions' for the South West and NE/Borders is just a joke. They no longer even have main studios in either the Border or Westcountry regions. How do you provide a regional service when you don't even have a base there?

DCMS should proceed with a full franchise round for C3 in 2014, and cancel their plans for C6. If ITVplc lose some of their regions, then so be it. They can still sell their highest profile programmes to the new franchise holders, and we could actually return to a proper federal structure for C3.

ITV Channel Islands manages to survive, despite being a very small area with little opportunity to generate profit. I don't see why a new franchise holder in the Border, Tyne-Tees, Westcountry & West areas can't survive on a similar basis whilst also benefiting from programmes on the C3 network.

I would snigger for hours if the C5 franchise was put out to tender and 'Dirty Des' lost it!

I'm sure I read somewhere that ITV may lose the Welsh franchise, leaving every home nation with a different company running it.

Although doesn't Channel generate a lot of its profit from being responsible for the scrutineering of many ITV programmes before they go to air?