Kent House, the home of ITV. Image courtesy of The JPS. Modified under license.
It’s official: ITV is dying. We’ve known it for some time, but the story has been confirmed by the figures. It’s depressing to see that a company with such a rich heritage may well go down the pan, but in my opinion, it’s something that there may be a solution to.
Rewind your minds back around fifteen, twenty years. In these days, ITV plc did not exist. Each ITV region had its programming managed by an independent comapny. For example, until 1993, programming in London was managed by Thames Television (now talkbackTHAMES) on weekdays, and LWT from Friday evening to the end of the week. In all the other regions, a single company controlled programming around the clock - for example, until 1993, programming in the South West was managed by TSW. Each regional station produced its own local news, and for national news, all the regions simeltaneously crossed to ITN.
However, over the period from the commencement of the 1993 onwards franchise period, ITV had been deregulated, and the companies began to huddle together and conglomerate. This was mostly led by Granada in the North West, and Carlton in London. The process was completed in 2004 when Granada and Carlton merged into a single company, and formed ITV plc.
Since then, things have gone downhill, drastically. Programme quality had been declining ever since conglomeration began in the early 1990s, but now it accellerated. This combined with the economic slowdown of recent months means that ITV is starting to collapse, and fast.
There’s no denying that the conglomeration was a mess. ITV is now finding it difficult to run a profitable business and fulfil its public service broadcaster remit to produce a certain amount of regional programming and current affairs programming.
Therefore, it seems to me that ITV has three options open to it.
- The first would be for ITV to do nothing, and continue as it is. This would mean almost certain ruin for the network.
- The second, and most likely, option, is that ITV will ask for its PSB status to be removed. This will remove its franchises for the Channel 3 multiplex, and will mean that ITV1 gets moved back to the very back of the digital terrestrial channels (or, god forbid, on to subscription services). This could open the way for a new system, from scratch, similar to the old franchise system where each component of the network was served by a different company.
- The third option would be for ITV to bring out the corporate cleaver, and slice itself into tiny little pieces, to create something not dissimilar to the old arrangement of different companies shuttling around tapes and producing home-grown programmes. This would be a big risk, but it might well pay off - it’s more economical to produce regional programming if headquarters is in the relevant region.
I don’t claim to be an economist, but I am certain that ITV in ten years or so will be very different to the ITV we see today.
