Talk of a court battle between ITV and the Independent Television Commission (ITC) was in the air today after the industry watchdog told the broadcaster to move its Nightly News programme to an earlier slot. The culmination of a year-long tussle between the two, provoked by slumping audience figures for national and regional news on the network after the demise of News At Ten, the ITC “unanimously rejected” ITV’s proposals to improve viewing figures for its evening news output.
Executives at ITV were today “considering their position” after the regulator took the unprecedented move of rejecting its suggestions for improvements, which included additional investment in the 9pm-11pm peaktime period in the run up to its 11pm news slot. There were reports that some ITV executives were ready to accept the decision but others are believed to be prepared for a legal battle against the move, stating that the ITC does not have the power to enforce such a ruling.
ITC chairman Peter Rogers said he “does not want to lay down scheduling requirements” but is “charged with securing the delivery of public-service broadcasting through effective programme obligations.” A spokesperson for the ITC said today that if ITV failed to move Nightly News to an earlier slot, it would consider a issuing a directive requiring the network to bring forward the news programme to make it available to a larger audience. A report commissioned by the watchdog has found that a 30% more people are available to watch the news at 10:30pm than at 11pm.
The debate began last year when the News at Ten was moved to an 11pm slot to allow ITV a more flexible and lucrative schedule for advertisers. In particular, it would enable it to show feature films without a break for the news. When audiences for the later news programmes dropped by 14%, however, and regional news programmes suffered as a result of the changed schedule, the ITC stepped in, asking ITV to come up with a list of proposals to turn around the falling figures for evening news output.
The regulator rejected one set of proposals last month and gave ITV until Thursday this week to hand in its final proposals for tackling the decline in audience figures to its news output.
The week’s events have been seen by some as a last ditch attempt by the ITC to show its strength before the government’s white paper on communications reform later this year, which is expected to draw a close to its activities. Many, however, wondered what the fuss is all about when news is increasingly becoming just another commodity in a multi-channel world.
A report this week showed that 2.5 million homes now have access to cable TV news channels and ITN itself is preparing to launch its own 24-Hour news channel for digital platforms, making terrestiral scheduling skirmishes appear insignificant.
ITC: 020 7255 3000 ITV: 020 7843 8000
