Can ITV’s new chairman erase the sins of his predecessor?
Raymond Snoddy asks if it is too late for ITV’s new chairman Archie Norman to overturn Michael Grade’s decision to dump regional news.
It would be the final irony if the new ITV chairman Archie Norman, the much-maligned “grocer” from Asda, should turn out to have a surer touch for television strategy than his predecessor Michael Grade.
Grade spent a great deal of corporate energy trying to prove that ITV could no longer afford to provide regional television news. The regulatory burden must be lifted. Some other way had be found to fund competition to the BBC in the regions, although ITV would still provide the slot for such programming.
In the simple barrage of numbers, Grade, of course, was right. Providing regional news on ITV costs multiplies of any direct advertising earned as a result.
Communications regulator Ofcom was convinced on the numbers and the arguments. The government was so alarmed that the BBC would have no competition that hand-ringing conferences were held to try to do something about the problem.
The rather awkward confection, independently financed news consortiums (IFNCs) were dreamt up as a solution – at least as far as creating pilot schemes are concerned.
Few are in love with the idea but what they say privately is, if £40 million is going to be extracted from the surplus in the BBC’s analogue switch-off fund, then what the hell, we might as well go for the money.
An election victory for the Conservatives will mean no more IFNCs.
In their place there will be an even more impractical idea – masses of local television stations on the North American model without the slightest idea of how they are going to be financed, other than at the hobby level.
If that is not a definition of an unholy mess it is difficult to image what would be.
So along comes Archie Norman, with no experience of television but a reputation for “what if” thinking, who – according to the Guardian – is rethinking the decision to dump regional news.
Even to be thinking of such a thing, whether he finally decides to issue a formal reprieve or not, suggests that at the very least the new chairman is not a crude slash and burn merchant. Anyone with the soul of an accountant would have already sent a letter of thanks to Michael Grade for warming up both the regulator and the government and be already at work on the redundancies.
Can it be that the new outsider might have discovered some obvious truths that have been forgotten by the old lags?
Matters such as the fact that ITV was founded as a regional confederation and that, in an age of globalisation, homogenisation, and fragmentation of audiences, regional identities might become more valuable rather than less.
In a very competitive broadcasting environment brand images are very important. ITV must, of course, concentrate on the big ticket items such as soaps, talent shows and exclusive sport, but most people expect a grown up-broadcaster to provide a comprehensive news service and not just the bits of news that it’s convenient to provide.
The fact that regional and local news is not done very well in this country is no excuse for not trying both to do it better, and at lower cost.
Apart from anything else, closing down ITV’s regional news would make it more difficult for ITN to cover the UK.
So how could you make ITV regional news better and more cost-effective?
There is money to be saved all the time from the direction that technology is heading in with smaller and cheaper cameras. There is no shortage of talented young journalists, many without a job at the moment, who can report, film, edit and transmit.
Take some of the ideas of shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt, but work them through within the sort of serious framework provided by ITV/ ITN.
Instead of wailing about BBC intransigence, take the corporation promises of co-operation, reiterated earlier this month by the BBC Trust, at face value and make sure they happen.
Compete on exclusives and stop sending duplicate crews to cover duplicate stories. Large egos are involved on both sides but it should be possible to make considerable savings. Appoint a young, innovative television newsman to work out how it could best be done and name and shame any BBC type guilty of civil service style obfuscation to Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust.
The penny may also be starting to drop that what ITV has done is to give up sovereignty over part of its own schedule. Who controls quality, and rather more important, who is responsible for any libels that fetch up?
It may all be too late. The IFNCs are already on the launching pad and the winning bids are due to be announced next Tuesday. Norman would have to make his mind up pretty quick and place a number of high level calls.
If he cannot erase all the sins of his predecessor there is one error he can rescind without having to call a single minister.
The decision to undermine Lord Bragg and the South Bank Show was a disgrace.
Norman might realise that some of the time advertisers want to reach an older more up-market audience and they want variety not just a pile it high mass audience. The arts, and I don’t just mean trying to teach pop stars to sing opera, should be part of that mix.
In the end reputations matter and ITV has managed to greatly damage its reputation of late.