Feature: Regional Programming Suffers From ITV Scheduling Changes
On Wednesday next week the ITV Network is to hand over a set of proposals to the Independent Television Commission (ITC) outlining a strategy to boost its ailing news programme audiences. Of particular concern to the television watchdog are the falling viewing figures for ITV’s regional news bulletins which, on aggregate, have seen audiences drop by 16.4% year on year for the first nine weeks in 2000, according to the Commission’s research.
The analysis of ITV’s news audiences was prompted by changes to the ITV evening schedule permitted by the ITC and begun by the Network in March last year. As a stipulation of the move, which saw the controversial demise of the News At Ten, the ITC undertook to perform a thorough appraisal of the new schedule after one year. Although the Commission’s full report is yet to be delivered, chairman Sir Robin Biggam has already made it clear that current news viewing figures, particularly to regional bulletins, are not satisfactory.
A number of regional bulletins have been moved forward in the schedule as a result of the changes and it is these programmes that have seen the most dramatic fall in audience figures. North East Tonight, for example, previously broadcast between 6:00pm and 7:00pm but is now scheduled in the 5:30pm to 6:30pm slot. So far its audience has dropped by a third from 342,000 to 228,000 viewers. Granada Tonight, which experienced the same schedule shift, saw viewing fall by 24.1% to 512,000. Those regional bulletins which have not been rescheduled, including London Tonight, Calendar and Meridian Tonight, are also experiencing falling audiences, although the decline is less severe.
ITV Evening News, broadcasting from 6:30pm to 7:00pm, is now the Network’s main news programme. However, its average audience size between April 1999 and February 2000 was 6.1% lower, at 5.4 million, than the average 5.7 million viewers attained by News At Ten across the same period a year earlier. This deficit is not being redressed by ITV’s second bulletin, the Nightly News, which broadcasts from 11:00pm to 11:20pm and is currently attaining 24.4% fewer viewers than the old Early Evening News which began at 5:40pm. Furthermore, ITV’s prime objective of increasing viewers to drama and film output around 9:00pm, and so boosting advertising revenue in the slot, is not really being achieved according to BARB ratings. Year on year for February 1999 to April 2000, the weekday 8:00pm to 11:00pm average Network ratings have grown by just 0.1% points, from 13.3% to 13.4%.