The AGM luncheon of the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers was held today in London, with Michael Grade as guest speaker. He began by referring to the speech made by Stephen Dorrell last week about the future of broadcasting. However, he disagreed with Mr Dorrells vision of a future with hundreds of television channels, catering to specific minorities. Mr Grade does envisage that there will be new channels, and niche markets but he believes that “public taste and behaviour will stay surprisingly constant and conservative over the years.”
He spoke of the tough task of newcomers to the television market place, and their uphill struggle to win a share of the audience which is only won by high quality production and creative and financial risks.
The subject of quality programming and profits then brought Mr Grade swiftly on to the issue of the Channel 4 Funding Formula, where he called yet again for its abolishment. He spoke scathingly of ITV’s Network budgets’ failure to meet the promise made in the 1991 bids, due to the diversion of too much revenue into dividends.
Mr Grade spoke of the lunacy of Channel 4, with only a 20% share of the commercial market, subsidising its dominant competitor. He proposed that the £57m a year, given to ITV, could be used to invest in British films and new production companies, thereby cultivating new talent and creating new jobs. Mr Grade stressed that, with the extra money to spend on programmes, Channel4 would be able to make a bigger contribution to adding to the growth of the commercial audience, therefore competing even more strongly with the BBC.
Continuing his attack on ITV, Mr Grade was to say “So the £97m of revenue we’ve passed over to ITV in just two years has gone straight out of the business: nothing for viewers, nothing for advertisers – but plenty for shareholders.” He then spoke of his hope of the formula being abolished in the autumn, when the government will be bringing forward the new broadcasting legislation and the fact that abolition will have no effect on the government. He urged the members of ISBA to give their support to his campaign to get the message across to the government that the “funding formula … a well-meaning, but misguided and unnecessary” is abolished.
On a final note, Mr Grade brought up the subject of the coverage the Daily Mail has given in recent weeks, to the new programming schedule Channel 4 has lined up this summer by saying that, as usual, most of the copy was a misleading distortion of the facts. He then cited Channel 4’s “stunningly successful couple of years … and a glowing report from the ITC ” to finish.
