ITV Presents Annual Report And Plans For Future
ITV presented its annual report today, giving its bosses the interesting job of persuading a hard-bitten audience of hacks and advertisers to focus on the high spots of the commercial broadcaster’s year, rather than the sticky issue of a 38.5% peak-time audience share target missed by some 1.4% when 2000 figures are totted up, as well as a 3% decline in commercial impacts over the year.
Marketing director John Hardie took the approach of insisting that the three years of targets have been an “experiment”, that the original figures were set with “a large dose of optimism” and that they were definitely not guarantees. In any case, while targets have been judged a good idea overall, the company’s aims in future will not be as focussed on share of peak-time audience, but rather in delivering more of the ABC1 and 16-34 year old audience beloved of advertisers. Unfortunately, more unwelcome figures from last year show that these groups are a decreasing element of ITV audiences.
Figures Hardie would like us to look at show the gap in peak-time share between ITV and its closest terrestrial rival, BBC1. Despite the fact that the BBC has been showing its teeth with a more commercially competitive scheduling strategy – set to continue during Lorraine Heggessey’s run as controller of BBC1 – ITV kept its points difference safely above 8% for the “difficult” first three quarters of the year, and increased this to 10.5% during a successful autumn and Christmas season. Beating BBC1’s “shamelessly commercial” schedules remains a primary aim for ITV, which hopes to maintain and increase the current 7.4% overall difference and eliminate the 4% lead the BBC currently enjoys for daytime.
Some may question whether ITV is tackling the right enemy by continuing the ratings war with its non-commercial rival. While maintaining its status as the biggest performer in digital homes is also listed among its aims, the continuing lack of a carriage deal with Sky and no real mention made of the constant trickle of viewers being lost to the non-terrestrial channels (currently around 50% of audiences in digital homes, see Digital Round-Up: Channel 5 Failing To Capitalise On Digital Advantage) begs the question, is ITV taking the threat of multi-channel TV seriously?
David Liddiment, director of programmes, stepped in to explain how scheduling will help alleviate the threat of digital TV. Echoing Hardie’s praise for the success of “junction management”, which has seen an increase in self-promotion footage shown during end credits and centre breaks, Liddiment went on to promise that in future the schedule itself would be designed to be easier to navigate, in order to attract digital viewers.
The shadow of Big Brother is still cast long, it seems, as another aim is to produce “event TV” which lasts across a season, as oppose to quick hits like the Millionaire winner and awards ceremonies. Efforts to achieve this have begun with Popstars and are set to continue with Public Property, more reality TV which sees competitors putting their entire lives in the hands of the viewing public. Originally developed as a prime time programme, it is now to be drafted into daytime slots across the week.
Spending on Public Property and the two new soaps – Crossroads and Trafalgar Road is to reach £22m. Over the year a total of £747m is due to be spent, with an additional £200m for regional programming bringing the total spend on on-screen material reaching almost £1bn. Investment will also go towards the development of an ITV website which could turn out to be “one of the largest UK-based web offerings”, the strengthening of digital channel ITV2 and the possible development of more ITV channels.
ITV: 020 7843 8000 www.itv.co.uk
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