Post by Teddy Bear on Mar 5, 2009 23:02:41 GMT
While it's more and more recognized now that the BBC is biased, it's good to see articles emerging, such as the one below, that deal with the effect of this in today's climate as a fact, rather than just examining whether it is or not.
Dumbed down and badly run, but ITV must be saved to challenge a smug, bloated, Leftie BBC
Last updated at 12:23 PM on 05th March 2009
Owning an ITV franchise was a 'licence to print money'. So said Lord Thompson of Fleet back in the 1950s.
And so it was for many years, during which ITV was divided into proud regional companies such as Granada and Yorkshire and London Weekend Television, all of which have subsequently been merged into a single company.
This new ITV conglomerate, which we were assured a few years ago could take on the world, yesterday announced an unprecedented decline in profits, as well as 600 redundancies, amounting to 13 per cent of staff. Programme budgets have been slashed for the next two years. Far from taking on the world, ITV will be fortunate if it survives in anything like its present form for more than five years.
If it went under, the consequences for this country would be profound, the more so if Channel Four and Channel Five followed, as seems quite likely. That would leave the all-powerful BBC dominating the airwaves, with Rupert Murdoch's satellite BSkyB playing a supporting role.
It obviously can't be healthy for the BBC, with its depressingly homogeneous political (i.e. Left-of-Centre) and cultural values, to be so dominant. Thankfully this country still has newspapers with many different voices, though I wouldn't count on there being so many of them in ten years' time.
But on the airwaves, as ITV retreats to the margins, the BBC's voice is fast becoming the only one that can be heard, on radio as well as television. If there were only one newspaper in Britain with a single viewpoint, there would be an outcry. Yet the prospect of one broadcaster does not seem to alarm many of us.
How could this happen? How could ITV, which in its heyday produced such marvellous documentaries as The World At War and such memorable dramas as Brideshead Revisited, while attracting many more viewers than BBC1, be at risk of becoming one among dozens of undistinguished digital television channels offering pap television and commanding minority audiences?
Summon Charles Allen and his money men, who engineered the merger of the remaining ITV channels to create a single broadcaster that would supposedly be a world player, able to compete with the major American networks, as well as Rupert Murdoch.
The dreams of financiers, rather than the interests of viewers, drove that deal. The creative capital of regional companies such as Granada was squandered in the rush to create a single mega-company. What was supposed to be a world-beating behemoth has turned into something that in international terms is a struggling minnow. The stock market value of BSkyB is more than eight times that of the whole of ITV.
Even before yesterday's announcement of further cutbacks by Michael Grade, ITV's executive chairman, what was once a steady stream of outstanding programmes had been reduced to a trickle.
The broadcaster's position will only weaken as a result of the economies announced by Mr Grade. A half-decent series such as Wire In The Blood has been canned, and established favourites such as Sharpe, the Napoleonic war drama, are at risk.
The future of The South Bank Show - almost the sole survivor of a once formidable array of serious factual programmes - hangs in the balance.
The major 'face-lift' promised by Michael Grade when he became chairman in September 2007 is turning out to be a devastating piece of emergency surgery. We can expect more 'feel-good' programmes, which is a way of saying that they will cost less to make, and be increasingly dumbed down.
So most of ITV's difficulties are self-inflicted. Or, to put it another way, it has lost viewers by producing too few impressive programmes, and therefore finds itself in a weak position to deal with a sudden and alarming contraction in advertising revenue, which has fallen by an amazing 20 per cent in the first quarter of this year.
The worry is that this collapse in advertising is not simply to be explained away by a deterioration in the economy, which will presumably recover at some stage in the future. Some think that some of ITV's advertising has permanently migrated to powerful online rivals such as Google, and will go on doing so. ITV's financial model may no longer make sense in a digital age.
The broadcaster is so much a husk of what it was in its better days that one could easily take the view that its demise would hardly matter. Incidentally, ITN, the news organisation which is 40 per cent owned by ITV and supplies its news coverage, has also suffered cutbacks, and its resources are dwarfed by those of BBC News, which it once surpassed.
But before we consign ITV to the dungheap, consider what would be left. Apart from BSkyB, whose main strength is sport, we would be left with the BBC, which has become a media giant in recent years as ITV has grown increasingly feeble.
While the budgets of all commercial media organisations have been slashed during the recession, the BBC sails on imperiously, with its £3.4billion income from the licence fee untouched, and guaranteed to rise in line with inflation until 2013.
Why should the BBC be immune to the economic whirlwinds that are sweeping through other media organisations? While it continues to grow - for example, by acquiring the Lonely Planet travel guides or buying stakes in Indian radio stations or by expanding BBC Worldwide - others are forced to retrench.
So far as the Corporation is concerned, the recession does not exist. When I see BBC reporters and newscasters apparently almost relishing every new bit of bad economic news, I even wonder whether their sometimes excitable coverage of the credit crunch does not reflect their certainty that their generous pensions and salaries will survive unscathed when the rest of us end up in soup kitchens. Would they be a little less apocalyptic if they thought they might be affected, too?
Naturally I am not in favour of the Government bailing out ITV. But the broadcaster is beset with regulations which do not afflict satellite channels such as BSkyB - and do not concern the BBC. It could significantly increase its revenue if it were allowed by the authorities to show more advertisements and to use 'product placement' in its programmes.
A relaxation of these regulatory burdens would give ITV more space to breathe, and the Government should turn its mind to such actions as a matter of urgency. But, of course, such measures could not by themselves rescue a moribund organisation - if that is what ITV has really become.
Let's hope there are still people working for the broadcaster who, given the right conditions, can rescue it. If they don't, we will be left in a few years with one state-funded broadcaster dominating the airwaves. It alone will be immune to every economic downturn and, secure in its future, will offer us its dangerously uniform view of the world.
Last updated at 12:23 PM on 05th March 2009
Owning an ITV franchise was a 'licence to print money'. So said Lord Thompson of Fleet back in the 1950s.
And so it was for many years, during which ITV was divided into proud regional companies such as Granada and Yorkshire and London Weekend Television, all of which have subsequently been merged into a single company.
This new ITV conglomerate, which we were assured a few years ago could take on the world, yesterday announced an unprecedented decline in profits, as well as 600 redundancies, amounting to 13 per cent of staff. Programme budgets have been slashed for the next two years. Far from taking on the world, ITV will be fortunate if it survives in anything like its present form for more than five years.
If it went under, the consequences for this country would be profound, the more so if Channel Four and Channel Five followed, as seems quite likely. That would leave the all-powerful BBC dominating the airwaves, with Rupert Murdoch's satellite BSkyB playing a supporting role.
It obviously can't be healthy for the BBC, with its depressingly homogeneous political (i.e. Left-of-Centre) and cultural values, to be so dominant. Thankfully this country still has newspapers with many different voices, though I wouldn't count on there being so many of them in ten years' time.
But on the airwaves, as ITV retreats to the margins, the BBC's voice is fast becoming the only one that can be heard, on radio as well as television. If there were only one newspaper in Britain with a single viewpoint, there would be an outcry. Yet the prospect of one broadcaster does not seem to alarm many of us.
How could this happen? How could ITV, which in its heyday produced such marvellous documentaries as The World At War and such memorable dramas as Brideshead Revisited, while attracting many more viewers than BBC1, be at risk of becoming one among dozens of undistinguished digital television channels offering pap television and commanding minority audiences?
Summon Charles Allen and his money men, who engineered the merger of the remaining ITV channels to create a single broadcaster that would supposedly be a world player, able to compete with the major American networks, as well as Rupert Murdoch.
The dreams of financiers, rather than the interests of viewers, drove that deal. The creative capital of regional companies such as Granada was squandered in the rush to create a single mega-company. What was supposed to be a world-beating behemoth has turned into something that in international terms is a struggling minnow. The stock market value of BSkyB is more than eight times that of the whole of ITV.
Even before yesterday's announcement of further cutbacks by Michael Grade, ITV's executive chairman, what was once a steady stream of outstanding programmes had been reduced to a trickle.
The broadcaster's position will only weaken as a result of the economies announced by Mr Grade. A half-decent series such as Wire In The Blood has been canned, and established favourites such as Sharpe, the Napoleonic war drama, are at risk.
The future of The South Bank Show - almost the sole survivor of a once formidable array of serious factual programmes - hangs in the balance.
The major 'face-lift' promised by Michael Grade when he became chairman in September 2007 is turning out to be a devastating piece of emergency surgery. We can expect more 'feel-good' programmes, which is a way of saying that they will cost less to make, and be increasingly dumbed down.
So most of ITV's difficulties are self-inflicted. Or, to put it another way, it has lost viewers by producing too few impressive programmes, and therefore finds itself in a weak position to deal with a sudden and alarming contraction in advertising revenue, which has fallen by an amazing 20 per cent in the first quarter of this year.
The worry is that this collapse in advertising is not simply to be explained away by a deterioration in the economy, which will presumably recover at some stage in the future. Some think that some of ITV's advertising has permanently migrated to powerful online rivals such as Google, and will go on doing so. ITV's financial model may no longer make sense in a digital age.
The broadcaster is so much a husk of what it was in its better days that one could easily take the view that its demise would hardly matter. Incidentally, ITN, the news organisation which is 40 per cent owned by ITV and supplies its news coverage, has also suffered cutbacks, and its resources are dwarfed by those of BBC News, which it once surpassed.
But before we consign ITV to the dungheap, consider what would be left. Apart from BSkyB, whose main strength is sport, we would be left with the BBC, which has become a media giant in recent years as ITV has grown increasingly feeble.
While the budgets of all commercial media organisations have been slashed during the recession, the BBC sails on imperiously, with its £3.4billion income from the licence fee untouched, and guaranteed to rise in line with inflation until 2013.
Why should the BBC be immune to the economic whirlwinds that are sweeping through other media organisations? While it continues to grow - for example, by acquiring the Lonely Planet travel guides or buying stakes in Indian radio stations or by expanding BBC Worldwide - others are forced to retrench.
So far as the Corporation is concerned, the recession does not exist. When I see BBC reporters and newscasters apparently almost relishing every new bit of bad economic news, I even wonder whether their sometimes excitable coverage of the credit crunch does not reflect their certainty that their generous pensions and salaries will survive unscathed when the rest of us end up in soup kitchens. Would they be a little less apocalyptic if they thought they might be affected, too?
Naturally I am not in favour of the Government bailing out ITV. But the broadcaster is beset with regulations which do not afflict satellite channels such as BSkyB - and do not concern the BBC. It could significantly increase its revenue if it were allowed by the authorities to show more advertisements and to use 'product placement' in its programmes.
A relaxation of these regulatory burdens would give ITV more space to breathe, and the Government should turn its mind to such actions as a matter of urgency. But, of course, such measures could not by themselves rescue a moribund organisation - if that is what ITV has really become.
Let's hope there are still people working for the broadcaster who, given the right conditions, can rescue it. If they don't, we will be left in a few years with one state-funded broadcaster dominating the airwaves. It alone will be immune to every economic downturn and, secure in its future, will offer us its dangerously uniform view of the world.
