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I don’t want my ITV

Thursday, June 29, 2006 by

Oh, for goodness’ sake, what are they doing at ITV1? It seems that everyone is so concerned about the financial side that they’ve just plain forgotten that they’re supposed to be running a television channel – if the current schedules are anything to go by.

The recent announcement on cuts to entertainment programmes (not sure how much will be saved by a 10% cut on comedy, 10% of nothing is nothing) follows on from the news that they’re also stopping producing children’s programmes, closing down a factual department, slashing the sports budget and scaling down one-off dramas. And what will go in its place? Well, this weekend on ITV1 there are three episodes of Quincy. That’s really going to get those missing ABC1s flooding back, isn’t it? Similarly, fair enough if they want to get rid of kids’ shows to make way for higher-rating series, but next week Children’s ITV ends at 4pm to make way for The Darling Buds of May and The Unforgettable Les Dawson. This is just cutting stuff for the sake of it.

In the past, ITV1′s programming may have been crass and irritating, but at least there was a swagger about it, and you knew bucketloads of cash had been spent on it. These days the schedules are a joke and ratings are plummeting, and only on ITV would the answer to this be to spend next to no money on programming.

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