ITV's digital portfolio

So it’s happy fifth birthday, today, to ITV3. And a tip of the hat to ITV4 which is also celebrating – four years of service.

By way of a tribute, one-man OTT-updating machine Dominic Small returns with a history of ITV’s digital strategy. From ONDigital, to ITV2, there have certainly been ups and downs. As Dominic reminds us, the network’s nascent dabbles in the digital market weren’t very successful…

“ITV regional operators did dip their toes into the satellite pool quite early on, with mixed results. Many of the ITV franchisees of the time worked together to launch a new UK-based satellite channel with Europe-wide broadcast, though this pioneering venture – Superchannel – was not as successful as had been hoped and later ended up in the hands of an Italian firm, and subsequently the American broadcaster NBC, who dumped much of the UK content for US-produced output.”

For more, Read the feature »

Later this year, The Bill will move to a permanent 9pm position. ITV explains that “a post watershed slot [will allow] for a grittier, action filled series in a more traditional home for terrestrial drama.”

Peter Fincham, ITV’s Director of Television said: “I’m delighted to announce The Bill’s transition to a weekly 9pm drama on ITV1. It’s a fantastic opportunity to take the series to another level, marking a new era for one of the most established brands on British television.”

Lorraine Heggessey, CEO, added: “This is a huge vote of confidence from ITV in the show and is a genuine first on UK television. We are incredibly proud of the show and we look forward to embracing the new opportunities this will bring.”

"My dear Mr Grade, when are you bringing back 3-2-1?"

Once I would’ve had some default reaction along the lines of: don’t even dream of touching such an institution; sure, it might be ailing, a half-breath of the presence it used to be, but don’t say the remedy should be extinction. It still has a part to play, it still stands for something…doesn’t it?

But in a practical, constructive way, mind. Basically, the channel should join its cousins as a purely-digital venture. ITV1 should air from 7pm to 1am every night, on Freeview, satellite, cable and online. It should vanish from the analogue spectrum. This would:

a) be an enormous kick up the arse for the rest of the country to switch to digital
b) save Michael Grade a hell of a lot of money (and a lot of face besides)
c) make sense

Because there’s no logic in ITV existing as a public service broadcaster anymore. It doesn’t broadcast anything of public service. It hates the fact it has to fill the daytime with programmes, so take the daytime away from it. It can’t stand having to broadcast the news, so scrap that too. It can’t give sport the time and format it deserves, so ditch that and relaunch ITV Sport as a digital channel. GMTV could go it alone if it wanted, again as a purely digital service.

The only things that ITV1 can rely on these days to earn it money are Coronation Street, Emmerdale and Simon Cowell. They also seem to be the only things people want to watch on ITV1. Fair enough: stuff the schedules of the new all-digital ITV1 with them, plus The Bill, Heartbeat and a film to finish the evening off. Sorted. There’d even be proper start-ups and closedowns again, to please anyone over the age of 30.

One piece of legislation would do the trick. It could be Gordon Brown’s legacy to the nation. Were Michael Grade to propose such a thing, and then succeed, he’d be slaughtered by the press and politicians for about three weeks, but then hailed as the saviour of ITV for the rest of his days.

Do it Mike!

In truth Grade was in the wrong office at the BBC. He should have been Director-General. That would have given him the licence to deploy those legendary black arts of scheduling, besides handing him the excuse to do shameless photo opportunities with cast members from all the Beeb’s top shows, plus be far more of a charismatic, avuncular and likable public figure than Mark Thompson.

All of these things he’ll now be able to do at ITV, but only because the network got into such a mess in the first place that it had to merge the roles of chief executive and chairman in order to make the job of running the place in any way appealing.

As BBC chairman all we only really saw of Grade were his dry turns at government committee hearings and corporate conferences. Maybe he made a difference internally, aiding morale and boosting the BBC’s self-confidence. Externally, you sense his departure won’t make any difference at all.

Christopher Bland, another former BBC chairman, made an insightful point on the Today programme yesterday morning. Grade, he argued, had more or less done himself out of a proper job anyway by sanctioning the replacement of the governors with the BBC Trust. Grade was to have been chair of this new body, but equipped, by definition, with far less authority to meddle as he had when chair of the governors. Sensing he was about to see out the rest of his days in the most emasculated job he’d had for decades, Bland reasoned, Grade was already looking for a reason to jump when ITV came calling.

It’s fair to say whenever Grade’s done a job where he hasn’t had the power to put some stick about – when he was creative director of the Dome, or chair of Camelot, or looking after his dad’s old service stations – he’s come unstuck.

Now he’s got the whole of ITV to play with. He got a standing ovation when he showed up at the network’s offices, just like he did when he made his first appearance in the BBC as chairman. In both cases it was deserved. If he makes ITV the powerhouse it once was, however, he’ll have pulled off the biggest success of his career.

This week’s Broadcast reports that he’s going to try and lure over loads of BBC talent, in an attempt to stop any more Paul O’Grady-esque situations. The magazine reckons Jonathan Ross is going to be targeted, which is fair enough, but they also claim they’re trying to grab Catherine Tate – a “natural signing”, apparently, who’ll obviously be able to go in all those comedy slots ITV has. It also reports they’re going to try and grab … Graham Norton! Because of course his exclusive BBC deal has worked so well, hasn’t it?

Broadcast also reports that one of the options ITV are considering for a replacement for The Paul O’Grady Show is, er,The Best of The Paul O’Grady Show. Surely that would just look hugely embarrassing, but probably a better option than another concept they’re considering, as claimed in yesterday’s papers - The Price is Right with Joe Pasquale.

For most of the afternoon, it was the usual fare, interleaved with remarks from presenters Owen Thomas (“Was it all a big mistake – no, not closing the ITV News Channel, but the London Olympic decision”) and Faye Barker about how much they’d miss the travel jingle, and joshing with the financial guy about him being out on the street, so on.

Then at 5.30pm we got Alistair Stewart reflecting on Five Years of the News Channel, which sounded a bit grim, but actually turned out to be a neat little history of the network, with Stewart Purvis saying that the original plan was to be a CNN Headline News kind of channel, only nobody really wanted that. There was footage from the first bulletin from August 2000, when it went under the ITN banner, and launch presenter Julia Somerville saying she was angry it was going.

It was a refreshingly honest retrospective, everyone admitting that the ratings weren’t good, it never had much money, and it never really got out of bronze medal position. The controller of BBC News 24 even turned up to suggest that having no live news channel might be a problem for ITV next time there’s a huge news event.

There was some good clippage, notably from the 2003 Gulf War and the Beslan siege, and perhaps most compelling of all, John Irvine’s personal account of escaping the tsunami last Christmas. ITN really do still have some of the best news reporters around, whose work has largely been wasted of late, as the management continue to tinker around with the main bulletins (the News at 10.30 goes back to being called the Nightly News, like anybody cares) and spend more time and money on gimmickry.

The News Channel won’t be missed, though. It went-off air halfway through a cheap commercial for blinds. It seems sort of appropriate.

It’s fair to say that Trev was the last of the big ITN giants, following in the tradition of Alastair Burnet, Reginald Bosanquet and Sandy Gall – charismatic, indeed often barking mad, figures with real authority that everyone knew and respected.

Nowadays ITN have a whole host of distinctly transient and uninteresting figures, with Trevor’s replacement by Mark Austin summing it up – he’s a perfectly adequate reporter but simply doesn’t have the authority or the character that ITN used to be so great at. They seem to have totally lost the knack of picking the right kind of newsreader – only Nick Owen seems to have any sort of personality amidst the solid-but-unspectacular James Mateses and Bill Neelys.

I’m not saying the newsreader is more important than the news, but the Beeb have got figures like Huw Edwards who have personality and charm, while not sacrificing their respectability. Even if the Beeb had always been the more authoritative and serious, ITN’s great characters used to make it much more of a level playing field.

With Trevor’s departure and the closure of the News Channel, this must be the worst week in ITN’s history. And that’s a real shame.

There was never any need for an ITV News Channel. Sky News had established itself as a pretty decent player – breathless and in lots of ways the inspiration for The Day Today maybe, but it was fast, it was reliable and thankfully a long way from Fox News. Then the BBC came along and marked out their own territory – News 24 had its faults, and perhaps still does, but, well, it’s the BBC and so News 24 has the authority that Sky News lacks. If you’ve got a pacy, get-it-first service from Sky, and a more authorititive service from the BBC, what do ITV do?

It never helped that absurd rulings and bandwidth restrictions meant it wasn’t even a 24-hour channel for most viewers. When it launched as the ITN channel on OnDigital in 2000, it was only on screen between 5.30 and 9am. In 2002, it got hauled off the air on cable to make way for football. At one point, it was unavailable to DTT viewers at breakfast time because of some medieval prior claim that GMTV had on those hours. And since the launch of ITV4, Freeview watchers have only had access to it during daylight hours.

Perhaps one way forward for ITV would have been to make it a Sky Sports News-style clone – lots of tickers, fact boxes, flashes, a complete barrage of information. It wouldn’t have been to everyone’s taste, but at least it would have been different. Instead, we got endless Angela Rippon and Alistair Stewart.