Would anyone mourn the loss of ITV?

It’s easy to take today’s sizeable range of television channels for granted, but it’s not so long ago that there were three. BBC1 & 2 and ITV. Two colossal broadcasting giants going head to head like Finn MacCooil and the Buggane.

Times change and despite all the early ridicule heaped upon the new kid on the block by the old guard, Sky flourished and inspired a plethora of broadcasters who scramble for our attention 24 hours a day. One of the old giants adapted as best it could and eventually learnt to adjust its style to suit the modern time. The other giant couldn’t adapt to the new circumstances at all and all the decisions it made always turned out to be the wrong one. They took on a Chairman who had been everywhere else before and may have run out of fresh ideas. They wasted £120m on a website that had already reached its peak and was heading for a downturn. They took on Formula 1 at a huge cost and ruined it by putting advertisements on at the best bits, they employed Clive Tydsley to commentate on football, they dumbed down Saturday evenings to the point of embarrassment, they threw in the towel on nighttimes and settled for ‘Nightwatch with Steve Scott’, they employed Clive Tydsley, they handcuffed themselves to Ant and Dec for a ludicrous amount of money, they couldn’t broadcast a Merseyside derby without showing advertisements when the winning goal was scored and worst of all, they employed the ‘Old Trafford announcer’ Clive Tydsley.

Of course the Giant conveniently blames the economic downturn for all of its woes as it now seeks to lay off 600 employees in Leeds and London. Gerry Morrissey, general secretary of broadcasting union Bectu, rebuts those claims and says "This is because of the mismanagement of ITV and has been going on for longer than the current credit crunch," He claims that the Giant's management has been more interested in looking after shareholders and senior management, rather than staff and viewers and accuses it of giving up on its public service broadcasting remit after announcing it was going to move more towards popular entertainment programmes! Sheesh, how low can their Saturday output get?

I can’t think of one programme I now watch on ITV. If it ceased broadcasting today, would I even notice it had gone? In fact once the big digital switchover takes place and it simply takes up one space amongst a bouquet of channels, would the majority of viewers miss it?


nick