ITV ratings slump 'nonsense', says ITV boss
Well he would say that, wouldn't he? But what Charles Allen fails to mention is that the last "I'm a Celebrity..." didn't do quite as well as the previous one, and that ITV1's audience has fallen faster over the last few years - particularly in the case of those much-prized and discerning ABC1's - compared with the growth of multichannel television and faster than the decline of other major channels.
It's fortunate for ITV that what remains of the ITV1 audience tends to be relatively loyal, and it seems in many cases to be also relatively undiscerning - how else could the relative success of ITV2 be explained any other way? Meanwhile ITV3 has been a modest success in that it genuinely offers programming that is both neither too downmarket and isn't shown anymore on ITV1, but still represents very little effort in this direction.
But if I was an advertiser I would be genuinely worried about the lack of effort being made towards trying to attract audiences above and beyond the established (and commendably loyal) ITV1 audience. The phrase "The main point is using the eyeballs we collect on ITV1 and streaming them into 2, 3 or perhaps 4" says it all really: what's the point of relying on this technique when the main ITV1 audience continues to decline?
