BBC and Channel 4 dominate RTS awards
Full list of winners
Numbers don't often tell a story, but in this case they can tell you a great deal about the current state of British broadcasting. The BBC and Channel 4 cleaned up at the RTS awards, leaving ITV to pick up what was left over, though ITV can take some comfort in also having produced award-winner Brainiac 3 for Sky One.
What remains of creative staff working within the ITV empire must be growing very frustrated at ITV's stronger commercial direction, and the lure of the independent sector is growing ever stronger as a result for both producers and presenters alike. This has already resulted in defections where the financial rewards have proven to be not the only incentive.
In a pursuit for ratings victory, ITV has invested most of its remaining creative resources in its regular ratings bankers such as Emmerdale, so winning Best Soap where the major opposition is an occasionally glum and directionless EastEnders is no surprise whatsoever; ITV's soaps may still have strong production values today but will this still be the case in ten years time?
What's more, Media Guardian claims that ITV won five awards when infact it has technically only won four awards since the Presenter award went to GMTV's Lorraine Kelly, and GMTV isn't actually part of ITV itself despite residing on the same channel. Oh, and Paul O'Grady has now defected to Channel 4, presumably because money isn't the only factor in the equation.
The awards handout may spotlight ITV's ruthless pursuit of advertising revenue but it also points out how weak the multichannel opposition still is from a creative perspective, hence the likes of Rupert Murdoch thinking in terms of poor quality programming being consumed on-the-move like "fast food"; this is unlikely to ever change from a commercial perspective.
