Good television costs money
Has the death of mainstream TV been exaggerated?
If you believed the pessimists a few years ago, BBC One would now be struggling to attract 5 million viewers and Sky One would be just as popular as ITV, but for a variety of reasons this 'doomsday' scenario for the BBC and ITV channels still hasn't happened and is unlikely to either, although there's bound to be further decline before the digital switchover completion.
Firstly there has been a long tradition of UK-produced quality television that has been maintained by the BBC and ITV channels despite attempts to cheapen things by much of the commercial sector along the way. Good television not only costs a lot of money to produce but also requires other inputs such as imagination and talent to be truly successful.
Secondly there are public events in the lives of human beings that strongly benefit from a shared experience, and although recent broadcasters such as BSkyB have had some success via sporting events such as football matches in particular, this sort of thing has turned out to be less of an ultimate draw because of major games being shown for free on terrestrial channels.
The advent of reality TV came at a fortitutous time for the major broadcasters since these formats often require word-of-mouth promotion to gain traction together with an established outlet; witness Channel Five's past attempts at reality TV which have all been relative failures despite tabloid headlines involving Rebecca Loos and a certain pig a few years ago.
And the less said about Sky One's reality TV attempts the better.
ITV in particular has cleverly used formats such as I'm a Celebrity to boost ratings on ITV2 but without obvious detriment to the established ITV1 channel, though that is basically just exposing a demographic split amongst some of its audience. (Or that there's nothing worth watching on the other channels at the time.)
However you only have to look to Sky One to see what can happen when a in-house production strategy goes badly wrong; recent BARB weekly viewing share statistics have put the channel roughly on a par with BBC News 24, and Ross Kemp On Gangs hasn't exactly set the world alight despite helping to keep overall ratings from being a real embarassment.
BSkyB executives won't be losing too much sleep over Sky One (Sky Three is ironically doing almost as well courtesy of its Freeview presence) since they are more concerned with subscription revenues. But it does illustrate the intense difficulty of attracting viewers with original programming if the broadcaster isn't either the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 or (maybe) Five.
Also never underestimate the power of existing soap operas such as Coronation Street, EastEnders and Emmerdale in helping to maintain channel loyality, which has been very important for ITV in particular, although Channel 4 has no soap opera apart from Hollyoaks so this can't be a sole factor in explaining how a channel maintains its popularity.
It has to be said that many people seem to be creatures of habit; programmes can perhaps unfairly be ignored if shown on certain channels yet gain mass audiences if shown on the established terrestrial channels. Because of the 'shared experience' factor, you can't really talk about a programme with friends and family if you were the only person to have watched it.
And despite the lack of a language barrier, US imports haven't significantly dented the popularity of home-produced programming presumably due to cultural and perceptual differences; series such as Heroes have gained a respectable audience but on a well-established channel (BBC Two) as opposed to the 'geeky' Sci-Fi Channel.
The dire content of most of the numerous channels available on digital platforms just helps to reinforce the difficulty in producing original content, and a Sky subscription is often required to access anything of worth above and beyond the terrestrial channels available via satellite television. Even then the result can be underwhelming if you hate sport and movies.
Word-of-mouth promotion takes a long time to take effect, and unless you have something very different to offer (such as Most Haunted on Living TV for example) then you stand little chance of making an impact from scratch. Plus the 'promotional window' for something can be all too brief before the next fad comes along to take its place.
All this means that the terrestrial channels would now have to make some pretty disasterous moves to come unstuck, all things considered. ITV came the closest to throwing its reputation away but has managed to avoid total disaster and with luck can hopefully regain some of its old confidence again. But the importance of innovation is now much higher than before.
