New year, new(ish) ITV1
Rovers Return for another bite at Friday nights
This new schedule for ITV1 (commencing January 12) is probably the most important thing to happen for the channel in many years, although its overall significance may not be immediately obvious. It's the first major change to happen to the flagship commercial TV channel since Michael Grade took over the reins of ITV plc in a blaze of publicity several months ago.
So we should find out whether the hype over Michael Grade's return to ITV was justifiable, as well as discovering whether the rest of the commissioning team is capable of delivering on the faith that was put in them. Like other broadcasters, ITV has had a difficult last few months and is now banking on a new schedule to try and help restore public confidence in its output.
Public confidence is most important for ITV1 considering the impact that the recent premium rate phone service scandals had on the broadcaster and its relationship with its cash cows viewers, especially given the amount of money that these services raised alongside advertising and sponsorship. Mess this up and ITV could be seriously damaged for years to come.
Basically speaking, News at Ten is back for four nights a week as previously promised, but it's the repositioning of the soap operas that is the more riskier move to make. In supposedly making weekends 'special', ITV1 is simply copying BBC One in this respect although ITV if anything is playing to its historical strengths in terms of drama and light entertainment.
A really bold move would have been to axe the weekend soap editions altogether instead of moving them, but ITV knows that it can't do such a thing when UK internet advertising spend is close to surpassing that of UK commercial television for the first time in 50 years and ITV needs to demonstrate that it is still a significant commercial force to its advertisers.
Proving ITV's continued commercial significance is also of great importance at this point because an economic slowdown could be just round the corner, which is just the sort of occasion that causes companies to start slashing their marketing budgets as a priority above everything else.
However all this soap during the week may conspire to make weekdays seem rather predictable by comparison, and although ITV is counting on Emmerdale's frequent dominance over EastEnders when they go head-to-head, there is a significant element of risk for ITV in banking on this being a regular occurrence with a rejigged schedule.
Even if this new schedule performs to expectations, ITV is still likely to have a fairly turbulent year ahead for other reasons. The Deloitte report into ITV's premium rate services could still give the broadcaster a hefty fine from Ofcom, and revenue sharing deals with programme producers (X Factor, Ant and Dec, etc.) could be placed under a very uncomfortable spotlight.
And of course there's BSkyB's 17.9% shareholding in ITV plc which is giving stability to the broadcaster but is likely to be under threat from concerns over any undue influence being exerted by BSkyB over the commercial television sector. This has been a blessing from Michael Grade's perspective, although he didn't seem publically enthused about this shareholding.
It was decidedly strange was Michael Grade recently stated that he wanted BSkyB to sell its ITV shares, because theoretically there's nothing worse than financial uncertainty for a broadcaster. However he was probably thinking that ITV could benefit from a corporate takeover, giving it more money and the potential of even greater long term stability.
But there's no guarantee that an ITV plc takeover will be good news for for the company, and may be bad news for the prospect of quality commercial television in the long term, especially if the new owner(s) end up treating ITV plc as just another business and falls into neglect as a satellite operation of a disinterested parent company.
