ITV chasing “lowest common denominator” audiences
Editor ©RapidTVNews | 03-11-2010
Senior management at the UK’s leading independent broadcaster ITV have admitted to a UK government committee that the broadcaster is trapped in a ‘ratings rat race’.
Giving evidence to a House of Lords committee, Chief executive Adam Crozier and Chairman Archie Norman squarely blamed the controversial Contract Rights Renewal regulations which limit the ways in which ITV can gain advertising as leading to a situation where the company was forced to offer primarily higher ratings programmes such as soap and reality shows.
Norman admitted to Peers that complying with the CCR has driven ITV to being locked in a “ratings rate race”. He added that the net effect of this trap was that ITV is chasing “lowest common denominators” audiences with programming, abandoning non-mainstream programming such as arts and documentaries. Going even further, Crozier conceded that ITV’s current output had a “remarkable lack of diversity."
Two weeks ago ITV signed a new three-year deal with Freemantle Media for The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent. The importance of such reality shows ITV is starkly indicated by the fact that the two shows provided the most watched television moments of 2009 in the UK with peak audiences of 19.3 million for The X Factor final and 19.9 million for the Britain’s Got Talent Final.
The ITV chiefs stressed to Peers that the solution to becoming less dependent on ratings-grabbing content would be to amend if not scrap the CCR regulations what they claimed has resulted in a loss over £250 in revenue since it was introduced in 2003. If allowed to fid other revenue streams, Norman and Crozier argues that it would invest the extra revues in less mainstream programming.
