ITV moves to the left
Mortensen Green
The prize of a franchise still glitters strongly enough for executives and carpet baggers from 42 television companies and competing consortia to humble themselves last Sunday in that periodic British ritual, the public auction of ITV. Past auctions made multi-millionaires of the winners and funded the growth of multi-media empires like Grade's now ailing ACC. Over the next decade, given a bit of luck, the latest set of prizewinners might make a billion or two themselves.
At 4.30 p.m. Lady Plowden revealed that Southern and Westward were off the picture; that ATV and Trident were to be broken in two; that Peter Jay would be correcting the bias of our misunderstandings over breakfast and that power in all ITV companies would devolve towards the people — towards a few carefully chosen people at least.
What was disguised by the snap, crackle, pop headlines about breakfast in bed with Anna was a significant shift in the politics of independent television. ITV was willed into existence back in the Fifties by a Conservative alliance of big business and show business. At the last auction in 1967, the Independent Broadcasting Authority was still very close to its clients. Then came the Seventies with demands for devolution and participation. Unease about the influence of television brought a succession of inquiries, ending with the Annan report. Meanwhile, the rapid growth of independent radio and custodianship of the Fourth Channel further distanced the IBA from its ITV companies.
Last Sunday's the IBA's12 lay members, appointees from among the Great and the Good, exercised their authority decisively. When things threaten not to hold, political parties may move left or right, but the Establishment's keepers of the consensus move instinctively to secure the centre. And that is just what the IBA has done.
There was a time when a Tory minister questioned about Granada's perceived Labour bias could reply urbanely, and with some truth, 'Well, that's 14 to us and one to them!'. The IBA may have altered that over-simple equation. Out goes Southern and its trio of right-wing proprietors — Rank, Associated Newspapers, and D. C. Thompson. In comes Labour's Lord Boston heading an array of regional interests. Westward, the creation of Peter Cadbury, last of the bare-knuckle entrepreneurs, falls to an anonymous army of regionalists led by an officer of NALGO. Lew Grade, routinely craven on issues like Ireland, sees ATV broken and 49 per cent of its Midlands franchise put up for grabs from competitors, the strongest of which, Mercia, sports Shirley Williams and Brian Walden, In the North, Ward Thomas and Paul Fox, the top executives of Trident, emerged from last year's bitter technicians' strike with reputations as union bashers. Now Trident is wrecked by a mutiny of its staff at Yorkshire Television, egged on by outside agitators like Austin Mitchell and Sir Harold Wilson. Trident's satrapy, Tyne Tees Television, is prey to takeover, in part perhaps by a consortium which includes Moss Evans's TGWU and other big unions. With shares in most surviving contractors. to be put on public offer, we may yet see a few brothers in the boardroom.
In the East, Toryish Anglia got a light horse-whipping for being too 'county' and was instructed to pay more attention in future to its urban viewers. Unscathed, indeed commended, are Granada and LWT, companies presided over by those liberal patricians Sir Denis Forman and John Freeman. And Breakfast, of course, was served up, dead centre, to PeterJay and Sir Richard Marsh of no fixed party.
What difference does it all make? On screen, probably not a lot. If showbiz spectaculars arc replaced by local welliethrowing contests, we have only ourselves to blame. While the rest of us were watching Pot Black or the Muppets the IBA travelled the land listening attentively at 245 meetings to the opinions of 20,000 of the unlikeliest people ever to pose as the general public.
For all that, the redistribution of franchises, in calling to account those granted monopoly use of a scarce national resource, is ultimately worthwhile. This time it has taken some power away from the businessmen who dominated the scene for a quarter of a century and distributed it among those more representative of Britain in the Eighties, seedy and boring though some of them may be.
The dearth of creative talent in . the competing consortia is instructive. Most programme makers know that whatever gentlemen sit on the boards,' ITV's real problem is that it gets more difficult by the year to make good programmes in image factories patrolled by shop stewards and accountants. Excellence can only be achieved with big budgets. So what happens if revenue drops and ITV has to find £70 million to fund the Fourth Channel? What if labour costs continue to rise alarmingly'? What if the Government stops profligate companies buying out the trade unions at the Treasury's expense by taxing revenue rather than profits? What if ratings are pulled down by worthy programmes imposed by the IBA? The Fourth Channel should release some pent-up talent, but not many masterpieces in drama or documentary are made on budgets averaging £30,000 an hour. One can only hope that independent producers will find ways of making the money go further when freed from the restrictions and waste of ITV.
What then does the decade hold in prospect for the lucky winners of Bridget Plowden's auction? If the system can absorb the shocks of last Sunday; make advertising revenue rise as the rest of the economy declines; increase regional output; spend £70 million on a new channel in 1982; allow Breakfast to gobble up a portion of its advertising in 1983 and still find a few million to develop Oracle, a teletext service that tells you things you don't wish to know, then ITV might just be in shape by the second half of the Eighties to do battle against video cassettes, cable TV and sky satellite super-stations backed by multinational megabucks which should be about ready to take on our state-protected systems. Then, of course, it will almost be time to start bidding all over again, assuming, that is, that in the eight years up to 1990 an ITV franchise hasn't become a licence to lose money.
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