A FUTURE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE TELEVISION CONTENT AND PLATFORMS IN A DIGITAL WORLD

A FUTURE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE TELEVISION
We recognise that ITV continues to produce
high quality news coverage and some
worthwhile current affairs, notably in the
Exposure strand, as well as an impressive,
albeit diminished, roster of drama.
However, it has all but exited some key
genres, reduced it spending and commitment
to public service overall, and, mindful
of the need to retain popular appeal in
programming, has allowed a certain amount
of ‘dumbing down’ to take effect, with
celebrity-fronted documentaries and a more
consumer-led approach to current affairs (see
Chapter 10 for a further discussion on current
affairs). Without a fresh discussion of its role
as a public service broadcaster, it could lobby
for further dilution of its commitments to
the point whereby it ceased to be a public
service broadcaster in any meaningful sense.
It is now more than a decade since Ofcom
published its first public service broadcasting
review that accepted the case that ITV’s PSB
contribution would change and reduce over
time. 239 We believe that, given the changes to
the market since then and the importance of
finding ways of sustaining the overall public
service ecology, it is time to look again at the
role ITV could play in the future.
A new deal for ITV
The original deal under which ITV produced
public service broadcasting was simple:
its franchise holders enjoyed advertising
monopolies so were required to make public
service television in return. They were held
to account by regulators who were able to
monitor the quality of their output properly.
Today, as a result of the multichannel
revolution and digital switchover, the deal
is less clear cut. It is important to recognise
that ITV’s great asset in the past – its access
to scarce analogue spectrum – has now
disappeared. It is because of this that it
no longer has to pay anything other than
nominal licence fees and has to do much less
public service television than before.
But ITV retains two key advantages today:
its right to ‘appropriate prominence’ on
electronic programme guides and its reserved
capacity on the digital terrestrial TV platform,
where its channels enjoy a disproportionately
high level of exposure. 240 Gauging just how
important these advantages are is crucial to
any attempt to set criteria for ITV’s public
service commitments in the future. Many
argue credibly that EPG prominence remains
very beneficial to ITV at least in a world
where the majority of viewing remains linear,
in continuing to reinforce the traditional
prominence ITV has had in public culture
and the national conversation. Arguably, the
benefit that ITV has derived and continues
to derive from it has been underestimated;
it is highly unlikely at this point in time that
ITV would choose to walk away from its third
channel status.
This is not to say that ITV does not face
challenges. While the benefit of EPG
prominence remains considerable for now,
there is a growing threat to its viability. At
some stage in the future, Internet Protocol
television (IPTV) will become the norm
effectively ending the benefits associated
with EPG prominence for broadcasters
such as ITV. Even in the short term, the
development of new interfaces on some
TV sets and other viewing platforms, where
239
Ofcom, Ofcom review of public service television broadcasting, 2004.
240
ITV’s operates a multiplex on Freeview through its subsidiary SDN and all of ITV’s channels apart from ITV Encore are found there; ITV2 is
at channel 6 and ITV3 at channel 10. The digital terrestrial platform accounts for the highest share of viewing hours of any platform – 44.3%
of the total in 2014, ahead of 40.5% for satellite and 14.6% for cable. ITV’s main channel enjoys a better share on terrestrial TV than on
satellite or cable – 15.5% in 2014, compared with 13.6% on satellite. See Ofcom, CMR 2015, p. 195.
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