The Daily Novel

First day back in London and the papers are full of Michael Grade’s switch from the BBC to attempt the near impossible; revive the ailing ITV colossus which still reaches,
with terrestrial television, nearly all the 23 million homes in Britain. ITV contains nearly all the once great companies which changed the face of British television in 1956, when the Conservative government of the day broke the BBC monopoly and launched commercial television. They brought us Coronation Street, ITN News, and World in Action, the first hard hitting investigative television journalism programme and lots of first rate drama, notably from ABC Television and Granada and some outstanding documentaries. Read the history for yourself in Wikipedia. And all because the ITV Act required them to put in some quality programmes if they wanted to keep their programme contracts.

ITV’s advertising, which financed all these expensive high quality programmes, has slumped in recent years because of the huge success of Murdoch’s Sky satellite television and cable television, transmitted by the two cable companies, NTL and Telewest, who have just merged with Richard Branson as the biggest shareholder. They are to relaunch as Virgin Media.

Sky and Virgin compete vigorously with each other, but the diet they offer is remarkably similar. Lots of popular mass market programmes, including sport. Lots of films, including many of the best in film history, which are of course much cheaper than new drama or documentaries. Very little of the more expensive quality programmes in which Granada, London Weekend and ABC television excelled.

Sky and Virgin are equally keen to get their hands on ITV because it beams into the 7 million homes in the country which still rely for their delivery on the type of aerial my father installed on our roof in the late 1950s.

Murdoch now has 7.7 million homes with his satellite dishes on the roof. Virgin has dug the streets to get cable television into 3.3 million homes. Both companies have been gobsmacked by the success of the latest entrant to the new delivery game, the Freeview set top box. The BBC chose it to launch its digital services via Freeview and ITV now uses it as well. Freeview put on 2 million subscribers in the last year to reach 7.1 million viewers. The attraction of Freeview is that once you have paid for the set top box, you have nothing more to pay, whereas Sky and Virgin collect an annual subscription.

The leader in The Times yesterday welcomed Grade’s appointment and told him that he was the right man to do just what Murdoch wants. Namely go for the Sky/Vision diet of popular and low cost television. This has the added advantage for all three companies that they can cut their costs still further by offering their programmes to the other two.

So if Grade is a sensible chap, he will do just that and collect his near £10 million pay in two years and enjoy a well-earned retirement after his many achievments, including his latest one of quietly working to restore the credibility and morale of the BBC after the assault by Alaistair Campbell and the Hutton report.

My own impression of Grade, based on following his career and on meeting him a few times at various parties, is that he is a chap who likes hot seats, and likes taking on difficult jobs. See what you think yourself by looking up the potted biography in Wikipedia. Getting enough extra advertising to enable ITV to make some quality programmes is a near impossible task. But I hope he attempts it.

Meanwhile I am feeling cheered this morning by the article in The Times this morning that tells me the French red wine I was drinking in Paris is actually good for me. What’s more, while I was in Paris my cigarette consumption dropped from 20 a day to 5 a day. Not sure why that was. Relaxing with old friends, enjoying writing a few blogs which flowed out of my head. Back home my consumption has started to rise again. But, one day, I may find that I no longer need to smoke, and I shall have to throw away my collection of cigarette lighters, and use my beautiful Bohemian glass ashtray for serving peanuts.