Is ad-funded programming the silver bullet that will cure ITV?

Having exhausted his barnstorming repertoire of jokes – ‘why is Sir Martin Sorrell known as June 21st? He’s the world’s shortest knight’ and one I can’t quite recall about his gynaecologist – he went on to evangelise the second coming of ITV to a room-full of events organisers, call centre managers, litho–printers, reps, a smattering of agency people and several PR types.

He cited Harvey’s furniture stores as a great TV sponsorship tie-up and talked at first hand about how his family could barely get through the week in eager anticipation of the Saturday night entertainment fest of ‘Harry Hill’s TV Burp’ and ‘The X-Factor’.

It was a true ‘boy stood on the burning deck’ performance – rollicking stuff, but totally wide of the mark in terms of the assembled audience, and the macro economic background - falling advertising revenues (though admittedly ITV’s has been falling with slightly less velocity than others), dismal audience figures (though, to their credit, ITV have retained audience share) and a BBC awash with licence-payer funds, to whom light entertainment is just one strand of a multi-faceted schedule. 

His attempts to circle the wagons at ITV have been admirable and heroic, but the more he went on at that ISP lunch, the more I thought he started to resemble Custer at The Little Big Horn as he faced down the whole Sioux nation. Dogged, vulnerable, isolated. Without reinforcements. And fighting a losing battle from the start.

Yet, unlike the beleaguered Custer, poor Grade has had to fight on two fronts.

With the wealth of the nation’s talent at his disposal, BBC boss Mark Thompson has been Chief Sitting Bull to Grade’s depleted General. And, with the regulators breathing down Grade’s neck, it’s as if the Apaches have entered the battle too.

Little wonder, then, that it turned out to be Grade’s last stand as CEO.

The truth about ITV is that they have to redefine quality on a broad front before advertisers have the confidence to stick around.

Light entertainment has always been the Trojan horse that the BBC has wheeled into the nation’s living rooms in its battle for audience share. The difference is that the BBC has strength in breadth and depth of programming.

Peak-time audience-pullers such as  ‘Strictly come dancing’ can out-muscle ‘Britain’s got talent’ or ‘The X factor’ simply because, with an eternal line of credit at its disposal, the BBC can assure quality output around its flagship products – and do it right throughout the schedule. Take a look at tonight’s TV fare and you’ll find the creative gap between the two terrestrials glaringly obvious.

With his feet under the desk, the first thing that the (rumoured to be) incoming CEO of ITV, Simon Fox, should do is to re-define quality entertainment in terms of the competition. No doubt, he faced similar challenges at HMV.

As a starter for ten, there’s a vast untapped source of revenue and talent that he could draw on. The world of brand-created content and the creative agency world. 

It is agencies, not the independent production houses or media brokers, who have the relationships with brands. It is they whose acumen helps to inform clients’ business plans. It is they who conform ideas and formats and understand the language of audiences better than most. It is they who trade in entertaining narrative. It is they who know how to enrich a viewer’s experience - from broadcast right through to interactive platforms.

Last Thursday, ITV announced a half -year loss of £105 million and is selling Friends Reunited for a reported £25 million – a thumping deficit of £150 million, though Michael Grade is keen to declare that he took no part in the purchase of a social networking site at a time when MySpace and Facebook were busily subjugating it.

What can ITV do now?

They’ll never out-gun the BBC, currently spending the equivalent of ITV’s losses on rent alone and a move to Salford Quays for sport and children’s production that is, with current estimates, reported to be costing the licence-payer £876 million (what couldn’t ITV do with those sort of funds at their disposal?). But they could outsmart them.

Give ad-funded programming a real and serious look, Mr Fox. Don’t just flirt with it. It could be to ITV in 2010 what the indy production company revolution was to Channel 4 in 1984.  A source of self-generated, compelling, intelligent, popular and entertaining TV  - capable of enriching viewer involvement beyond the cathode ray tube. And injecting fresh energy and revenue into a tired organisation.

To do so, you’ll have to overcome a deeply embedded psychological barrier – the ‘sup with the devil’ phobia. The fear among commissioning editors that, if brands have a hand in shaping and conceiving programme content, it will compromise editorial integrity.

Let agencies have their turn at creating interesting formats. Allow them to bring innovation to the commissioning editors’ desks. It no coincidence that most people enjoy the ad-breaks far more than the programmes they populate. Why?

Because agencies exercise a great deal more imagination on behalf of their brands than many programme-makers do on behalf of their viewers.

Let the viewers decide on entertainment value. Ofcom will back them up. But they’re savvy enough anyway to know when they are being short-changed. Equally they know it’s a value exchange. That’s what us integrated agencies do so well on behalf of brands. And it could prove to be a silver bullet for ITV in these troubled times.

Dan Douglass is executive creative director at Meteorite

Douglass: 'ITV can never out-gun the BBC'