MGEITF 2010: A new era of BBC/ITV co-operation?

During the MacTaggart Lecture, the BBC director general Mark Thompson seemed keen to throw the commercial channels a number of olive branches, albeit this was a political lecture and there were further implications to everything he said.

The suggestion that Sky should pay ITV, Channel 4 and Channel Five a fee for carrying their channels on its satellite platform through a “retransmission” charge may have been very hastily quashed by the Secretary of State the next day, but was Thompson’s comment that it was “not about ratings” for the BBC made with an eye on the licence fee negotiations, or just possibly the start of a phase of greater co-operation?

“The public want a range of programmes from the BBC, including popular ones, but they don’t want a BBC which is driven at all by ratings or commercialism or by any form of competitiveness other than the urge to be the best.”

Peter Fincham, Director of Television at ITV, picked up on these comments with some scepticism initially – suggesting Thompson may have had his fingers crossed behind his back when he made them – but Fincham also, wisely realized that he better not look a possible gift horse in the mouth: “To the BBC it’s a game, to us it’s a business. I would love to feel that we can compete, but to do so realising that between us we divide up the bulk of the audience.”

The audience and media industry should find out soon enough when Strictly returns to BBC screens against X-Factor. Will we see co-operative scheduling?

Thompson continued in benevolent fashion by suggesting that CRR should be dropped, something the Secretary of State agreed with the next day. Whilst referring the highly political News Corp / Sky issue to Vince Cable, Jeremy Hunt had no problem stating that he expected to be able to give this one a personal shove on its way. ITV is “no longer a major broadcaster in financial terms” and competes in a wider market than it used to, he said, justifying any decision to remove CRR.

“I think it is possible that we may need to have a review of the entire TV advertising market. It is no secret that I don’t think CRR is appropriate. In the end we have to get out of the business of regulating the way airtime is sold.”

When it was pointed out that the Competition Commission has only recently said that CRR should stay in place to protect ITV’s rivals, Hunt’s response was that it was in fact the CC’s remit that needed looking at: “The Competition Commission has a very, very carefully defined remit – I want to look at the remit we give it on this type of issue. Is it broad enough? That is what we are looking at at the moment.”