Culture

ITV: down, down, deeper and down

February 28, 2008
Placeholder image!

As ITV have a quick reshuffle, including bringing in Peter Fincham (ex-BBC 1) for Simon Shaps as director of television, it's worth recalling one key fact. ITV's audience share has fallen inexorably since 1981 regardless of who was running the shop.

In 1981, ITV's audience share was 49%. By 1991 it was down to 42%. A significant fall but not catastrophic. But after 2000 the audience share started to full more steeply. By 2001 it was below 30% for the first time, down more than 2.5% in a year. In 2006 it had fallen below 20% for the first time. Last month (January 2008) it was barely 19%. Two weeks ago (week ending 17th February) it was barely 18%. In other words, in 26 years ITV's audience share was down from almost half (49%) to less than 20%.

Of course, all the channels have taken a hit since multichannel TV took off. In 1981 Channel 4 didn't exist. In 1991 the four channels had 96% of audience share between them. Now it's down to less than two thirds according to BARB. But of the five terrestrial channels there's no doubt which has been hit most in the last few years. In 1996 ITV still had 35% of audience share. It has declined by almost a half in barely ten years. During that period, BBC 1 has gone down by one third (33.5%-22%, 1996-2007). The smaller channels have done much better: BBC 2 from 11.5%-8.5%, Channel 4 10.7%-8.6% and Five has actually risen from 2.3%-5.1% (1997-2007).

Most worrying for ITV, in the last 25 years, its audience share has declined year-on-year every year except for one year (1989-90).

This kind of decline suggests that we're not talking about a question of particular individuals. ITV has simply failed to respond to the new world of multi-channel television. Its core audience is voting with its feet.

The two most talked-about initiatives have failed. 'News at Ten' was quickly seen off byBBC 1's Ten O'Clock News. The new raft of 9 pm dramas have had a rough ride and none of them have had the critical success of BBC peak-time dramas like 'Spooks', or 'Life on Mars' and even the lamentable 'Ashes to Ashes' brought in more viewers than 'Kingdom'. The demise of 'Parkinson' was a reminder that ITV no longer have a class talk show. Their sports coverage is inferior, sport on sport, to the BBC. Its top-ratings shows are dominated, as ever, by soaps -- 'Coronation Street' (1-5 in ITV's ratings for BARB's figures for the week ending 17th February) and 'Emmerdale' (8-9, 11-13). But where are the high-rating entertainment shows or popular dramas that used to be the hallmark of ITV for decades? Only five years ago, 'Cold Feet' brought in nearly 9m viewers, 'The Commander' (a cop show with Amanda Burton) almost eight million, Footballers' Wives' almost six million. The recent death of Richard Drewett was a sad reminder of the kinds of entertainment that LWT used to produce in the 1980s -- Barry Humphries, Clive James, Russell Harty. The days when Harty would interview Salvador Dali or James would interview Roman Polanski are well and truly gone.

That was the ITV world that Simon Shaps started out in, back at Thames in the early 1980s. It's hard to see how in the unrecognisable new world of the 2000s -- share price, ratings, audience share and critical acclaim falling as fast as each other-- how ITV will survive the coming years.