As part of a surprise management shake-up last week, executive chairman Michael Grade announced that Fincham will succeed Simon Shaps, who has headed ITV’s broadcast division since 2005.
Commenting on the move, agencies warned that the broadcaster should be cautious about pursuing the experimental scheduling that has marked the past two months.
Among several changes, ITV has reinstated its nightly news programme to 10pm, dropped soaps from Sunday evenings and invested heavily in new dramas for the 9pm slot.
MediaCom TV director Phil Hall said: “It is good to see ITV taking risks on programmes, but it will be no good if they are quirky and get two million viewers – they need to be both engaging and mass market, which is difficult for any channel, but what we want ITV to aspire to.”
Azon Howie, head of broadcast at Carat, agreed: “It is all very well to be inventive with programming such as Echo Beach and Moving Wallpaper, but it was a poor decision to schedule them on a Friday night.”
This year, the broadcaster promised to dominate ratings in the pre-News at Ten slot by investing in a slate of new drama. But in the first month of the new ITV1 schedule, between Monday, 14 January and Wednesday, 13 February, ITV’s ratings share fell by 3% year on year to 19.1% and in peak fell by 7% to 21.4% year on year.
However, Grade and Shaps have enjoyed notable successes. Dancing On Ice has been attracting more than nine million viewers on Sundays, while Wild at Heart, Primeval and Kingdom follow only the soaps in ITV1’s top performing programmes.
Agencies highlighted the success of Saturday night drama Primeval with young viewers, along with new US imports Dexter, Pushing Daisies and Gossip Girls as a solid way forward for ITV.
Meanwhile, Shaps is being seen by some as a scapegoat for the broadcaster’s mixed performance.
One former ITV colleague said Grade had “managed to side-step and dump” an underperforming strategy on Shaps.
But Numis analyst Paul Richards said calling Shaps a scapegoat was “too harsh”.
Richards said: “He tried new things with some mixed results, but he left things to build on. His exit was accelerated by someone of [Peter] Fincham’s calibre becoming available.”
Commenting on the move, agencies warned that the broadcaster should be cautious about pursuing the experimental scheduling that has marked the past two months.
Among several changes, ITV has reinstated its nightly news programme to 10pm, dropped soaps from Sunday evenings and invested heavily in new dramas for the 9pm slot.
MediaCom TV director Phil Hall said: “It is good to see ITV taking risks on programmes, but it will be no good if they are quirky and get two million viewers – they need to be both engaging and mass market, which is difficult for any channel, but what we want ITV to aspire to.”
Azon Howie, head of broadcast at Carat, agreed: “It is all very well to be inventive with programming such as Echo Beach and Moving Wallpaper, but it was a poor decision to schedule them on a Friday night.”
This year, the broadcaster promised to dominate ratings in the pre-News at Ten slot by investing in a slate of new drama. But in the first month of the new ITV1 schedule, between Monday, 14 January and Wednesday, 13 February, ITV’s ratings share fell by 3% year on year to 19.1% and in peak fell by 7% to 21.4% year on year.
However, Grade and Shaps have enjoyed notable successes. Dancing On Ice has been attracting more than nine million viewers on Sundays, while Wild at Heart, Primeval and Kingdom follow only the soaps in ITV1’s top performing programmes.
Agencies highlighted the success of Saturday night drama Primeval with young viewers, along with new US imports Dexter, Pushing Daisies and Gossip Girls as a solid way forward for ITV.
Meanwhile, Shaps is being seen by some as a scapegoat for the broadcaster’s mixed performance.
One former ITV colleague said Grade had “managed to side-step and dump” an underperforming strategy on Shaps.
But Numis analyst Paul Richards said calling Shaps a scapegoat was “too harsh”.
Richards said: “He tried new things with some mixed results, but he left things to build on. His exit was accelerated by someone of [Peter] Fincham’s calibre becoming available.”
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