David Liddiment bears no sign of scars, despite the barrage of
criticism directed at ITV1 recently. As ITV director of channels,
Liddiment carries the can for the schedule's performance - yet he comes
across as relaxed and cheerful.
The facts are drearily familiar: ITV 1 was narrowly beaten in all-time
figures by BBC One for the first time; it failed to meet any of the
performance benchmarks for 2001 set by then marketing and commercial
director John Hardie; it continues to perform poorly in daytime.
So, an annus horribilis for ITV1? "Not really," says Liddiment. "I can
see why for ITV as a whole, with the ITV Digital issues and the
shareholder issues, it's been a very difficult year. For ITV the
network, it's been a challenging year - a year of great programming,
great creativity, and rich with its particular challenges. As the market
gets more complex and the behaviour of our competition changes, the
ironic thing is that it makes the job even more interesting."
Not everyone in his team is so sanguine. Last week, Maureen Duffy, ITV1
controller of daytime, fell on her sword over the network's lacklustre
performance in daytime.
Decline in daytime
The facts speak for themselves. In January, Hardie spelt out plans to
narrow BBC One's 4.1% daytime lead over ITV1. By the end of the year,
BBC One had widened the gap to 6.6%. The decline in daytime was also a
key factor in BBC One's much vaunted victory in beating ITV1's share of
all-time viewing - albeit by 0.01%.
Liddiment says he is not about to follow Duffy's example and quit, but
admits ITV's performance in daytime is not good enough. He says: "Our
decline in daytime is driven by two factors. One, we lost Home and Away
two years ago and to date we've not found the programme with the
capability to deliver comparable performance. Two, we have been losing
audience over the past two years, but that has accelerated since we lost
Richard and Judy early in the year.
"So we're putting a lot of energy into restoring some of our losses in
daytime, but we're not doing so at the expense of maintaining a
competitive proposition in peak."
He adds, however, that advertisers can expect to see some improvements
in the next few months. A key change to the schedule has been the
introduction of first-run brand drama repeats such as Where the Heart Is
in the early afternoons, playing against the BBC's repeats of
Shoestring. He is also working hard with This Morning producers at
Granada to "aggressively tackle" the problems the show has experienced
following Richard and Judy's defection to Channel 4, which has seen
figures slip to one million.
The outlook for the newly resurrected Crossroads, however, seems less
clear. "It's not imminent, but we'll have to make a decision about
whether Crossroads will have the growth in it to be a permanent fixture
of ITV daytime or not."
He believes it is too early to say what the future holds for Night and
Day, ITV's tea-time replacement for Home and Away. Meanwhile, he says
the candidate he has in mind to replace Duffy comes from outside ITV and
"will bring freshness and energy" to the role of overseeing daytime
TV.
So what of ITV1's overall performance? Liddiment admits that "it doesn't
feel good" that ITV1's share of all-time audiences fell below BBC One's
or that ITV1 dropped three share points in peak.
He concedes that some advertisers have had their confidence in ITV1
knocked, but says some of the criticisms are unfair. "I am not
complacent about our performance last year, but in peak time I think we
put in a commendable performance, given the market conditions. We had a
number of new entertainment hits, we had strong factual events, we had
nine out of the top ten dramas and we had eight out of the top ten
entertainment shows. We won every night of the week last year, bar
Christmas night. These are not inconsiderable achievements."
While he is not looking for excuses, Liddiment is determined that the
performance of the schedule should be judged in the context of two
factors over which he has no control: the commercial behaviour of BBC
One and the growth of multi-channel.
"Whenever people contemplate the performance of ITV, they look back at
those glorious days when there wasn't much competition and we had over
half the available audience watching us.
"The end of 2001 underlined the speed of change, the growth of
multi-channel and the exercise of choice. There is now a purely
commercial perspective driving the BBC's programming schedule.
"Those changes are bound to have a greater impact on the market leader
than on our other commercial competitors that have a niche, more
bespoke, part of the market."
Nevertheless, Liddiment denies he is now in a position of managing
decline.
"I don't accept the notion of decline at all. I have to ensure we
respond as competitively as we can to keep delivering ITV's unique
proposition of rapid cover, high-impact, talked-about TV with bigger
numbers than anyone else in the commercial sector by a million miles. I
passionately believe this will remain the case for many years to
come."
New commercial era
Liddiment's optimism may be severely tested following publication of
ratings from the new Broadcasters Audience Research Board (Barb)
panel.
While the figures only cover the first two weeks of this year, and the
panel still needs to settle in, ITV's apparent 25% drop in viewing is
cause for concern.
In this new climate of realism it makes sense that ITV1 has abandoned
the performance indicators that have left it open to criticism over the
past two years. "We must not lumber ourselves with targets that don't
properly reflect the competitiveness of the market," says Liddiment.
"It's important to our ability to make the right decisions for
advertisers and audiences."
Instead, ITV director of marketing and communications Jim Hytner will
make a series of presentations to advertisers and bodies such as the
Incorporated Society of British Advertisers about ITV1's ambitions for
the channel.
Dropping the targets is part of a package of measures to change the way
ITV1 is perceived and judged. These will include ITV's first conference
for advertisers and agencies in May.
According to Liddiment: "Jim is working on a plan that will see real
change in the way the channel presents itself to viewers, the way we
look on air, the way we market the strength of our programming and our
schedules both to our customers and viewers."
Hytner, says Liddiment, is one of ITV's big hitters working alongside
"the strongest team of creative executives and schedulers in British
TV".
And Liddiment promises they are working to deliver the best performance
possible.
"We are not sat with our feet up saying 'Oh dear isn't life terrible';
we're saying this marketplace is really challenging and interesting. How
are we going to crack it, how can we do even better for our advertisers
and our viewers? That question preoccupies us in all of our waking
hours."
CHANGING TV MARKETPLACE
Channels' % share of viewing in all-time
ITV1 BBC One BBC Two C4 C5 Multi-
channel
2001 26.8 26.9 11 10.1 5.8 19.3
2000 29.4 27.2 10.7 10.5 5.8 16.4
Source: ITV.
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