Edinburgh is a great city for a wee dram, but it's quite a long way to go on a bank holiday weekend just to attack television regulators.
However, ITV clearly thought the effort was worth it, as demonstrated by its appearance at the Edinburgh TV Festival. Since the reign of Charles Allen, the channel's policy has been consistent: to shift public-service obligations as quickly as possible and ditch its cumbersome and expensive contract rights renewal (CRR) licences, at the same time if at all possible.
Not to suggest that ITV's director of television, Peter Fincham, and commercial and brand managing director, Rupert Howell, co-ordinated their efforts at the festival, but their contributions were complementary: singing the same tune in different keys.
Fincham was the MacTaggart Lecturer of the Year. His selection for the keynote speech was an obvious choice, as festival attendees clearly hoped to get the behind-the-scenes story on Fincham's scapegoating by and eventual resignation from the BBC last year following a scandal regarding the Queen's portrayal in a photography shoot and documentary.
But damn it, the man was far too nice. Fincham's lecture saw not even the mildest attempt to settle scores - hardly a lecture in the best traditions of the MacTaggart. In an unheard-of move, he even wrote the speech himself, rather than relying on the usual committee or 21-year-old consultant.
He told expectant delegates that he merely hit his iceberg - a disappointing and limp explanation.
Afterwards, Fincham said privately he could not attack the BBC, because he loved it - a clear case of Stockholm Syndrome if ever I've seen one.
Fincham was passionate in his defence of popular television and his attack on the regulators, always a perfect and undemanding target. With a swift verbal blow, he denounced their definition of public-service broadcasting as a recipe for 'the niche, the marginal, the worthy'.
He even accused independent regulator Ofcom of seeing television as a kind of social engineering, claiming it had no emphasis on entertainment or mass audience.
Howell, too, disparaged the regulators in his contribution to the festival, as leader of a panel session entitled 'How to Save ITV'. In it, he claimed ITV will be saved only when Ofcom begins a 'tough and long overdue deregulation'.
He got tough, issuing an essential ultimatum on CRR licences. 'If the gulf between the cost and benefit of ITV holding CRR licences widens, licence hand-back becomes unarguable,' he said. However, he argued this was not an ultimatum, but a restatement of Ofcom chief Ed Richards' views.
Richards said CRR must be reformed in time for the autumn 2009 trading round for 2010, because of its huge deflationary effect on ITV ad revenues.
There is agreement throughout the marketing community that the present CRR system has to go, Howell claimed, but no one can put their head above the parapet and say so. For other ways of saving ITV, the panel reached a consensus that the channel would be best in private hands.
The most original contribution came from Kelvin MacKenzie, who urged ITV to get rid of all of that regional rubbish and run a wholly commercial channel entirely from London. He then brought the house down by doing an Irish jig on the platform to underscore his point.
- Raymond Snoddy is a media journalist and presenter of BBC Television's Newswatch
30 SECONDS ON ... PETER FINCHAM AND THE MACTAGGART LECTURE
- Peter Fincham entered broadcasting having failed to establish himself as a composer on leaving Cambridge University, where he was involved in the Footlights alongside Griff Rhys Jones.
- He joined small independent production company TalkBack, which he went on to co-own with Rhys Jones and Mel Smith. He steered it through dramatic growth to its sale to Pearson for 拢62m in 2000, which made him a multimillionaire. In 2003, he became chief executive of TalkbackThames.
- Fincham was made controller of BBC One in March 2005; he resigned last October, but did not spend long at home - in May, he took up the post of director of television at ITV.
- The James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture, named in honour of the writer, director and producer, who died in 1974, is the keynote address of the Edinburgh International Television Festival.