ON THE MINDS OF TV'S MASTERS

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Aug 17, 2008 | by PETER JOHN MEIKLEM , MEDIA CORRESPONDENT

THE Edinburgh International Television Festival being held next weekend features a special edition of Noel Edmonds's Sky gameshow Are You Smarter Than A 10-Year-Old. In classic Edinburgh-ironic style, Edmonds himself is being inveigled into hosting a spoof version, asking: Are You Smarter Than A TV Executive?

TV critics, both armchair and professional, may already have their own answer to that, nurtured during the successive three hours 38 minutes a day the average British viewer is parked in front of the box (according to new Ofcom statistics).

However smart they may or may not be, the execs know that the industry is facing critical times. The viewer's average age is rising and many young people are tuning out. The industry is in the credibility doghouse after a wave of phone-in scandals, and advertising revenues are predicted to go through the floor in the second half of 2008.

Andrew Mackenzie, this year's festival chair, thinks the 2000 delegates heading for Edinburgh next weekend have "got what it takes" to sort out the industry's problems. But have they? We preview the issues that television's great and the good will be wrestling with next weekend.

ITV

IT SEEMS almost cruel to rehearse the misfortunes of beleaguered commercial broadcaster ITV, but as its director of television Peter Fincham is giving this year's McTaggart lecture - the most influential UK media speech of the year - ideas on reviving the company's fortunes should be batted around next weekend.

The depths to which ITV has plunged were underlined earlier this month when chairman Michael Grade announced that broadcasting profits fell by 21per cent to GBP89 million in the fi rst six months of this year. Adding insult to injury, Grade - appointed in November 2006 as a would-be saviour - was forced to downgrade his previous "turnaround" targets for the business.

The former BBC chairman tried to distract attention with a fierce attack on the Ofcom regulations that govern the broadcaster, threatening to hand back its public service licence if he didn't get his way.

However, many of those heading for Edinburgh next week dismissed his stance as "bluster" and said the heart of Grade's problems was not regulations, or even the advertising downturn, but the lack of attractive programming.

Richard Woolfe, controller of digital channels Sky One, Two and Three, said Sky had stolen ITV's thunder.

"One of the greatest compliments we were paid was saying all the shows that should be on ITV - Are You Smarter . . . ? , Gladiators, our new dating show with Cilla, Noel Edmonds - are on Sky One.

We have taken up the big, noisy entertainment baton."

Woolfe said ITV had lost its way: "I look at ITV as a viewer and as a competitor and I think to myself it is a network that doesn't quite know what it wants to do.

"Where there are so many places fighting for people's attention, we need to take risks and we have to be creative.

If ITV is going to win viewers back it needs more surprises."

TRUST

WHEN Fincham was announced as this year's McTaggart speaker, media watchers rubbed their hands together with glee: at last the inside story on Queengate, a reference to the misleading BBC preview - implying Her Majesty had stormed out of a photo-shoot - that led to both Fincham's resignation as controller of BBC One and an ITV and BBC ban on the use of production company RDF media.

But then Fincham got a job - the director of television at ITV, to be precise - and hopes for a juicy, bloody, gossipnourishing speech died. While Fincham may be muzzled slightly by his new appointment, the legacy of Queengate lives on Don't believe it? Listen to the spin from BBC Three controller Danny Cohen: "This year the people who are organising the festival are much more keen to have a more positive tone. We want to celebrate creativity and the talent behind some of the best shows on television. Good ground has been made on trust but there is still some work to be done."

Hold us back.

Journalist and broadcaster Muriel Gray, who returns from a long absence to chair a debate at this year's festival, believes the whole topic was blown out of proportion.

"I'm not entirely convinced TV lost the public trust in the first place. The phone-in thing [where TV channels duped viewers into entering competitions whose winners were already decided] was awful but the blaming of honest documentary makers was based on hysteria worked up by the press. I will not allow the Daily Mail to lecture me about honesty."

So will Fincham come out cheering for the poor, maligned documentary maker?

"Now he's in a job, it will be bland. I wish he'd been speaking when he was still on the dole, " observes Gray.

SCOTLAND

ALTHOUGH to London-based TV executives, Scotland, if considered at all, is the land of tartan tat and whimsy, the creation of the investigatory Scottish Broadcasting Commission (SBC) has shaken things up.

As the SBC prepares to publish its findings, the state of Scottish TV - not a subject that has often kept channel controllers awake at night - is elbowing its way into the consciousness of some of TV's most powerful elite.