ITV is rubbish .. discuss

I read in Private Eye today that Television's viewing figures have declined by 1.5 million, lost presumably to Playstations, DVDs etc. So what's happening with those that are still watching? There was bad news for the terrestrial channels this Christmas, as for the first time ever, BBC1 and ITV1’s combined share of the television audience fell below 50 per cent, with BBC1 winning a 27.2 per cent share, compared with just 22 per cent for ITV1 (via the Scotsman).

More significantly, as Inside TV points out, ITV still remains the only mainstream channel incapable of 24 hour broadcasting. It was once a strong set of regional companies making local broadcasting; now this fragmentation makes it weak against its opposition. So what are ITV pinning their hopes on in the future? Well, it needs to buy out GMTV, which although currently successful, is not wholly owned by them; it needs to become purely digital (its analogue programming agreement means it is obliged to show 'public interest' programming); it needs to extend to 24 hour programming to compete further.

But what of the programming? In the midst of reality TV taking over our networks, what are the big two doing about it? Well, the BBC has had to become slightly more highbrow to justify the license fee, while ITV has plummeted into chav-dom. A proliferation of digital channels offers watered-down programming - cheap make-over, cookery, lifestyle, fly-on-the-wall and reality programmes. These are cheap (in both senses of the word), and allow ITV to compete with all the other non-BBC digital channels. "I'm a Celebrity's Big Brother Going Life-Laundry Mad in the Property-Ladder Antique-Auction Swap in the Sun" is surely the only combination of programming that hasn't been thrown at the largely undemanding British public. Too much in-yer-face branding is only helping to cheapen the general offering: permanent on-screen logos in the corner reminding you that you're watching "UK-Sad+1", or that "today's Neighbour Swap was sponsored by Burberry" don't make the experience feel a luxury one.

These initiatives spell disaster for me - GMTV is currently successful; with ITV's recent record, they can only ruin it. Becoming purely digital means it is no longer obliged to make 'serious' programming in the public interest, and 24 hour broadcasting means filling larger gaps with cheap muck. When I was a kid, before the onset of millions of channels, you were either an ITV household, or a BBC one (honest, this really happened). Now it will become BBC or all-the-rest-of-the-homologous-filth.

In the words of Paul Weller .. "The public want what the public get" .. might be on to something there.