ITV - 2007 rubbish & the future's looking pants too (IMHO). And what's with such lazy journalism?

I'm sure that anyone who's touched any kind of news channel over the past 24hours will be well aware that ITV announced their profits had fallen in 2007 by a whopping great 35%.  I can't say that I was particularly all that interested - but I found myself unable to muster the effort to lift myself from the sofa at that particular time and thus consumed about 80% of the 10pm news (think it was ITV - but that's irrelevant).

I was amused by Bushes’ hypocrisy and dismayed at watching the IOC playing politics and calling black - white (or indeed smog – mist), but what really got my gander (yes – even at gone 10pm on a school night it can be "got") was the reporting of the ITV profits slump.

What's the easy go to in journalism these days - what do you want to blame everything on? Move over Al Qaeda & the war on terror, hold on a sec rising fuel crisis & global warming, we’ve got another one this month on which to hang our bad news fixation, the credit crunch.  Yup – ITV are losing millions because of Le Crunch. Case closed, move along here, nothing more to see thank you very much.

That’s right - not a single mention / acknowledgment / aside about the migration of ad spend online. Nothing about the changing face of entertainment delivery and media consumption that's causing marketing budgets to be reconsidered - re-evaluating what the true value is of a stuck on the sofa mid Coronation Street eye ball on your expensively produced "all on transmit" TV advert against different audiences where you could can get immediate engagement as well as generating information that will allow you to in near (or indeed actual) real time re-target and / or evolve your messaging to deliver maximum ROI!

I even looked into what was being reported on this on the BBC today - and all Mr Grade is being reported saying is:

"Viewers that had deserted us are coming back," Mr Grade told the BBC. "With a much improved performance onscreen, we have countered the myth that ITV is a business managing decline."

"In my first year back at ITV, we put together a growth strategy for the business and strengthened the senior team," Mr Grade said. "The first priority for ITV was to stem the decline. We did more than that, delivering an increase in viewing to the ITV family for the first time in over a decade."

Don’t get me wrong – I’m certainly not an “end of the world is nigh” kinda guy. I’ve said many times that I feel that the established media and the medium through which they have traditionally delivered their messages will co-exist with new and emerging mediums as advertising platforms for a hell of a long time yet, but that doesn’t mean that the impact of the change won’t be significant and the pace relentless. And for many of those established broadcasters and publishers who have enjoyed decades of massive profits generally based on monopolizing the routes to consumers through mountainous cost barriers to entry then, and I thought they knew this already (although apparently not in all quarters), then ready yourself for a steady leaching of your profits whilst you cling desperately to your old business models and miss the point in that which you snap up in an overpriced manner (see: FriendsReunited). 

In ITVs investors statement they do at least mention their online efforts (although not in the most promising of lights) – the overall message does indeed seem to be that they see their future profitability coming from audience growth / share.

So my beef with this was / is summarised into two distinct elements:

1. I know the Credit Crunch is causing all sorts of issues and isn’t nice news at all – but don’t we deserve to have our journalists doing more than just taking press releases at face value? Is it just me that thinks that’s sloppy?

2. I have to say (certainly not the first nor the last) surely ITV are barking up the wrong tree - the tree where getting a message in front of a possible customer could be charged in tens of £s as opposed to the real value ultimately likely to end up being realized as more like a couple of quid.

Good job the ITV Management Team have a ropey economy to blame their failure on (for the moment). More Lobotomy TV anyone?

:-]

Comments

[Sam Michel]

Want some more lazy journalism to get your goat? Check this out:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/mediamonkey/2008/08/georgia_not_on_my_mind.html

Yup, Sky News citing Wikipedia as a primary source (and getting it wrong). Class.

[Alex Hens]

good spot Sam - thanks for that (kinda ;)

Yup - generally long term we have to hope that the wheat is sorted from the chaff, and so I cling to the belief that in the face of mass media mediocrity and shoddiness people will pay (in one form or another) for journalism that they can actually trust - whereas sky news et al will be left serving low value 'Whats on TV?' "readers". I'm just kinda hoping that the BBC is aiming for, or at least allowed to pursue, the former rather than the latter.

Or perhaps I'm just too much of an optimist and the whole world will succumb to dumbing down, with the BBC becoming just another publisher driven by lowest common denominator quantity over quality pressure :-]

Subscription to the Economist anyone?

;-)