Broadcasting
The great TV afflatus
Paul Johnson
At a recent love-in with independent TV producers, Jeremy Isaacs, Chief Executive of Channel Four, exulted: 'At a time when, across the country, other industries are contracting, ours – almost by some miracle – is expanding'. It is worth looking a little more closely at this 'miracle', if there is one. Of course in one sense Isaacs is right. His own channel is due on the air in November 1982, and breakfast TV will be with us, at a date to be arranged, in 1983. Local radio is expanding fast (though the sinister proposal to kill Radio Four, which I still like to think of as the Home Service, reminds us thatit is.
not all gain). But how far does this group reflect paper decisions taken by such uncommercial bodies as Parliament and the IBA, rather than genuine money across the counter reflecting consumer choice?
Broadcasting is now a billion-pound-ayear industry in Britain. The BBC will cost £546 million in 1981. ITV is taking over £500 million a year in advertising revenue (the figure for 1980 was about £511 million, adjusted to take account of the 1979 strike), The BBC bosses are demanding a £50 colour-TV licence fee by the end of this year, and no doubt if the Home Secretary, Willy ('Quivering Jelly') Whitelaw, has his way they will get it. But Mrs Thatcher, who does not love the Corporation, may have other ideas.
As for ITV revenue, its increase in 1980 over 1979 was about 22 per cent, which is better than the overall inflation rate. But many in the industry consider it amazing that television advertising has not yet been hit by the effects of the recession, and predict the worst. ITV ratings are weak. Profits for 1981 are expected to be only about £47 million, as against £55 million for 1980.
In 1982 they will be savagely reduced by the need to finance Channel Four. The calculation is that they will fall to £28 million, based on a decidedly optimistic advertising revenue projection of £690 million.
Granted a recession which is more profound and prolonged than anyone imagined when Parliament gave Channel Four the go-ahead, can the industry afford it? One proposal is that the ITV companies, instead of contributing to the levy for the new channel, should raise a loan and deduct the interest on it from the tax it pays the Government. Another suggestion, favoured by some Tory MPs, is that the launch should simply be postponed. But it is already gathering momentum and the first programmes are due to be commissioned in the summer.
The trouble is that Channel Four is essentially a luxury item in an age of austerity. The wiseacres say it will need at least £100 million a year, and to gain enough advertising revenue would have to attract anything from 121/2 to 25 per cent of the audience. Isaacs himself says he is aiming at 10 per cent. But even this could prove sanguine. He says he is keen on 'hard-sell' 'soliciting for advertising, but he also favours such notions as 'block advertising', that is transmitting the advertisements in groups once or twice in the evening, instead of between, and in the middle of, each programme. This idea was favoured by the Annan Committee for 'aesthetic reasons', but commercial reasons dictate otherwise. Isaacs also wants advertising to be sold nationally, instead of by region as at present; but, according to Campaign, the ad-man's weekly, the companies, which actually have to sell the time, say the proposal is impractical.
The mandate given to Isaacs, which he has enthusiastically accepted, is commercially unattractive. The channel is supposed to devote 15 per cent of its time to 'educational material'. Oh dear. It is under a general obligation to encourage experiment and cater for minority interests. Isaacs Spectator 14 March 1981 says he is going to appeal to young people, and we know what that means. The channel is required to be 'distinctive', but as it is firmly in the hands of the radicaldocumentary school, I can foresee an enormously enlarged amalgamation of Seventies ,formulae :`faction' plays knocking the famous or exalting desperadoes, indepth investigations of the police, the prison service and MI5, soap-operas about slums, race and other 'social problems', community Marxism and, of course, plentY of Open University-style sociology. Not much joy there for the ad-salesmen. Channel Four also takes off under the lengthening shadow of breakfast TV, which could well be fighting it for a diminishing pool of revenue. Having watched breakfast TV daily over several months, I am sure there is a future for it here, but the difficulties are formidable. A London Business School survey suggests that home layout is the most important factor in determining the number of breakfast TV viewers a week – that is why it scores so high (70 per cent) in Japan, where people eat in the living room. The percentage in the US is about 30, though most homes there have two sets (the figure for Britain is only 37 P6r cent). A MORI poll shows that 94 per cent of British TV sets are in the living room, and only 29 per cent of people spend more than five minutes in this room on a weekday morning. About 63 per cent are within hearing of the telly, but this I think is bound to help the BBC breakfast service which will be geared to its existing radio formula, as well as starting first. By the time Peter Jay's glamorous stars (whose fame will have faded by then) come along, they may find, much of the audience already hooka' elsewhere. A Marketing and Research Consultan population foonu nsda y that that t cy breakfast time, but a large majority (58 Per 44thepyer cent of the cent) want news in preference toawnaytcohtheart sort of programme. The magazine program me; presumably the strong point of Jay's AM-TV, was favoured by only 17 per cent. This confirms my own hunch that you can beat news in the morning. But hews costs a lot of money. As the old anti-Guardian tag has it, comment is free but facts are expensive. I think the IBA was unwise Nt to give the contract to Independent TV News, which could have provided the basic service for comparatively little extra As it is Mr Jay must rely on ITV's goodwilln as the price of a separate news organisatioe would be prohibitive. Even so his revenn.„ estimates may be wrong. He thinks he wnn" get £15 million a year on a 5 per cent audience figure. Harry Henry, one of tn_f top experts, whose calculations weie . appended to another bid, thinks that 4 per cent will be nearer the mark, and forecasts revenue of only £7.38 million xa prices). One of them has to be wrong', Remember what happened in the early day" of London Weekend? The example Inf. prove instruction for both Jay and Isaacs. ca1s9ts80
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