ITV's director of programmes wants more co-operation with the BBC over scheduling:
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“The BBC and ITV should stop trying to “rip each others’ throats out” and agree to stop scheduling some hit shows at the same time, ITV’s director of televison, Peter Fincham, says today.
After complaints last year, the two broadcasters have already struck a tentative deal not to schedule The X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing at the same time on Saturday nights, and both have since seen increases in viewing figures.
Mr Fincham urged the BBC to go further, and enter into talks to stop clashes in other areas of the schedule. He said: “I have been talking to the BBC for a while about whether we can look a little bit more, whether in the viewers’ interests we can act co-operatively. I think viewers like it when we do.”
The advent of multi-channel digital television has led to a drop in audiences for the five main terrestrial channels. Mr Fincham said that the BBC and ITV should recognise that co-operation would benefit both channels.
He said: “This year Strictly is up and The X Factor is up. For years the two channels have had an understanding that EastEnders and Coronation Street don’t play against each other.
“BBC One and ITV1 are the two big mainstream channels. But they are two of some 350 channels, In the day when they were the only two channels I think it’s understandable that they tried to rip each other’s throat out on a daily basis.
“In this much, much more fragmented multi-channel world they also have interests in common, and those are the interests of the success of mainstream channels in a very fragmented world. There are only a small number of channels who are able to commit to a regular output of original drama. It’s an expensive thing to sustain. When that’s the case are we serving the viewers better, and indeed ourselves better, by acting in a more co-operative spirit?”
Mark Thompson, the BBC Director-General, recently pledged to end needless ratings wars with ITV. Giving the keynote MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival, in August, he said viewers “don’t want a BBC which is driven at all by ratings or commercialism or by any form of competitiveness other than the urge to be the best”.
Mr Fincham hoped the BBC would be receptive but said: “The habits of competition for competition’s sake are quite ingrained, and probably have been on both sides”. He pointed to Monday nights as an example: “The last eight or ten weeks we’ve had a run of dramas that have all played against a run of Spooks on BBC One, very successfully as it happens. But that’s a good example of giving the viewers a choice that they may not want to make.
“I hope the BBC will be receptive. I believe it’s a discussion worth having. I’m not unrealistic about this. Sunday nights will always be a night, because it’s a very high viewing night, when the mainstream channels will bring out their big guns. But perhaps during the week when neither of the main channels can afford to play drama every night of the week at 9pm, you could look at that a little bit more closely.”
BBC sources said that the corporation’s representatives would be happy to meet with Mr Fincham to discuss the proposals, and that Jana Bennett, the director of television, or Danny Cohen, the controller of BBC One, were the most likely candidates to do so.”
Also in another article he says that they're already making plans for a 3rd & 4th series of Downton Abbey, and this is what he said about Daybreak:
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“Fincham made his millions running TalkbackThames, producer of The X Factor. But not every ITV programme has been such a success. In September ITV launched Daybreak, a replacement for GMTV, after luring Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley from the BBC.
The transfer of television’s golden couple from the early evening to the early morning has not paid off, with viewing figures dropping as low as a third of BBC Breakfast. Fincham accepts that the show has to improve, but says that he is in it for the long haul.
“It’s not perfect, but we’re working on it,” he says “I believe it’s been improving, in the last couple of weeks its audience has been sharply up. It has had a rough ride in the press, but it’s a lot better show than you’d think if you read what’s been written. I’m saying we’re working on Daybreak, and we’re listening as well, but it will be with us for a very, very long time to come, and so will Adrian and Christine.”
Fincham points to slow signs of the show turning around. While Daybreak’s figures fell to about 500,000 over half- term, it peaked last Friday at 1.4 million, leading many to conclude that it may have pulled itself back from the brink.”
