Talk:History of ITV

What's the connection?

The article says:

In June 2005, Ofcom, the channel's regulator since the demise of the Independent Television Commission announced huge reductions in the licence fees payable by the Channel 3 contractors (and Five). This move reflects the significant shift towards digital viewing in the UK, and the British government's desire to switch off analogue television signals altogether by 2012.

What is the connection between digital television and licence fees (really taxes) paid by the commercial television channels? There's no inherent reason why this should be so, and in other countries the opposite is true. 121a0012 05:01, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Here's a news story - from RTE in Ireland - about the subject: [1]; and commentary from my ever-authoritative but never NPOV namesake over at Transdiffusion's blog: [2];

I think the sentence in the article has a couple of problems, the first being, as you say 121a0012, that it doesn't assert a reason for the reduction. Unfortunately, the reason appears to be "ITV lobbied for this change for years and has now succeeded as a sop to them in the face of the BBC surviving for another Charter". But there's no way to easily say this in the context of an encyclopedia. Perhaps it needs to be better put by editing rather than addition: In June 2005, Ofcom, the channel's regulator since the demise of the Independent Television Commission, announced huge reductions in the licence fees payable by the Channel 3 contractors (and Five) after years of lobbying. ➨ ❝REDVERS❞ 20:36, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Rebid possible?

Another question left unanswered by the article is: under the current regulatory regime, will the Channel 3 contracts ever be rebid, or are the current operators now the permanent licensees in their respective regions? (This would parallel developments in the United States, where stations were once subject to competing applications at every renewal, but today, renewal is automatic absent gross misconduct. Similarly, competing applicants were once subject to a "competitive hearing" process, similar to the IBA "beauty contest" described in the article, but now, open frequencies are put directly to auction. In this case the UK blazed the trail; US broadcast spectrum auctions were not authorized until about 2002.) 121a0012 05:01, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

This subject is a bit of a horrible fudge, in the way that British law is often a horrible fudge. The Tories' Broadcasting Act 1990 and the subsequent Labour-derived Communications Acts allow for ITV franchises to be awarded on a rolling basis. So, without anyone really noticing, the franchises have all been renewed for between 10 and 25 years when they expired at the end of 2002.

Notionally, there is a requirement for an open competition, at some point, for the licences. But this has been disregarded (and may have been removed by the 2004 Act, I'm not sure). So, one way or another, no, there will never be another franchise round and the present contractors are now permanent, but the reserve power of defranchising or readvertising still exists. It's just seen as pointless, as ITV plc, if they lost their franchises, could just move the popular programmes to ITV2... or start a new digital channel called ITV1 with all the popular programmes on it, and leave the old "ITV" to a new entrant. Or have someone else win, then buy them up anyway. Or lose a single region to someone else, but then refuse to supply them with certain programmes until they went under.

Whatever, ITV as we now know it is, unfortunately, very permanent. The article could say this, but the research to prove it would be tough: the reserve powers remain and the 1993 system is still in place... it's just unenforcable and everyone in power knows it, but people rarely if ever say it. ➨ ❝REDVERS❞ 20:36, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

It's quite depressing when you think about it. PMA 07:59, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

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UTV Ireland New Region

Hello Wouldn't UTV Ireland Be considered a ITV Region, if so maybe add it to the map on the region + ITV Now owns UTV and UTV Ireland TrapdoorSmoke (talk) 08:56, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

I know it's not a channel 3 region TrapdoorSmoke (talk) 08:58, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

No, it's a separate channel altogether and isn't part of the ITV network. Bbb2007 (talk) 17:11, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

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