As any variety performer will tell you, a good warm-up act can make the world of difference to your reception. So the government must have watched in horror from the wings as ITV Digital died on-stage just before its new Communications Bill was due go on and do its turn last month.
Personally, I blame the impressario - the Bill had the wrong stage name, being more about broadcasting than communications, and the collapse of Carlton and Granada's venture into digital TV was a Greek tragedy that should never have been mixed with the world of stand-up comedy.
Many observers predicted the collapse of ITV Digital even before it started, including this column. Up against BSkyB, with more channels, millions of existing subscribers, deeper pockets, and simply more nous, ITV Digital had only one chance of survival. That was for the government to promote the digital terrestrial platform (DTT, or digital through your normal aerial) as the natural successor to the obsolescent 5-channel analogue transmission system, and encourage UK homes to either for the free-to-air or pay-TV services available from ITV Digital.
Well, that didn't happen, even though the government is obsessed with transferring viewers onto digital systems so that the old analogue frequencies can sold off, although God only knows who is likely to buy them given the rickety condition of every business that has dabbled in digits or communications in the last five years.
ITV Digital was left to slog it out in the open marketplace against a competitor whose monopoly was sealed a decade earlier when, like an anaconda, it swallowed up British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB), the official regulated satellite service, without pausing to spit the bones out.
In a move worthy of the blackest film noir, ITV Digital, the official regulated digital service, set up its HQ in BSB's old building, Marco Polo House, and allowed the resident poltergeist to throw around the same ludicrously large cheques that had done for the previous tenant. The football deal which eventually brought the receivers in was spectacularly ill-advised - it won hardly a single new viewer, and ITV Digital might as well have given the cash straight to Ferrari, Porche, and various other manufacturers who provide over-paid footballers with mobile jewellery cases.
At a time like this, you might expect new government legislation to deal with the need to keep ITV going, as the UK's biggest spender on original programming outside the BBC, and the complete absence of any public service obligations on BSkyB, now the largest supplier of digital TV to the nation's homes.
Sadly, the Communications Bill is unlikely to help with either of these problems. BSkyB looks set to continue with only the lightest of regulation - provided it sticks to the rules on taste and decency it will be left to do what it wants. Murdoch's anaconda continues to escape the onerous duties ITV has to broadcast a range of public service programmes, and, crucially as far as BECTU is concerned, shows that are produced and transmitted locally across 15 regions of the UK.
Without any levelling of the commercial TV playing field, ITV will remain at a competitive disadvantage while other TV companies are allowed to concentrate on chasing audiences.
As for the medium-term survival of ITV, the Bill's promise of relaxed rules on ownership will at the very least open the way for one company to take the network over - a move that BECTU won't exactly welcome, but will live with if programming targets are protected.
More than that though, ITV could fall into the hands of a non-European transnational media conglomerate, provided it doesn't own more than 20% of the UK newspaper market (so it won't be Murdoch, but there are plenty of other big snakes out there). If this happens, our members will see a repeat of the savage job cuts that followed the last big change in broadcasting rules in 1991, and viewers will, for the first time, have an unwelcome opportunity to taste television made purely for profit - not a pretty sight, and probably the end of regional programming on the network.
Various other proposals to relax ownership rules in the Bill put Labour somewhere to the political right of the Liberal Democrats, and possibly even the Tories. Charles Kennedy's party has a firm manifesto commitment to tighten up media ownership in the interests of viewers and newspaper readers, and incidentally, recently fell in step with Labour by giving full support for the BBC to be funded by a licence fee.
The good news about all this is that the curtain hasn't yet fallen on the Communications Bill, which is only in draft form, and is due to be picked over by a joint House of Commons/Lords committee. Between now and August, BECTU and related unions like the NUJ will be working hard to put commonsense regulation and control back into the Bill - after all, we don't want two tragi-comic acts dying on-stage in the same show.
Tony Lennon
June 2002
