Examination of Witnesses
(Questions 100 - 105)
THURSDAY 22 OCTOBER 1998
MR LESLIE
HILL, MR
RICHARD EYRE
AND MS
KATE STROSS
100. If I could turn briefly to the letter which
I mentioned, your letter of 2nd September to all of us. We have
had a lot of talk today and in replies to Mr Wyatt, Ms Ward and
others you have talked a little bit about the type of programming
that you would see in place of News at Ten. We have just
been discussing in your previous answer the watershed at nine
o'clock. You mentioned more factual programmes, you mentioned
your 60 minute style current affairs programme, you mentioned
the return of regular top class sport, that is a popular subject,
and you mentioned more drama and comedy. How far are you down
the road of actually commissioning or looking at some of these
programmes? Can you tell us a bit more about exactly what we will
see? It is very important. We know peak time viewing is nine to
11, what will fill the post watershed to the 11 o'clock bulletin?
(Mr Eyre) Yes, I can. We have commissioned already
the current affairs 60 Minutes programme. That will be
made by Granada with ITN, for the first time ITN very significantly
being part of the production team. Their brief is to deliver exactly
that component that has made ITN news across the day so successful,
that ability to deal with difficult news subjects, make them accessible
to the man on the Clapham Omnibus, if you like. That programme
will contain a considerable amount of political interview, investigative
pieces and filmed reports as well some lighter material. That
is commissioned already. If we do not get permission from the
ITC then there will be found an alternative slot in the schedule.
We talked about the real life strand of documentaries. That has
been commissioned also, although individual components of that
strand remain uncommissioned. Our intention there is to challenge
a large number of news broadcasters, documentary makers, to get
into this subject and the particular nuances of the subject and
produce a rather interesting documentary series as we run into
the last few years of this century. We will remain with our commitment
to the investigative journalism such as that practised by John
Pilger, Roger Cook and other very serious documentary makers.
Over the course of this year already we have seen a lot more in
ITV's peak time of serious factual material where we have addressed
ourselves to serious issues and dealt with those in unusual ways.
For example, the documentary on the life of Stefan Kizko, featuring
Olympia Dukakis, which was a way of addressing in documentary
form a quite interesting and important story and which attracted
quite large audiences and I am sure will win a few gongs for us
as well. Across the piece there is a commitment to very high quality
programming through all the genres but in maintaining news, current
affairs and serious documentary at the front end of that.
101. Is it part of the ITC's remit in considering
your application to move the News at Ten what you are going
to put in its place or will they consider it purely on its merits?
(Mr Eyre) Yes, it is part of their remit. They will
be needing to satisfy themselves that we have a diversity of programmes.
(Mr Hill) They have occasionally criticised us for
not producing a diverse schedule. They have criticised some of
our sitcoms. This is meant to address some of those concerns.
This will enable us to produce a more diverse schedule. It will
enable us to do certain kinds of sitcoms at 10 o'clock which we
might not be able to do at other times. It does give us a flexibility
and an ability to meet our public service obligations in a total
sense in a better way.
102. Finally, Mr Eyre, you said on the 7th of
this month that the political perspective has got to be part of
the ITC decision but there seems to be a danger that politics
is going to dominate it. In the last couple of weeks do you think
that has got better or worse?
(Mr Eyre) I think it has been quite intense over the
course of the last couple of weeks. What I fear is that when they
come to look at this package of proposals the ITC will have to
deal with the additional question of whether they snub the Secretary
of State or whether they appear to be cowed by his involvement.
That is my only concern. As I said earlier in this meeting, I
do think that the ITC are robust and I do think that they have
a good track record in arriving at independent points of view.
Mrs Golding
103. Yes, following on from what Mr Faber was
saying, you put in your submission about more original and ITV
films and film length programmes at nine o'clock. Is not one of
your major problems that at ten o'clock either you have to interrupt
a film or you cannot in fact start showing the film until after
the ten o'clock news? I know it is a serious problem for me because
when I get home at the weekend him indoors is usually waiting
and saying: "I have had my film interrupted again while you
MPs were having jollifications at ten o'clock in the lobby. I
had my film interrupted". He is not watching the news, he
is sitting there seething, thinking that he cannot have the film
running through. It is a difficult problem.
(Mr Hill) It is a very serious problem for us and
it raises an awful lot of complaints. Let me say, first of all,
lest anyone should think this is just about showing hundreds of
American films, it is not. There probably would be a dozen or
so American films or big films acquired in 250 week days of the
year. The film part of this is about five per cent. There will
be two hour dramas, of course, which have been referred to before,
so it is not just films, it is home made drama as well. If I could
emphasise that nearly all of the programmes in this nine to 11
slot would be original made programmes made here by our own programme
makers. Coming back to the main point, the fact is that we get
a huge number of complaints about this issue. We had a film on
13 October and over 11 million people watched it for the first
hour, only 7.4 million stayed through News at Ten. It is
true to say another million came back after the 40 minute gap
but again you see the extent to which we lost audience.
104. Yes.
(Mr Hill) Interestingly enough, the television stations
get more complaints about that than they do about the sex and
violent content of films which we edit anyway, as I say. It is
a serious problem.
105. Could I ask how much influence do you think
your proposals to have 60 second live headline bulletins within
the period will have on your viewing audience at 11 o'clock if
you decide to put the news on then? What effect does it already
have and do you think it would help hold the audience after 11
o'clock?
(Mr Eyre) Yes, I do. It has two roles. These things
could be longer than 60 seconds where appropriate. Where there
is a major developing story, as I have said in 24 times this year
we have gone to that major developing story regardless of what
was our scheduled programme but it does have the benefit for us
that it can give a few snippets of headlines which will lead the
viewer to the whole news bulletin at 11 o'clock. I hope it does
have that benefit, yes.
(Mr Hill) Just to emphasise the point
you made, it is very interesting that Channel 5 gets a very substantial
proportion of its audience between nine and 11 when it can show
a film for two hours uninterrupted. As I said before, one of the
problems that we have is because of these fixed points in the
schedule we cannot react as a competitor would to what its competitors
are doing. That is one of the reasons why we have suffered a bigger
loss of audience over the last three or four years, we have lost
more audience than the other channels, mainly because we do not
have the flexibility that the others have and this is what we
are trying to change.
Mrs Golding: I would like to say that
I would prefer to have an 11 o'clock news programme because you
have sat through the film and you can catch up to date before
you go to bed, but I am just one person.
Chairman: Gentlemen, thank you very much
indeed for coming.
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