What will Crozier and Norman do to ITV?

ITV plc must hope that the new Top Team will bring a return to profitability

^{Brian Butterworth published on UK Free TV 1st February 2010 at 07:20}

Here's some ideas about what will happen to ITV with the new Chairman Archie Norman and Chief Executive Adam Crozier.

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Cut costs by dumping the "legacy of regionalisation"

Firstly, ITV spends a massive amount of money supporting the legacy of regional stations. The new bosses should collapse the ITV channels into single national channels and dump the regional news programmes and all the costs they bring. This could save £150m a year as running a single national ITV1 would simplify terrestrial arrangements and free up satellite capacity for HD services. This would also provide an extra half hour of peak each night.

Dump the news

News is expensive and no-one tunes to ITV for it anymore, removing it from the schedule would free up an hour of peak time each night. This would save £50m each year.

Sort out the branding

What is ITV1 for? Change the name for ITV1 to something more ... modern. What does ITV1 do well? Firstly, there are the soaps, then there are the family talent shows, quizes and finally there is drama.

So, make that the only content on ITV1 and expand the amount of it.

Use the non-peak time to show the peak time content as narrative repeats.

Split broadcast and then sell production

Merging Carlton and Granada was a bad idea, in so much as Carlton was a publisher-broadcaster and Granada was a production house.

Sell the production house to the market, retain the brands in ITV Broadcast which could then focus on the advertisers needs.

A renamed ITV Productions could then make programmes for the BBC and Sky.

Change ITV2 to ITV Movies

ITV2 gets big viewing figures for movies. Dump all the unwatched stuff on the channel and just show classic Films. Outsource the channel operation.

Change ITV3 to ITV Gold

ITV3 is clearly "ITV Gold", change the name, outsource.

Change ITV4 to "ITV Dave"

ITV4 is aimed at the "Dave" audience, but the branding (and bitrate) is awful. Rebrand the channel and outsource.

Close CITV

It serve no purpose, close it. Use the space for a +1 channel.