United Kingdom
[GB] ITC assesses independent television
IRIS 1996-5:1/15
David Goldberg
deeJgee Research/Consultancy
The Independent Television Commission has just published its 1995 Performance Review of the ITV companies. This is an annual exercise. The report deals with three topics; the overall quality assessment of the ITV schedules; economic behaviour of the companies; and the performance of Channel 4. As regards the overall picture, the Commission finds that ITV has lost the balance between entertainment shows (in particular, as regards real-life and fictional crime programmes) and other genres, such as documentary and arts programmes. The Commission is concerned that the distinctive foundation of the network - the regionalisation of companies - was being jeapordised by mergers and co-production deals. Finally, Channel 4 was criticised for over-reliance on American imports and repeats.
References
This article has been published in IRIS Legal Observations of the European Audiovisual Observatory.