Topic: TV
Can things get worse than this?
Switch on ITV anytime after midnight, the chances are you’ll be presented with the gurning features of one time Big Brother winner and ex-SMTV Live host (but with the disadvantage of not being Ant and Dec), Brian Dowling, who more and more seems to be taking on the physical appearance of Liberace (except without the piano). For this is The Mint, part of a collection of programming that make up ITV Play, ITV’s fifth channel and simulcast on the other ITV channels when they seemingly have nothing better to show. And in this day and age that appears to becoming more and more, the norm
The strategy behind the Mint and the rest of ITV Play’s output, would appear to be a way of maximising revenue in a commercial industry, where ITV can no longer rely on their main source of income, i.e. advertising revenue, as year on year the amount advertisers are willing to spend for the honour of promoting their products on the nations biggest commercial channel, continues to fall.
So Instead ITV have opted to rely on getting the nation’s insomniacs to phone in and answer seemingly obvious questions for cash prizes. For every person that calls, that’s another 60p going towards dross such as Love Island (even ITV realised they were infringing on the Trade Descriptions Act, and so dropped the word ‘Celebrity’ from the title). And it’s not as if everyone who calls gets to go on the programme. More often than not the caller is greeted by a recorded message that they haven’t been lucky enough to be selected this time, but keep trying folks! While, all the time, Liberace’s insisting people keep calling in, because there’s no one on the line.
And if that wasn’t enough excitement for you, ITV’s Play daytime schedule is then made up of interactive quiz shows based on popular ITV1 programmes. So we get such delights as the snappily titled Rovers Return Quiz Night (regretfully lacking in Betty’s Hot Pot), and This Morning’s Puzzle Book.
Of course, blame for such interactive twaddle should also fall at Channel 4’s door, who beat ITV by several months in launching the Quiz Call channel on Freeview. But even they, so shamed that they were sneakily opted to disassociate themselves from it as quickly as possible, dropping any promotion to it from their other channels within days.
And it’s not just ITV and Channel 4 either. Sky Digital’s absolutely awash with them, so much so that it this day and age you’d probably struggle to find anything late at night that could classed as either titillating or pornographic, as all the channels are filling their airspace with inane interactive quiz shows with a cash prize.
Meanwhile, ITV faced with further drops in advertising revenue, and an ever dwindling share price, find themselves turning to the likes of The Mint, in a bid to just make some money, out of the cretins who actually bother to call these programmes up with, what 99% of the time, just happens to be the wrong answers, until such persons are shocked to find that they’ve gone and blown the house keeping money yet again. Still, makes a change from losing it all down the Bookies.
Cuts in ITV’s drama department will result in less spending on one off shows, and a greater focus on long running drama serials. Great, that’ll mean even more episodes of Where The Heart Is and Heartbeat then. And, oh look, ITV then go and have a bit of a victory dance because they’ve just churned out another one of their Emmerdale hour long specials as an excuse to kill off yet more characters in a slight variation on how they did it last time, meaning Eastenders end up with their lowest ever ratings of 3.2m, because ITV have split BBC One’s audience. Of course Emmerdale, like the majority of the other big hitters on the main channels, have found their ratings in decline for years anyway, currently averaging around 5m when once they’d have been assured a solid 13m.
ITV have also taken steps in dismantling the Children’s production department, despite the launch of the CITV Channel earlier this year. Children’s programming on the main ITV1 has now been cut to a single hour a day (discounting GMTV children’s output), in order to make way for another repeat run of The Darling Buds of May (and praise the ITV Controller, for that).
No longer will they seemingly be able to create such greats as they once did, such as Danger Mouse, Dramarama, Kinghtmare, that computer games magazine show that wasn’t Games Master but was still actually quite good, and Fun House with the mulleted Pat Sharpe and those two dippy twins (okay, maybe not Fun House).
Similarly, ITV have also quietly got rid of their Saturday morning kids magazine shows, thus bringing to an end a long line of (variable) quality children’s entertainment. From Tiswas (admittedly, I think we were more Swap Shop in our house), to Get Fresh (Gaz Top, mullet), to No 73 (Sandy Toksvig, Neil Buchannan, and some bloke who’s name escapes me but definitely had a big mullet), Ghost Train (Nobby the Sheep, and Gerrard, mullet – was this written into the ITV contract in the 1980s? Did they have a sponsorship deal going on with the society for bad hairstyles??), and the aforementioned SMTV Live (Ant and Dec, no mullet, but Brian Dowling, Liberace). And instead, they’ve poached Anthony Worrell Thompson from his Saturday morning cookery show on BBC One, so he can host ITV’s new Saturday morning cookery show on ITV1. Oh well, it’s good to see that originality is still live and kicking.
Oh, and as good as it is to see The Rockford Files back on Saturday afternoons, who at ITV had the bright idea of screening episodes on ITV1, with a start time set to coincide with the final five minutes of another episode of The Rockford Files going out on BBC Two?
And even better than that, as good a film as The Bourne Identity is, was it really necessary to show it twice, back to back, as happened on ITV2 on Sunday July 9th?
So, can things get worse than this?
No actually, I don’t think they can.
