Grade defends ITV's performance

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The ITV executive chairman, Michael Grade, hit back at his detractors today and defended his flagship channel ITV1's new schedule.

Grade, who is under pressure after ITV's profits fell 35% year on year and with the company's share price faltering, said ITV's programmes should be judged over the whole year.

Recent additions to the schedule such as The Palace and Moving Wallpaper have failed to deliver high ratings, while the relaunched News at Ten has consistently trailed BBC1 rival the 10 O'Clock News.

"Take a view of the performance of ITV at the end of the year," Grade told reporters at a press conference in central London today.

"To sit here and pick one time period on one night and characterise the performance of the schedule on the basis of the delivery of one or two shows is not the game we're in at all."

He said that ITV's audience share when measured across all its channels - including digital services such as ITV2 - had gone up in 2007, for the first time since the early 1990s, and was up again at the start of 2008.

"As we have seen in the full numbers, we are enjoying our best start to a year that anyone can remember - but not all shows have worked," Grade added.

"BBC1 had a new show the other night with 2.3 million viewers - do you say BBC1's schedule is falling apart? No, it's very hard to launch new shows today.

"Is ITV looking more different today than it has for many years? You bet it is … Is the creative community responding and wanting to work for us? You bet they do. For many years we were the last shop in town for anybody wanting to work for us."

Grade also defended the record of the outgoing ITV director of television, Simon Shaps, who was present alongside other top executives at today's briefing.

ITV announced last week that Shaps is to be replaced by former BBC1 controller Peter Fincham in the spring.

"Look at the ink our shows are generating today," Grade said. "The schedule Simon [Shaps] inherited was tired, predictable and we were down to a hardcore solid base of support for ITV. We have come a hell of a long way in the last couple of years, particularly in the last year.

"I have never known a time in ITV's history - and I've been following it quite closely since 1955 - when the schedule looked as fresh and reinvigorated as it does, night after night.

"You may not like some of the shows, some will catch on and some will not - that's the nature of the game. But people are talking about the ITV schedule. It's an unbelievable change."

ITV is hoping that the next wave of new shows - not least Shed Media drama Rock Rivals, which launches tonight - will deliver bigger audiences than the programmes that debuted over the past two months on ITV1.
Shares in ITV were up 1.7% today to 67.6p at 3.21pm, having closed at a record low of 65.4p on Monday night.



Source: guardian