Back in the summer of 2008, the radio station I work for was then called Virgin Radio which in turn was owned by SMG plc. Once upon a time SMG was a media force to be reckoned with. It also owned the Glasgow Herald, the cinema advertising group Pearl & Dean, an outdoor advertising company called Primesight, and of course STV and Grampian – the ITV franchises in Scotland.
Then there was something of a boardroom coup in 2007. The Herald group had already been sold off, and there were disposals on the cards for other businesses, as the share price crashed, and there was a general retrenchment.
Virgin Radio was finally sold to the Times of India, and became Absolute Radio. And SMG, having got rid of nearly everything with the exception of Pearl & Dean (which it has been unable to sell for various reasons), renamed itself STV.
The new management was led by Rob Woodward, and he decided that STV needed a new focus which meant producing more local programming. This came at a time when the rest of ITV was doing the reverse, and no longer making local programmes and closing regional studios and production bases.
STV has traditionally done well in Scotland, but ITV has changed over the years. Where once upon a time it was a network of seperate groups who’d meet every so often and divvy up who would make what programmes for the network, it slowly merged into one large company, with just some smaller players like STV in Scotland and UTV in Northern Ireland remaining outside ITV plc. However everyone continued to play out broadly the same programmes across the entire network.
In recent months STV has changed. Rob Woodward says he’s trying to focus on more local programming. Ordinarily STV has to pay its share of production costs of any ITV network productions that it shows. But opting out of expensive dramas saves it money. Drama just happens to be the most expensive type of programming on television (possibly with the exception of something like X-Factor which is also expensive to produce).
In recent months this has meant that the most recent series of Lewis and Kingdom did not reached STV’s viewers’ screens. Seemingly these dramas – set in England – are of limited interest to Scottish viewers, despite garnering good ratings in earlier series. The fact that they’re very expensive to produce is neither here nor there seemingly.
Then, when ITV relaunched The Bill as a weekly 9pm drama a few weeks ago, STV dropped that series as well – after 25 years. ITV responded this time by scheduling a same-week repeat on ITV3, which is available free-to-air to all digitally enabled homes in Scotland.
Today Broadcast reported that nearly all of ITV’s Autumn drama schedule (excluding the soaps) will not be carried by STV. At the weekend, STV didn’t show the one-off drama Gunrush, starring Timothy Spall I’ve yet to watch but awaits me on my Sky+ and has been well-reviewed). Nor will STV be showing Doc Martin, The Fixer, Wuthering Heights, Agatha Christie’s Marple, Collision, Blue Murder or Midsomer Murders. These include some of ITV’s most popular and upmarket dramas.
The only major ITV dramas that STV is going to show will be Murderland which stars the very Scottish Robbie Coltrane and is produced by Touchpaper Scotland, and the Quentin Crisp follow-up, An Englishman in New York. Not airing the former would have been a real kick in the teeth to Scottish viewers!
Not living in Scotland, I’ve not seen the full scale of displeasure that may (or may not) have been raised at these decisions to date. Not showing The Bill was probably the first instance of a show going missing that people noticed (viewers may not realise that they’ve not seen new series of Lewis or Kingdom just yet). I’d be amazed if there wasn’t a bigger viewer reaction to this news too. There are plenty of very busy message boards though.
In today’s Broadcast piece, STV’s Broadcast Services and Regulatory Affairs Director, Bobby Hain, said that not showing these productions was not purely a financial decision. Yet it’s odd that STV seems to be mostly opting out of dramas and not much cheaper factual programming.
STV has been busily talking up some of its home-grown programming including a documentary on Susan Boyle, and the fact that they took live coverage of the Scottish Parliament reaching a verdict on the Lockerbie bomber who was returned to Libya. But will audiences really hold up?
Tomorrow, in place of The Bill, Scottish viewers will be treated to Scotland’s DNA Secrets (and it’s Scotland Goes To War next week). On Sunday and Monday, when ITV’s new version of Wuthering Heights starts, STV will be showing Sirens, a repeat of a 2002 crime drama made by STV. On Tuesday, when ITV begins the second series of The Fixer (from Kudos, producer of programmes like Life on Mars and Spooks), STV will be showing an episode of Fitz, the 12 year-old American Cracker remake which was cancelled after 16 episodes.
Incidentally, STV’s website is so poor that I couldn’t actually find out what was on TV beyond today’s programmes. I could see no facility for seeing future programmes. I had to use the Radio Times website to see future STV listings.
While on the one-hand, it’s admirable that STV still shows some locally produced documentaries when the rest of the ITV network has pretty much given up, it’s clear that this absolutely is a money saving device. It’s palpably nonsense to try and claim anything else. Other replacements include imported programming like South Park and repeats of films which were clearly acquired cheaply (although I do think Michael Grade’s recent tirade against STV misfired a little when he mentioned Gregory’s Girl as one of STV’s replacement films. Clearly that does hold a lot of Scottish resonance. Actually it holds a lot of resonance for viewers across the UK).
The bigger question for STV is whether or not the audience is maintained over the longer term.
Bobby Hain, again, on Radio 4’s Media Show (you can still listen) a few weeks ago was confident that they would. But the reality is that if STV can save its £60,000 contribution towards the £1m cost of an hour of Wuthering Heights, and show a seven year-old repeat at a fraction of the cost, then it can afford to lose some ratings and still come out ahead financially. But it does occupy the third spot on EPGs and peoples’ sets, and that kind of thinking is how channels like G.O.L.D. and Dave are programmed, and surely STV has a higher purpose than repeats channels like those. I wonder how Becoming Jane will fare on BBC1 on Sunday night in the Scottish region while the rest of the UK gets to watch a new Bronte adaptation?
Something very interesting has happened on digital television as a consequence of this stand-off. Sky Digital viewers usually have their local ITV service determined for them by virtue of their postcode. Unlike the BBC, other regional options are usually hidden in the EPG. You can find them if you manually add a channel but it’s difficult if not impossible to record shows from those channels, and they appear in a different part of the EPG. But recently ITV London appeared on 993 for non-London viewers. In other words, Scottish Sky viewers can watch these programmes with relative ease if they go looking in the outer reaches of their EPGs. And the same has happened with Virgin Media customers who can now find ITV London on channel 853, while Freesat viewers can get ITV London on channel 977. Watching ITV’s HD service might also get around the problem, although I’m unsure given the fact that it’s only reachable via the red button currently.
Who loses? Well Freeview and analogue viewers obviously. But also Scottish advertisers. If more people start watching ITV London, then local Scottish advertisers will receive fewer viewers than they might have hoped. That in turn hits STV’s finances.
But potentially all Scottish viewers of ITV and STV lose out. They’re going to need to stay alert to even know that programmes like Wuthering Heights are even being shown. I’d be fascinated to see next week’s Scottish edition of the Radio Times. The London edition has a big three page feature on that very programme with “(not STV)” alongside it. I suspect that feature sits in the Scottish edition too. Viewers will just have to wait for the DVD. If I was ITV, I’d actually simulcast that programme on ITV3 and look very carefully at the ratings for that channel in the Scottish regions.
Otherwise local versions of listings magazines and Scottish newspapers won’t mention them. So how would a viewer even know about ITV showing these new series? Perhaps via ITV2, ITV3 or ITV4?
The other danger is for the long-term futures of talented producers, writers, actors, directors and other staffers working on Scottish drama productions. Since Rebus was cancelled, STV has been left with Taggart, the long running detective drama as its sole ITV drama commission. And as far as I know, that’s not yet been recommissioned by ITV with un-aired episodes dropped into the schedule at seemingly random intervals, hardly helping the series maintain a decent audience following.
ITV might become reluctant to commission drama from STV if STV refuses to show any of its dramas in Scotland. So perversely STV viewers could actually end up with less Scottish-made drama as a consequence; frankly, STV is not going to be able to produce £1m an hour dramas without the support of the rest of the network.
[UPDATE]
STV announced its interim financial results this morning. They’ve reported a steep decline in profits, but unlike ITV, they’re still reporting a profit.
I found this part of Media Guardian’s report very interesting:
STV said that it remains in discussions with ITV over the future commission of Taggart, a hugely important revenue and profit driver for the division, and that the company “remained confident” about the future of the series. Analysts predict the cost to STV if Taggart is not recommissioned to be in the region of £3m.
Finally, in good journalistic measure, I should note that I do actually have some shares in STV as a result of working for them during their ownership of Virgin Radio. I’d completely forgotten about them! However since the value of my shares would leave me hard pressed to buy a round of drinks for my brother and sister in a Wetherspoon’s pub, I don’t think that my ownership of them makes me anything less than objective.