Interesting news from ITV. They’ve cancelled all their premium rate phonelines until a few review by Deloitte has been conducted. This affects all their channels and in effect suspends ITV Play until the review is complete. ITV is “in conversation” with GMTV, who love their terribly hard competitions. What does this mean for Cheggers’ future?
Seemingly there have been more issues with programming following recent issues with Richard & Judy on C4, and Saturday Kitchen on BBC1. Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway may have been getting people to call in after a winner had already been chosen.
The most impacted show is Dancing on Ice, the format of which requires viewers to phone or text to vote. Of course, they could use a free web voting system, which also lets many viewers “interact”, but there’s no revenue in that!
“Millions of people enjoy interacting with ITV – either by voting in our entertainment shows or by taking part in prize competitions.”
I can’t think of anything more enjoyable than being charged the better part of a pound to nominate some “celebrity” from the ordeal of having to be tutored by Torvill and Dean every week.
Still, ITV’s going to have to find some programming to run in the small hours where ITV Play was normally simulcast with ITV1. Maybe they’ll run some of that kids TV that they’ve stopped showing altogether this year (aside from at weekends), despite being required to show eight hours of programming a week. Although this can be averaged out over the year, the way things are going, they’re going to have to run wall to wall kids programming all summer.