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ANALYSIS
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May 2004
COMMERCIAL TELEVISION MANAGERS are more keen to cut costs than preserve the skills and experience necessary to protect the longer-term interests of the newly-merged company’s shareholders; that was the feeling of nearly 30 representatives of unions within the network when they gathered at Yorkshire Television in Leeds within the last few days.
Time after time shop stewards from Bectu branches and NUJ chapels at outposts in the newly-consolidated ITV plc said they felt that the company was ditching hard-won craft and professional skills because they cost too much.
Most immediately hit have been staff at Central in the Midlands where 186 jobs are due to be lost in Nottingham and 175 will be cut in Birmingham.
In the East Midlands, staff have arranged a 'fun day' on Saturday May 22 in Nottingham city centre to bring their plight – and threats to the quality of the regional news service – to the attention of viewers, local advertisers, politicians and businesses.
Ironically, in the short-term at least, Leeds is one of the few centres seeing jobs being created – as managers transfer transmission control for the Central region from Birmingham and Nottingham northwards.
But the 'shrinkage' probably will not stop there. In the south and Midlands, managers are striving to build news 'hubs' retreating to the situation that existed 30 years ago where a region’s main news magazine programme had short 'opts' for some transmitters.
Service quality is threatened too: the 'real time' transfer of video footage for erver-based editing and play-in has meant that the deadlines for some 6pm programmes are now earlier than when film had to be processed a quarter of a century ago.
Short-termism within ITV plc is emphasising the need to cut expensive – in another word, experienced – staff, so the skills that have underpinned high production values may be lost, possibly forever.
Making matters potentially worse for viewers, Ofcom – unlike its IBA and ITC predecessors – has no technical quality standards or monitoring. Now, it’s up to viewers to complain if there is too little lighting or the pictures wobble too much.
Ofcom Contact Centre, Riverside House, 2a Southwark Bridge Road, London SE1 9HA
Written for Leeds News, the newsletter of the Leeds branch of the National Union of Journalists4.
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