ITV Must Improve, Says Grade

ITV has posted a drop in its full-year profits, but new chief Michael Grade maintains that the strategy of the popular commercial broadcaster is on track.
Commenting on the results Michael Grade, Executive Chairman, ITV said: "Our overall strategy is right, but we need to improve our allocation of resources in order to accelerate the rate of improvement across all our businesses.
"ITV is a hugely popular brand with the UK’s largest family of commercial channels, driven by quality programmes from the biggest and most successful commercial production business in the UK. This in turn enables us to extend our value chain with online distribution. These unique strengths in brand, content and distribution are cause for considerable optimism in our ability to deliver real value for our viewers, advertisers and shareholders."
ITV claimed a "solid revenue performance, despite soft advertising market and lower ITV1 revenues."
Revenue improved slightly reaching £2.2 billion on the year.
However, pre-tax profit was down 19% at £364 million.
Mr Grade said: "My immediate priorities are developing the strength of our programming and new media businesses, and working to reduce overly onerous regulatory constraints.
"On the programming side we must raise our creative ambition. We must be more innovative and take more risks. We must be more relevant and we must be ahead of audience tastes. In particular we must regain our pre-eminence in drama series on ITV1 at 9.00 pm. I am definitely encouraged by what I have heard and seen so far from the new commissioning team headed by Simon Shaps. They have already started to cull some of the older programmes which were past their sell by date, and we are introducing a range of new programmes in 2007.
"I am now working with them on the plans that are being formulated for 2008 and beyond."
The company is currently embroiled in a debacle over premium rate phone-in competitions and all such operations have been suspended pending an investigation.
ITV has also been involved in a battle between BSkyB and Virgin Media, which resulted in BSkyB taking a 17.9% share in the company.
The matter is currently the subject to an ongoing Ofcom investigation.
(SP)