ITV has hit back at moves by the Incorporated Society of British
Advertisers to overhaul the TV airtime trading system, claiming the plan
would force ITV to squeeze its commercial rivals rather than attack the
BBC.
In a memo leaked to Campaign last week, it emerged that ISBA was
proposing a new system of TV trading based on channels’ audience
delivery rather than the traditional station average price
mechanism.
Now ITV sales houses have launched their own salvo against the plans,
insisting that the result of trying to impose such a trading base would
be to increase competition among the commercial channels, rather than
freeing ITV to fight the BBC in an attempt to increase the total
commercial audience.
Mick Desmond, the chief executive of Granada Media Sales, said: ’This
time last year, ISBA was lobbying ITV to be more aggressive against the
BBC. It’s ironic now that these new proposals almost encourage ITV to
run its guns away from the BBC and back on to Channel 4, Channel 5 and
satellite TV to ensure we increase our share of commercial impacts.’
Steve Platt, the managing director of Carlton UK Sales, also took issue
with the ISBA stance. ’It’s appalling that ISBA is telling its members
not to pay extra for something of superior quality. People spend money
with us because ITV works. We don’t force them. Clearly ISBA needed a
cause this autumn and this is all it could come up with.’
Platt said that advertisers should be encouraged to focus their
attention on moves to increase the commercial audience, for example, by
supporting ITV’s attempts to move News at Ten.
However, a number of senior clients are understood to have thrown their
weight behind ISBA moves to overhaul trading and are discussing it with
their agencies.
ISBA had already warned members of its TV Action Group that the idea
would be unpopular with broadcasters ’who have benefited from demanding
fixed shares of TV expenditure in return for variable (often falling)
shares of audience delivery’.
Media Forum, p18.
