sort of thing and are trusted. i think it s terribly important we continue to do it, so we will. let me ask you about that decision, you extended the news 6:30 to 7:30, and coronation street moved to episodes monday and friday, emmerdale up against eastenders, big decisions for you and itv to take. how do you take them? are you doing that on guts, or after months and months of data analysis? the data analysis follows the gut decision. does it? a bit. i just thought there was a lot of programming in between soaps that was good, some of it good, some of it not as good, but it tended to disappear after a while. the budgets were getting squeezed and ijust thought, i think it would be cleaner if the news ran longer. and the big decision,
in the evening, or do you block out time in the day and say, it is tv time? mainly in the evening. my poor, long suffering wife will attest to this, i have a way of watching which can be infuriating of fast forwarding quite often. but you have to keep abreast of, you obviously have to be on top of everything that you re making and is going out on your own stations. but you have to keep abreast of other things, and then there is what you watch for pure enjoyment that might be on a streaming service or something like that. yeah, i watch a lot of television. you mentioned streaming. itv has a two pronged strategy announced in the last 12 months, one is to double the amount of scripted tv, dramas mainly, and the second part is to launch a new streaming platform, itvx, and that has been released into the wild in the last few weeks. help me understand the decision to make itvx. was it partly driven by the fact that itv hub s reputation was not
comedies and hopefully attract an audience that perhaps would not first off go to itv. i m reading a quote on itvx saying it will tackle subjects that they would normally be nervous about on the main channels. what would you put on itvx that you would normally not put on itv? certain genres in drama, you may have darker stories, i don t know, horror, sci fi. itv doesn t do these. it is a mainstream broadcaster based on advertising revenue, and you need volume, and you need massive reach. and you want to reach as many people as you possibly can all the time, and that limits to a certain degree what you can do. there are wonderful programmes that are very niche and would never get 5 million viewers let alone ten. one thing that itvx can do is contribute to a widening
as 0fcom is suggesting it should? well, they could give us some of the licence fee. would you like that? oh, well, i don t know. it s very difficult to please everyone all the time. but i m interested, that was a throwaway remark, but it seems to me it wasn t entirely injest, because i m sure you know the culture secretary this week said that the licence fee is not a long term, sustainable model, so is itv interested in a different type of licence fee, which is notjust given to the bbc? honestly, that s a job for the bbc to worry about. what is without doubt is that the bbc is incredibly important, vital to the broadcasting ecology, and a strong bbc is good for the country and good for other broadcasters. you know, healthy competition between us is a good thing, and i want the bbc to thrive, just as itv does. you want it to thrive, but do you think it can and it should thrive with its current funding model? i don t know. i m sure there are legions of people in this building thinking ab
on the sofa with your wife, watching tv of an evening, just messaging different itv presenters on air. is there anyone else you re messaging? robert peston, while he s doing his show? i have texted robert. but, yeah, no, there is a close relationship, but also, there is a commissioning team, there are the producers, everyone is kind of united in getting the best out of whatever the show is at the time. we have inevitably, and rightly, talked about itv a lot. i want to ask you quickly about the place where you started your media career, the bbc, because in the last few days, 0fcom have said some audiences are persistently underserved by the bbc, and it s particularly the case for those in lower socioeconomic groups, who are less likely than other audience groups to use bbc services. you will be aware itv does a very good job of being popular among those people, those groups described by 0fcom. what advice would you offer the bbc to reach everyone better,