A new report from Mediatique highlights important role played by ITV in the nations and regions

[To read Mediatique's full report, 'ITV in the Nations and Regions: Storied past, dynamic present, challenges ahead', please click Download Press Pack]

Report from industry analysts highlights scale of ITV’s nations and regions commitment, and warns out of London TV production in the UK will suffer without urgent decisions from government on PSB reform

A new report from industry analysts, Mediatique, today highlights the important role played by ITV in the nations and regions, but also the risk that globalising trends in TV production and distribution pose to the national TV ecology. Without decisive intervention the future of UK produced, original content made at scale outside of London and the South East, reflecting life in the UK, will be in jeopardy, their report says.

Mediatique highlight that the “PSBs have delivered benefits -- economic, cultural and democratic -- to the UK’s nations and regions that could not have been delivered by the market alone”.   The report reveals that:

·      In 2019, ITV’s financial impact (GVA) in nations and regions totalled £538m (£643m including our spend with regional independent producers too)

·      For every £1 spent directly on ITV’s own staff, another £4.85 was generated elsewhere in the economy

·      Around 43% of ITV’s employees (‘full time equivalent’) are based in 34 centres outside the M25.

·      ITV employs 2,116 people outside London and its activities directly and indirectly support a further 2,553 full-time equivalent jobs and thousands of high skill freelance engagements;

·      ITV broadcast 3,438 hours of new network programmes on ITV main channel in 2019 of which 48% (1,663) were made out of London.   In addition, 3,436 hours of nations and regions news was also broadcast on ITV main channel in 2019.

However, Mediatique highlight in their report the need for a package of measures to sustain TV production outside London concluding that: “Without a rejuvenated PSB compact for ITV and other commercial PSBs the risk is that there would in future be:

• Worse outcomes for UK viewers:  less UK focussed content, less choice, less on-screen portrayal of the whole UK, the demise of plurality in nations and regions news
• Worse outcomes for the UK’s nations and regions:  less TV production and less economic activity outside London
• A shift in expenditure away from regional independent producers.

The economic role played by ITV in the nations and regions is a critical one: it generates jobs and tax across the UK with a financial impact well beyond its direct investments as well as contributing to skills development, enabling talent to progress and flourish.   ITV is an anchor for the creative industries outside London and the South East of England.

ITV invests in a range of TV content, making programmes across the UK for UK viewers that sell internationally.  By contrast, Mediatique find that global content players, such as Netflix, Amazon or Apple, are making high quality content but for the whole world not just the UK and in a much narrower range of genres (principally drama and comedy) than the UK PSBs. Furthermore, as Mediatique conclude, the investment by these global players in physical production hubs is concentrated in London and the SE of England.

Mediatique’s report finds that ITV’s commitment to the nations and regions of the UK is a “battle against market forces pulling in the opposite direction” with data from Nesta showing employment in film and TV increasingly concentrating in London since 1991.

At the same time, key elements that support PSB delivery and investment across the UK are threatened as TV and advertising markets globalise and as large global online gatekeeper platforms increasingly seek to control TV distribution. Furthermore, the proposed ban on HFSS food and drink advertising pre-9pm will have a particularly adverse effect on national commercial PSBs.

At stake, conclude Mediatique, is the visibility and viability of UK PSB content (which Ofcom research shows continues to be popular and perceived by audiences as important).  Ultimately they warn that:

“There is a very real prospect in the next few years of value being extracted from the UK creative industries, particularly the PSB system, and shifted abroad - specifically to providers and platforms based in the US.”

“The new global players in TV production and distribution, valuable though they are to the UK, will not replace the public benefit delivered by ITV (or the other PSBs) particularly in the Nations and Regions of the UK”.

Urgent decisions are therefore needed to secure the enduring value of Public Service Media and there are a few key areas where Ofcom and government need to act to secure and future-proof the PSM system for the long-term, above all:

·        A new settlement between PSM providers and platforms to secure prominence, inclusion and fair value from the platforms that distribute content (both broadcast and online) from the PSMs.

o    Effective guarantee of prominence: delivering Ofcom’s ‘top of list’ linear principles online.

o   Right of inclusion: securing access to those platforms to which prominence rules apply

o   Fair value for PSM content. Prominence isn’t enough on its own if global platforms can use their financial muscle to squeeze the value out of PSM investments. Regulation must guarantee us the opportunity to negotiate deals that fairly reflect the value of our risky investment in UK content to UK audiences.

·        A more flexible regulatory regime for PSM to reflect rapid changes in technology, the market and viewer behaviour: for instance enabling delivery of obligations across different channels and online, assessing delivery of obligations over periods longer than a year and minimising any unnecessary rigidity in the system of quotas.

·        Sensible regulatory changes to offer modest enhancement to PSM economics

·        Pulling back from even more regulatory restrictions on advertising, for instance the proposed pre-9pm ban on HFSS food and drink advertising on TV.

NOTES TO EDITORS: DETAILED FINDINGS

Financial impact

According to Mediatique, ITV generated £538m of value (GVA) in the nations and regions in 2019 (£643m including our spend with regional independent producers too).  This includes direct spend on TV content of well over £300m outside London each year.

For every £1 of direct payroll expenditure, £4.85 of additional value was generated through the supply chain and indirectly in the local economy. For every £1 of payroll and supply chain expenditure taken together, another 78p was generated.

ITV’s nations and regions broadcast footprint also makes possible expenditure of c£350m of regional advertising, very likely to generate incremental economic growth in local markets.

Employment around the country

Our regional structure means that nearly half of our ITV’s employees are based outside of London. We have bases around the country, particularly in the North, where we have significant bases in Leeds and MediaCity.

Office locations include:

Norwich, Salford, Leeds, Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Jersey, Gateshead, Whiteley, Cardiff, Carlisle, Maidstone, Nottingham, Selkirk, Cambridge, Liverpool, Brighton, Didcot, Derry, Colwyn Bay, Hull, Sheffield, Exeter, Plymouth, Truro, Lincoln, Glasgow, Manchester

ITV had 2,116 full-time equivalent employees outside London in 2019 (around 43% of ITV’s total group employees), and supported thousands of freelance jobs.

In addition to this, ITV’s activities directly and indirectly support a further 2,553 full-time equivalent jobs.  ITV also creates huge demand for high wage and high skill freelancers - around 3,600 freelance contracts were entered into in 2019 to cover Coronation Street, Emmerdale and nations and regions news alone.

ITV nations and regions news

ITV’s regional news programmes are crucial to ITV and our viewers are at the heart of our programmes. ITV increased its regional news service in 2014 and now provides 18 regional and sub-regional services covering the whole UK and the Channel Islands, except for those covered by STV in Scotland.

ITV spends tens of millions of pounds each year on nations and regions news.  Altogether, there are 645 FTE employees working across ITV nations and regions news’ 11 production centres and 20 news bureaux out of London.   ITV nations and regions news broadcast 3,436 hours of news content in 2019.

Programming output

ITV makes programmes around the country, telling stories about the country and the people in it, showing off great towns, cities, villages and countryside which everyone will recognise.

Our programming output reflects the whole of the UK, with 1,663 of 3,438 hours original hours on ITV main channel made out of London, not including nations and regions news.

ITV Studios and associated ITV controlled TV production labels made nearly 1,500 hours of programming for an ITV channel that either qualified as Out of London or had at least a partial element of regional spend. The value of the out of London programming made for ITV alone was £211m in total.

Viewers

ITV continues to serve audiences across the UK, with an average national weekly reach of 63% for ITV main channel, and 70% for the entire ITV portfolio of channels. ITV performs particularly well outside of London and the South East.

Impact is especially strong in the North. The North East, UTV and Border nations/regions see particularly high weekly reach; at almost 80% weekly reach in the North East. When looking at share of viewing, all of the most northern areas over-index against the national channel average for both ITV main channel, and for the totality of ITV’s channels. Comparatively, the BBC’s channels and Channel 4 over-index predominantly in southern regions.  

Tourism

ITV also has an impact, though difficult to quantify, on regional tourism and local pride, through shows such as Doc Martin and tourist attractions like The Emmerdale Village tour.

For example, Doc Martin, set in Cornwall, has been running for 10 series since 2004 and in early 2019, Cornwall Tourism presented the production team with a special reward for its “outstanding contribution to tourism”. Research by Cornwall Tourism found that 10% of visitors cited Doc Martin as an influence, not only in the UK but internationally. The production team has separately contributed over £130k to the village fund for use on local projects.

Similar effects were felt on the Jurassic Coast in Dorset in 2013 following the successful launch of Broadchurch. A study at the time found that 77% of local businesses reported an increase in customer numbers (with 70% of local businesses seeing increased turnover) in 2013 post-broadcast. Additionally, ITV drama Vera was awarded the Judges Award in the 2019 RTS North East Awards in recognition of its outstanding contribution in increasing tourism to the region since it started in 2010.