The case of the vanishing viewer
Milton Shulman watches the decline in ITV viewership since the 1968 contract changes
Panic is clearly in the air. After only three months of operation the new look in commercial TV is being relentlessly driven back to the old look.
Harassed by newspaper reports, falling ratings, impatient advertising agencies, bewildered manufacturers, the independent companies have the frightened glazed look of a fox being surrounded by ravenous hounds.
Having assumed for so many years that they had the magic formula for popular appeal, that they alone could unerringly supply what the public wanted, they are now faced with the fact that Auntie BBC has acquired a mini-skirt and a come-on leer, and can dish out friviality, [sic] vulgarity and triviality as expertly as their show biz rivals.
Catastrophic situation
The statistics for October viewing make very depressing reading for executives on Channel 9. According to JICTAR, which has replaced TAM as the source of TV ratings, the BBC acquired 53% of the total audience last month against the ITV’s 47%.
The BBC’s own statistics, which have always marginally differed from those of TAM and JICTAR, claim that in October the BBC had 60% of the viewers against ITV’s 40%.
Accompanying this decline has been the words of woe tumbling out of the mouth of advertising agency executive – “A catastrophic situation,” said one. “The present state of things cannot continue beyond two or three months,” said another.
If these signs of discontent are designed to get the programme companies to change their schedules, put out different programmes, revise the quality of their product, then one must ask in which direction they want the companies to go and ought they to have the power to force the companies to comply.
Already it is quite clear that no one has interpreted the dissatisfaction of the advertisers as a call for better quality programmes, more serious drama, more committed or involved or responsible programmes
Such news as has been forthcoming about the company reactions to their falling ratings indicates that a return to worse, less demanding, more familiar and more orthodox entertainment programmes is now being planned for the New Year.
Classic examples
We are promised a return of variety along the lines of the Palladium Show. Back in the London area Thames TV will bring back Crossroads and Peyton Place – both classic examples of what TV can do worst.
Crossroads, the epitome of serial drivel and a perfect example of chewing-gum for the eyes, is coming back, we are told, partly because of heavy viewer demand.
The actual number of letters received by Thames TV when Crossroads went off the air inquiring or requesting its return were 480 in August, 75 in September and only 34 in October.
Whatever these figures show, they hardly indicate that some millions of viewers should be condemned to this kind of TV junk for months, and perhaps years, because of the demands of a few hundred viewers.
Judging by the decline in letters received, it seems even these viewers have now settled down to the loss of one of their favourite shows without any undue repercussions on their emotional well-being.
More comedy
Even London Weekend, which was one of the few companies making slight genuflections towards the goal of more mature viewing, has assured us that more new comedy shows are on the way to cheer up their audiences and, presumably, their advertisers.
But when we speak of Channel 9 returning to more popular shows, we have to ask ourselves what are they really returning from? Why only popular shows!
The truth is that hardly anything much has changed, in terms of peak-time viewing, over the whole ITV network since the new companies have taken over.
The basic reliance on serials like Coronation Street, variety shows like Opportunity Knocks, comedy shows like George and the Dragon and hours of old films has barely been questioned.
Can anyone have watched London Weekend’s fare on Saturday and Sunday and truly say they were in anyway affronted by anything remotely highbrow or unpopular or adult during its peak-time hours?
Yet, in spite of all that is being done to provide more and more popular programmes, the BBC still seems to be clobbering ITV mercilessly in every region but Lancashire.
In the London area the BBC shows that have reached the top spots — seven out of 10 — have nearly all done so against opposition that was once considered impregnably popular.
Marked change
What, then could possibly have happened? If the ITV is producing much the same diet before against the BBC’s very similar menu, why has the taste of the public shown such a marked change in a matter of a few weeks?
Could it possibly have something to do with the manner in which the taste of viewers is measured? Is there any likelihood that some of the mystery may reside in the way in which ratings are now acquired compared to what had taken place previously?
The fact is that when the new companies came on the air so did a fresh audience measurement system. TAM, the previous company gave way to AGB and JICTAR.
Although the methods of gathering the ratings are much the same – electronic meters attached to a sample of sets which record the programmes switched on – the actual people having the sets have been changed. In other words, there are now in the London area 350 different homes equipped with these special sets: 350 other homes had them when TAM was in business.
Although the method of selection of these homes, designed to represent a cross-section of the London audience is the same, could it be that with such a small sample changes of three or four per cent in the sample taste could account for the statistical switch of hundreds of thousands of viewers?
Accurate reflection
Could it be that the fresh group of viewers now being asked for their preferences is a more accurate reflection of the nation’s taste than the old sample that had been used by TAM?
Is it possible that commercial TV never had the long lead over BBC that they had claimed over the past number of years, and that nothing has really changed with the advent of the new companies but a different standard of measurement?
And on such uncertain statistical evidence is it right that the standard of TV programmes should be pushed even lower than they now are?
