Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} One by Nigel Pickard One by Nigel Pickard. Nigel Pickard, currently the BBC's controller of children's programmes, will replace David Liddiment as ITV director of programmes. His new position is a vital one at the ITV network, which is currently undergoing a crippling advertising slump and has also seen ratings fall. He will be in charge of spending �825m on programmes in 2003 - an increase of �50m since 2001. His surprise appointment comes as the two main ITV broadcasters, Granada and Carlton, forge ahead with plans to create a stronger, single ITV company. Mr Pickard has spent most of his career making children's shows for commercial companies, and there may be concerns that his lack of experience in drama could cause a problem. His BBC stint also saw him axe BBC One's Saturday morning show Live and Kicking, which was comprehensively outperformed by ITV's SM:tv - a show he commissioned while at the commercial network. Mr Pickard was head of children's and youth programmes at ITV from 1998, and steered its children's output to the dominant position in the ratings for the first time in 13 years. Mr Pickard said his new appointment came at an "extremely exciting" time for ITV and offered enormous opportunities for the future. "I look forward to taking up the challenge of maintaining ITV's unique position in the UK market and to developing the strength of its channel portfolio." Mick Desmond, joint managing director of ITV, hailed the move as a "great appointment" for ITV. "He has a wealth of experience in commercial broadcasting plus a successful track record in both children's and multi-channel television, two of the most competitive areas of the business," he said. David Liddiment, who has been a fierce critic of the BBC, leaves ITV at the end of 2002. ITV bosses will hope news of his replacement will reassure advertisers that the channel can fight back in the ratings battle. One by Nigel Pickard. If you want to get to the top in television today, you could do worse than start in children's programmes. Lorraine Heggessey, the controller of BBC One, Dawn Airey, the chief executive of Five (soon to join BSkyB in a senior programming role) and now Nigel Pickard, the new director of programmes at ITV, have all spent significant periods producing or commissioning children's programmes. Indeed Nigel Pickard has spent virtually his entire career making programmes for kids. Once, he was at long-gone ITV companies Southern and TVS, where he worked on shows like Worzel Gummidge. Then he was at Scottish Television, where he was controller of entertainment and drama features - responsible among others for the Saturday morning shows What's Up Doc and Wolf It. Two years ago the BBC lured him to run its children's department, where he has been responsible not only for stalwarts of the schedule like Blue Peter and Teletubbies but also for the launch earlier this year of two new channels aimed at children and toddlers, CBBC and CBeebies. It may be tempting for grown ups to write off children's telly as somehow less serious than the adult kind. It's also the widest ranging: children's commissioning editors have to know about drama, entertainment, factual programmes, the lot. This background helps to explain why ITV turned to Nigel Pickard two weeks ago after Dawn Airey spurned the network's offer of a post as chief executive in favour of Sky. But for all his experience - and his reputation as a thoroughly nice bloke - Pickard is not the charismatic leader that Airey would have been, and that the network said it was looking for until very recently. Too many chiefs. When Carlton and Granada merge ITV will have too many chief executives as it stands; to have acquired yet another corporate figurehead running the ITV Network would have made life awfully difficult. The word from ITV is that Pickard will work as part of a triumvirate at the network with the head of marketing, Jim Hytner, and scheduling boss David Bergg. He will lead an established team of commissioning editors, though one or two might jump ship if they feel aggrieved at being overlooked in favour of Pickard. Pickard is a quieter character altogether. ITV's hope is that the network has acquired a safe pair of hands who will bolster the schedule - and prove strong enough to resist any attempts by Carlton or Granada to get him to favour programmes produced in-house over those produced by independent producers if the outsiders' proposals are better. His timing may be good. ITV has had a dreadful couple of years in which its audience share has fallen below BBC One's for the first time ever, thanks to programming disappointments and disasters like the scheduling of The Premiership and the failure of Survivor. But there is still cause for alarm. Coronation Street's ratings have slipped badly. Audiences have been deserting ITV's Formula One coverage. And there is no prospect of a let-up in the competitive pressure from a resurgent BBC, an increasingly successful Five and, above all, from the digital channels which more and more of us can now watch. Nigel Pickard will need all the skills honed on shows like SM:tv to keep ITV buoyant. Nigel Pickard fights back. That's a very simplistic way of looking at it, as if to say that no other channel is allowed to have high rating programmes. It's the way that if BBC1 or Channel 4 have a popular programme, the ITV1 programme as a result is therefore unpopular and is therefore axed that I just can't understand. If every programme that doesn't win it's slot is a flop, which it seems to be according to the likes of Media Guardian then surely every channel may as well close down and be replaced by one single channel. Surely even in the 70s, BBC1 lost out to half of the time to ITV and vica versa yet shows wern't announced as a flop straightaway. Yes it appears to be true, I read it on teletext. Although its a bit soon to pull programmes after 1 or 2 episodes ITV cannot afford to have dead wood in the schedule these days due to some much competition from digital channels. What makes me smile is that every time ITV pulls a failure from it's schedules - it comissions another thinking "it'll be different this time." It'll Be Alright On The Night - how apt - they certainly can't put out of a night's worth of "alright" programming. But with only one commercial broadcaster at the time, advertisers paid for their spots without question. That's why an ITV franchise really was a, "licence to print money". Apologies if this sounds patronising, but there *is* a very simplistic formula at work here. The cash raised in advertising slots slides in accordance with how many viewers tune in. As much as I hate the practice it probably makes more business sense to pull a low rater and replace it than lose the peak revenues over the run of the series. Many programmes simply don't capture their audiences on the first few installments, and it's a shame that some babies may get thrown out with the bath-water. But that's showbusiness. It also happened in ITV's 49th year as well. In fact replace Celebrity Love Island with Simply the Best and you could just rerun all of last year's posts. I'm sure they'll be back on top with dramas every night of the week come September. I really don't know what future this is leading to where ITV introduce a new series against a strong BBC1 soap, it doesn't beat it, which was not unexpected and then ends up getting pulled after 1 episode. There's something wrong here. I'm not sure it's about the 8pm shows beating Holby, that wouldn't be expected. ITV seem to be bothered a lot more about audience inheritance these days. And fact is, the 8pm shows didn't deliver into Bad Girls, which was relegated into 3rd place last night, and is usually one of their stronger shows. That, I think is more alarming. What I find particularly strange is the number of errors ITV perceives itself to be making, then answering this problem by shelving entire series (at considerable expense) rather than finding other positions in the schedule for them. By doing this, they're creating a rod for their own back, because this will just encourage lazy hacks to pick out any flagging series, in the full knowledge that ITV will probably can that as well, thereby leading to even more bad press. I think ITV will come to rue the day they gave away their trump card in this game, namely to test new concepts cheaply in regions before pushing them out nationwide. Now more than ever this would have been a very powerful tool. I've said this before but the main problem with ITV is they are reliant on short-term ratings boosts such as stripping a series of I'm a Celebrity, or a cheap rip-off, every night for a couple of weeks, or screening one-off drama premieres. What they need is more shows that can consistantly pull in the ratings on a week in, week out basis, alongside Corrie, Emmerdale and The Bill.