Written Evidence Submitted by ITV Plc
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Written evidence submitted by ITV plc IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON ORGANISATIONS UNDER THE DDCMS REMIT INTRODUCTION 1. The last few months have clearly been extraordinary ones in the history of the UK and of the world. Many old certainties have been upended by the crisis and there has been a very rapid transformation of everyone’s lives. 2. Clearly these changes have been hugely disruptive in almost every dimension: socially, culturally, economically, and practically. For most people the changes brought about have been deeply unsettling and, in many cases, personally traumatic. 3. ITV has done its utmost, as a Public Service Broadcaster and critical public service under the government’s classification, to support and inform people through the crisis. We have provided accurate news at the same time as misinformation has flourished online. We have brought the country together at a time of acute isolation. We have told stories and encouraged national conversations of a truly UK nature. 4. But, even as consumption of our free-to- air TV content has grown and as people have sought out information and comfort in the crisis, we have also seen our revenue move in an opposite direction as advertising spend has fallen and TV production across the world has been put on hold. The crisis has hastened trends we have long observed with the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon further strengthening their competitive position in advertising and other markets versus national players (like the UK PSBs). 5. We set out in this submission the role ITV has played in the crisis and the steps we have taken to mitigate the impact on our business, as well as a few areas where decisive action is now needed by policymakers and regulators to maximise the chances of the UK TV industry and the broader creative economy across the UK flourishing over the coming few years. HELPING PEOPLE THROUGH THE COVID-19 CRISIS: ITV AS A PSB 6. We have set out in a parallel submission to the Committee’s Inquiry into the future of PSB the role ITV plays, as a PSB, in the life of the UK. ITV has a unique ability to reach the public at scale, with an avowed social purpose, creating distinctively British shows that reflect and shape the world we live in. In summary, the PSBs deliver a number of key elements of particular importance in the current circumstances: a. A gold standard of trusted, accurate and impartial national and local journalism amidst the anarchy of fake news, offering plurality at every level to the BBC and reaching different audiences. b. The production of unifying national moments in good and bad times, and a mirror held up to our society helping us to better understand our country and our fellow citizens. c. A reliable and trusted broadcast platform to ensure effective communication to the public at times of crisis. d. Real, meaningful investment in talent and production across the whole country, a crucial underpinning of the creative industries, particularly in northern England, not just in London and the south-east. 7. The recent experience of the Covid-19 crisis has been clarifying. It has been the Public Service Broadcasters who have been in the lead in informing, entertaining and supporting the UK public with programmes and information reflecting the specific UK experience of the crisis. Such services with a UK specific focus are important for us as a nation in normal times, but crucial in a crisis. We believe that the past few months have illustrated, better than any submission, the role of public service broadcasting in the 21st Century. 8. The public appears to agree with this. In recent research by Freeview, almost 8 in 10 people (79%) felt that it was important for them to have easy access to content delivered by the PSBs at times of national crisis (three quarters of those aged 16-34 agreed with that too). 80% of people in the same survey agreed that the PSBs kept them informed about what was going on in the UK again with three quarters of 16-34 year-olds agreeing. Nearly three quarters of the survey claimed they mostly relied on PSBs to give them free and easy access to news and information. This at a time when, as a recent Press Gazette investigation found: “YouTube is broadcasting Covid-19 conspiracy theory videos to millions of people, and in some cases running adverts alongside them”1 9. Free-to-access public service broadcast television is part of our social fabric. 99% of people in TV-owning households watched ITV in 2019. 18 million viewers watched our main channel each day – on average nearly 37 million per week. 10. In normal times we broadcast live to the nation each weekday between 6am and 2pm. Even during the Covid-19 crisis we have stayed live to the nation each morning informing and entertaining our viewers with content about the impact on Covid-19 on our lives with everything from a platform for Dr Hilary to answer viewers medical questions to Martin Lewis offering financial advice. But more than this, we’ve offered daily tips, from dance- alongs to stay-at-home gardening, ways to keep in touch to coping with anxiety, sharing stories and helping people to talk to their children about Covid. 11. We’ve also brought the nation together with high quality drama and entertainment with everything from an innovative and well received Virtual Grand National to keeping Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway on air as long as we could, attracting nearly 10m viewers to shows. This led the Daily Telegraph’s review of their show in late March to comment that “Ant and Dec aren’t quite Covid-19’s version of the former Forces sweetheart [Dame Vera Lynn] but they come pretty close”. 12. In the midst of the Covid crisis we relaunched our Britain Get Talking campaign (“Apart. But never alone”) on air and on social media with huge impact. We’ve been supporting key workers through Clap for Carers, pausing our broadcasts for two minutes on a Thursday evening as well as though the One Million Claps campaign and ITV’s NHS Day which has raised well over £1m for NHS Charities Together. In addition, we’ve worked with Public Health England to deliver public health messaging campaigns on air targeting hard to reach 1 https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/youtube-conspiracy-theory-videos/ groups – for instance our Stay at Home Lads campaign on ITV2. We also launched our ITVKidsCreate initiative that gave children in lockdown the opportunity to create idents for ITV with over 6,000 entries. As an illustration of the level of trust in ITV we’ve even had thousands of calls to our viewer services number seeking advice on Covid, which we have referred to the government website. 13. It is also to broadcast news that audiences have turned in the current Covid crisis. In the weeks since the lockdown ITV News has reached 22.8m viewers each week – 38% of the TV population of the UK a significant increase on the first 11 weeks of the year. This increase has come from across the population, in the weeks since the lockdown ITV News has reached 2.8m people aged 16-34 a week, a 20% increase on the first 11 weeks. Nations and regions news in particular has been of particular importance. The feedback we have had on those programmes has suggested that an understanding of what is happening close to home has been a particular public priority, given the clarity and regularity of daily government briefings about the national position which are generally well covered. It was an ITV regional news programme that first interviewed Captain Sir Tom Moore on TV. 14. Even before the audience spike caused by the crisis, the number of people watching our regional news programme at 6pm had increased by nearly 10% since 2015 and the number watching our national news programme at 6.30pm had grown by nearly 5%. This is instructive in a world where the assumption is that only online viewing is increasing. 15. Or consider the set piece statements by the Prime Minister during the Covid-19 crisis which directly reached a large proportion of the UK population in one go across the different audiences of the PSBs. The PSBs are the natural home for such moments in our national life being free, universally accessible, reliable and highly trusted. It is very hard to see a plausible online alternative to broadcasts on digital terrestrial TV from the PSBs at critical national moments such as these for a long time to come. ITV’S BUSINESS RESPONSE TO COVID 16. Like many other businesses, ITV has had to respond decisively to the COVID-19 crisis on a variety of fronts, the most significant of which we set out below. Safeguarding and protecting employees 17. Clearly our top priority has been to ensure the safety, health and well-being of our employees and those who work with us on a freelance basis. From mid-March the overwhelming majority of our employees began working at home and still are. We rapidly put in place plans to ensure that our news and morning magazine programmes could remain on air safely with appropriate COVID production protocols, and to reschedule and revise that programming we continue to make and to broadcast it safely. 18. In this context we were helped by the sensible approach of the government to the definition of key workers which included journalists and broadcasters engaged in work for the public service broadcasters.