The CITV schedules for the first weeks of 2007 have been released to the press, revealing a drastic cut in hours, way above anything so far requested from Ofcom by ITV management. Children’s programmes on ITV1 are down to just 2 hours a week - an hour on Saturday and an hour on Sunday mornings - with no kids’ programmes on weekday afernoons at all.
ITV are claiming this is normal “flexing” of the schedule, which will be made up at other times in the year - the sort of thing they do to react to big sports events like the World Cup. But rumour has it that this schedule extends after the first week of January when the kids are on holiday, into the rest of the month, in exactly the same pattern. Looks like ITV have decided to drop weekday programming on ITV1 no matter what.
ITV’s annual statement of programme policy will be public soon. It’ll be interesting to see what they say in it about their children’s programme plans.
Ofcom need to be consulted over “significant change” in ITV’s schedule plans for children’s content. Does this seem significant enough? It’s way below the recently proposed 5 hours a week. January is the start of the year for measurement of scheduled hours, so there is time for ITV to make up the airtime through the rest of the year. But what’s the betting they’ll schedule heavily in the summer holidays when no-one is watching so there’s no significant effect on advertising revenue - plus they’ll be able to point out to Ofcom that even when they put kids’ programmes on ITV1, the audience don’t watch!
And what’s the betting that after they’ve done that, they’ll still only be heading for their proposed 5 hours a week - exactly the position Ofcom rejected a few weeks ago?
Come on Ofcom - surely cutting back to 2 hours a week is a “significant change” in anyone’s book!
