At ITN's Christmas drinks last week, chief executive Mark Wood was proudly showing off the ITV news provider's mobile video streaming service, offering a 24 hour MobiTV news and weather channel via Orange 3G phones. Will you be able to keep this service going, Mark, after the ITV News Channel closes?
At boardroom level, axing the ITV News Channel may have seemed like a no brainer. News channels don't make money, and the service was about to lose a third of its multi channel distribution by being dumped from Freeview altogether, to make way for one that would – an ITV children's channel. And though the ITV News Channel costs considerably less to run than rival services Sky News and BBC News 24, scrapping it provides a tasty multi million pound annual saving to offer up to shareholders. Sorted.
However, today's announcement still smacks of short-termism, with the simultaneous unveiling of £2m extra investment in ITV News an inadequate sticking plaster.
For starters, the closure of the ITV News Channel must be a huge blow to the morale of ITV News editor in chief David Mannion's team. ITV News, and its supplier ITN, have always rightly prided themselves on being in the front rank of news broadcasters globally. To be in that premier league today, you need a rolling news channel – period.
Part of the new investment will go towards a "breaking news team", ready to broadcast open ended coverage. But when a big story breaks, the head of this team will still be haggling with ITV1 schedulers about breaking into the regular schedule, while News 24 and Sky News are already up and running with coverage. And the ITV News local, national and international newsgathering operation that feeds the news channel is still going to be there, an asset being sweated less efficiently.
ITV director of TV Simon Shaps says today's decision was about looking at how TV news will look in five or 10 years time – and it will be on demand, to various platforms, not a 24 hour linear channel. That may be true, Simon, but surely having a 24 hour news channel provides you with a ready source of content for these new broadband and mobile services.
And in the meantime, for the next decade or so, you are effectively asking ITV News to compete with one hand tied behind its back.
