Let’s play a QUIZ

Now regulation has been troubling me of late..

Looking at ITV it appears that regulation should be a fairly straightforward matter – the regulator being the body who grants the licence OFCOM – if the company fails to meet the terms of their licence OFCOM can fine them or in the extreme take away their licence.
But for participation the matter is not so clear cut, ITV Play uses premium rate calls so perhaps the regulator is ICSTIS?

Oh and some people say that the ITV Play games are actually a form of gambling so is it the gambling commission?
So is

a) OFCOM,
b) ICSTIS
or

c) The Gambling Commission ?

Answers to itvplaysurvey@btopenworld.com
Calls will not be charged and their may be a prize!

How to get responses for a research

I'm not sure if anyone has tips as to how to get responses from letters?

When I first started this research I wrote to a few people to ask for input, Charles Allen (he’d been ITV boss when the channel launched) – no reply
Richard Woolfe (Sky) – no reply (and now he’s having employment tribunal trouble)
William van Rest –ITV Play at least I got a no.

Channel 5’s News supremo Chris Shaw kindly replied and did give a note of an article he’d written for the Media Guardian.

If anyone want s to help or has information about Telemedia (where the presenters are trained) I’d be grateful details to itvplaysurvey@btopenworld.com

Is a game of chance a lottery ?

One of the key questions around the quiz formats like ITV Play and Quiz Call is are they a lottery - I was interested to see that the mad comments blog has noted that The Gambling Commission is set to rule on this, (good piece here too) the implications are not just the specific late night gameshow ghettos there'll be a knock on to some of those peak time shows too. But figures are that the chances of getting through to some shows were as high as an incredible 5,000-1 at peak times mean that this is an outside gamble with slim chances of winning.

The point (to me though) is What is ITV for is it something more than a vehicle for exploiting broadcasting capacity?

Mr Grade probably needs to re- invigorate the ITV brand and give a mission statement that is clear and inclusive.

Earlier predictions around a privatised Channel Four and a Sky owned Channel Five are looking noticably more likely and a clear differentiation is a goal ITV should aim to convert as soon as it can.

The world of (TV) branding

You might wonder why I’ve decided to look at branding for TV as a subject for research I’ll summarise here

1) TV in the UK was until the mid 1980s characterised as a ‘public good’ rather than a consumer commodity, the powerful and the good administered it and decided the rules that it should play by, strangely they were often the people who viewed it least and considered it little.

2) In the 1980s technology and a government that favoured deregulation (re -regulation?) conspired to change the rules of the game, Sky and BSB saw a new economic opportunity that could be commercialised.

3) The multiplicity of TV channels had a mixture of distinct and not so distinct programming, University Challenge moved from ITV (Granada) to the BBC, reruns of The Avengers appear on the BBC, Men Behaving Badly moved from ITV to BBC. ITV and BBC followed the Channel 4 model and moved from being a straight broadcaster/producer to a broadcaster, producer, publisher commissioner. UK Gold and similar re packaging channels became common .

4) New technology emerged that further blurred the origin of content people watched BBC content as they wished via Sky plus.

So where does ITV stand as a broadcaster and a brand – ITV play was launched as a part of a multi-channel answer to BBC and Sky offerings or was it just a method of creating a new revenue stream?
Does ITV Play fit with a historic public service broadcasters’ programming treasures such as Brideshead Revisited, World in Action or The Prisoner?

Who better to tell us than the viewer?

The research seeks to determine what the ITV Play project tells us about ITV as a brand – can it use the window of opportunity around the remaining days of bandwidth scarcity to ensure its future?

If this resonates with you in any way drop me a line at ITVPlaysurvey@btopenworld.com and I’ll be happy to consult with you, I’m particularly interested to hear from

* Viewers and participants
* People in the broadcast industry and those working on participation content,
* Brand consultants,
* And those working on regulatory issues (ICSTIS and OFCOM)