SOME of ITV’s best-known programmes, including The South Bank Show and Sharpe, the Napoleonic war drama, are facing significant cutbacks or cancellation because of a slump in the broadcaster’s revenue.

 

Prestigious costume dramas are likely to be the biggest victim of the funding crisis, which could mean ITV announcing up to 500 job losses.

 

Presenting the broadcaster’s annual results on Wednesday, Michael Grade, the executive chairman, is expected to reveal a marked fall in profits, a huge debt and the prospect of dwindling advertising income in the coming year. Insiders believe that ITV’s £1 billion programming budget will be cut by about 3%, or £30m, during 2009 and by even more next year.

 

Department heads, covering genres such as drama, comedy and entertainment, are likely to learn this week how they will be affected by the company’s poor performance.

 

Among the programmes under threat is The South Bank Show, the award-winning arts series, which has been presented by Melvyn Bragg for more than 30 years. It is likely to face an initial cut from the 20 programmes it produced last year and could be phased out altogether when Lord Bragg, 69, decides to retire.

 

ITV dramas, which can cost up to £1m an hour to make, will take the biggest hit. Sharpe, starring Sean Bean as a fictional British soldier in the Napoleonic wars, will not be returning to the screen, and Wire in the Blood, with Robson Green, will also be scrapped.

 

ITV has already canned a multi-million-pound adaptation of EM Forster’s A Passage to India, which was due to be filmed on the subcontinent.

 

A new adaptation of Wuthering Heights, starring Tom Hardy as Heathcliff and Charlotte Riley as Cathy, was completed last year, but it has not yet been given a transmission date. It could be one of the last period dramas ITV produces.

 

Indicating the channel’s future direction, Laura Mackie, head of ITV drama, said: “Crime thrillers and 20th century are things that ITV does very well.”

 

The future of Heartbeat, the police drama set in 1960s Yorkshire, and The Royal, a spin-off show, are also in doubt. ITV has already recorded 18 months’ worth of the two series, but it refuses to say if any more episodes will be made once they have been broadcast. The uncertainty places a question mark over the network’s Leeds studios, which were previously owned by Yorkshire Television.

 

The impending programming cuts follow a £40m streamlining of ITV’s regional newsrooms, with fewer areas of the UK receiving purpose-made bulletins.

 

Observers point out that one of ITV’s key problems is that about 85% of its advertising income comes from about 10% of airtime, which means that many programmes are bringing in hardly any revenue.

 

One method of saving money - already used by the BBC - is for ITV to enter into more co-productions, where programme costs are shared with an overseas broadcaster. Its remake of The Prisoner, with Sir Ian McKellen, involves an American company, whilea new thriller called Father and Son will be made with RTE, the Irish broadcaster.

 

Last week ITV floated the idea of a merger with Channel4 and Five, but the plan is widely regarded as a nonstarter.

 

Boat Race a casualty

 

One-off dramas will suffer. An Englishman in New York, with John Hurt reprising his role as Quentin Crisp, is finished but has no transmission date.

 

The Boat Race is sunk for ITV after its final screening on March 29. Having won the contract from the BBC, ITV has dumped the event.

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5822245.ece

The ITV local news in this area is a joke as the area is covers is just to wide to be classed as local.

 

But a lot of stuff on ITV is rubbish these days