ITV in blind panic; switches off all premium interactivity pending review
There’s a lot kicking around the industry today about this. This could well be a big deal.
From ITV’s recent press release on the matter:
As a responsible broadcaster, ITV’s commitment is to put viewers’ interests first.
(That is, when we’re not making shitloads from them out of premium rate interactive services…)
In light of recent concern surrounding premium interactive services in television programmes across all channels, ITV is today announcing that it has appointed Deloitte as independent auditors to conduct a complete review of all premium rate interactive services in ITV programmes. This will cover all premium rate landline, mobile (excluding pay downloads) and red button activity.
Uh oh…. oooooh dear me. INDEPENDENT? That’s not what you want. Not in this market…. I reckon the Deloitte folk will be shocked. That is, unless they’re doing an independent-but-not-really report. Let’s find out more about what’s planned?
The review is in two parts. First, to ensure that all existing procedures are robust
You mean they might NOT be robust at the moment?
… and second, a retrospective review of premium interactive services in all relevant ITV programmes of the last two years. ITV intends to make the findings of the review public.
Intends. Heh. As long as the report is positive. 
Retrospective? Gosh.
Here’s the kicker:
We are therefore temporarily suspending all premium interactive services across all ITV channels from Tuesday March 6th. Interactive elements will return, programme by programme, as soon as they have passed the scrutiny of the independent audit.
Do you mean to say, Mr ITV, that you don’t actually have any procedures in place right now? Is it that bad that every single programme has to be scrutinised by an auditor now? Fair enough, but what’s your mobile department being doing for the past 2 years? Sitting on it’s arse signing unrobust contracts with programmer makers and service providers?
Golly. Can you imagine being sat there in the board room when the Chief Exec made the decision to temporarily suspend all revenue generation on all programmes? You must have to be in a ‘total shitstate mess’ (management definition) to take such sweeping action. You must also be thinking your mobile department are a bunch of muppets.
It’s quite simple. Everything should fit ICSTIS policies. This isn’t difficult. Everything should have been ‘certificated’ by ITV central command prior to being authorised and sent to air. Everything should be regularly organised. You have to be in ridiculous shape to have to do something like what ITV have done.
Although it’s probably better do to that NOW rather than risk the ire of anything else coming to public attention. Fascinating.
Check out the statement from ICSTIS in response to ITV’s announcement:
ICSTIS welcomes today’s announcement by ITV that it is to conduct an independent review of all premium rate interactive services in its programmes.
Ok, that’s fine, right. Now the next bit..
ITV’s announcement comes in the same week that ICSTIS is hosting a meeting with leading broadcasters, programme makers and premium rate service providers in the wake of the recent allegations made premium rate interactive services to agree what practical steps can be taken to restore consumer trust and confidence in the sector. ITV will be attending the meeting.
Well that’s going to be quite an interesting meeting isn’t it? I wouldn’t mind being a fly on the wall.
George Kidd (really nice chap) is also quoted:
ICSTIS Chief Executive George Kidd said: “We believe that the industry has a major role to play in ensuring that viewers can take part in TV shows with confidence. Today’s announcement by ITV is evidence of a broadcaster taking its responsibility to viewers seriously. We look forward to receiving the review’s findings.â€
I am sure they will look forward to the review with relish!
In the cynical world that you and I live in, you have to ask yourself why ITV is taking such immediate action. Why didn’t they simply do an internal review? Why bother telling us all about it? Why not implement an internal review across the next 2 weeks — pull people off projects etc., and check that everything is ok? Surely there can’t be such a catastrophic failure to stick within Government defined guidelines that they have to pull the entire service within 24 hours? But that’s the cynical world we live in, right?
I’m imagining things.
On a slightly different topic, but still text voting related, I have setup a text poll on my website blog, unlike ITV I am not getting any money out of this!
I am looking for people to test my little project…
Bit of fun, bit of a geek! Do you like Marmite/Vegetable/Beef Extract?
Can you help me test my SMS blog? Text “blog 67:” followed by your opinion to +447913694107.
e.g. “blog 67:I love the black stuff!” (Note: The colon after number 67 is important).
You will get a text back with results url.
Posted by James Saunders on March 5th, 2007 at 8:00 pm.wow!!!!!!!!
- little player does something against icstis rules - “bang! £50,000 fine, go hang yourself naughty little boy”.
- big ITV possibly breaks the rules - “we at icstis welcome itv doing their own fixing of any rule breaking instead of us just throwing the book at them”.
My god, there must have been some serious peace-talk style negotiations going on into the early hours to pull this get out of jail free card from the bag.
steve/itagg.com
My viewpoint above is all based on speculation and is in no way accusing itv or icstis of doing ‘owt wrong. I just fancied a rant that’s all
Posted by steve procter on March 5th, 2007 at 8:15 pm.I personally feel it’s total overkill.. Ultimately they’ve made a few silly errors recently all be they *really* silly, but at the end of the day usually pricing is VERY VERY clear. I’ve no doubt the report will show them up to be shiny elsewhere and this will get resolved (we in the industry hope) very quickly. Without going into the full ‘cycle of life’ re all the funky mobile apps and service providers really needing the Premium industry to keep going, i’ll just point out that any negatives this big in the Premium world will have knock on effects across the spectrum. Let’s hope it gets sorted asap
Posted by njar on March 5th, 2007 at 11:47 pm.You’re absolutely right Njar, I too hope it gets sorted quickly because the knock on for everyone in the industry is huge; due in main to the entire mentality of Britain at the moment…..
…i.e. trip over a Marmite sandwich and suddenly Marmite is banned, a senior judge is having an enquiry about whether black sandwich fillings should be allowed and MP’s are debating whether to make a national apology to those who have suffered the perils of Marmite over the years. And as for the company that dropped the sandwich on the floor in the first place, well they are hounded as The Evil One, submitted to tortuous questionning on Watchdog, The Today Programme and Newsnight and then in 3 years time when the enquiry report comes out are cleared of doing anything wrong anyway.
It is definitely better to admit now that one tiny insignificant TV programme made a slip up with a particular sms campaign, that the public who are now out of pocket to the massive tune of £1.50 were too stupid to read the smallprint anyway, and we all just get on with our lives as though the world is still gonna be here tomorrow…..
steve
Posted by steve procter on March 6th, 2007 at 7:30 am.njar, this is one of those “get it all out in the open” moments. I suspect they’ll be a lot to get out.
Interesting they are doing the cut-off at 2 years.
Posted by John on March 6th, 2007 at 10:59 am.I’m concerned at the potential impact that this might have on consumer trust. Broadcaster/participation TV is the most powerful medium for educating the uninitiated on how to use their phones for exciting stuff If it wasn’t for TV then mums, dads, aunt’s, uncles and the general unsavvy massive would never use there phones for anything but phone calls and text.
I hope that we don’t see broadcasters being extra cautious in the coming months by scaling back the roll out of new mobile based interactive elements.
We’re now beginning to see mobile UCG services become part of programmes which is great, plus broadcasters are finally beginning to pay attention to how mobile and advertising can work together - let’s hope this shit storm blows over and we can all get back to business.
Don’t be scared people - mobile is your friend.
Posted by Steve @ infomob on March 6th, 2007 at 12:00 pm.Hi guys,
Yep Steve, the sooner this gets resolved the better! I don’t have live ITV business personally, but I feel for those that do. This business is high maintenance - massive volumes, but super low margins. Even a week or so without revenue turnover won’t be fun. Part of the reason we’ve not seen ITV suppliers releasing stories can be attributed to their valuation of the respective relationship, and almost certainly due to contractual obligations not to comment in such events.
Steve you’re spot on. I was kind of infering to this side of things. In fact it’s actually a 2-way thing - the users have to be aware of ‘mobile’, but equally from a network perspective there needs to be commercial viability to a carrier for launching new services (and continuing existing ones). Before each new carrier 3rd party service (LBS, MMS, Voicecodes etc) is launched a full commercial business case is put together. When the service is eventually launched it’s then down to the aggregators and service providers to push the product in order to prove the carriers were right to launch the service and encourage them to allow 3rd parties to further dictate the future development of their wholesale offerings ongoing.
The likes of ITV and their various production companies and suppliers ultimately do a great job of pushing new services to the market. ITV is the largest user of premium telephony services in the broadcast space, and has also been proactive in pushing MMS, IVR, and Wap/Data (if you watch x-factor you’ll invariably be up sold to extra mobile services above and beyond the simple text vote).
Posted by njar on March 6th, 2007 at 1:12 pm.[...] Original post by ewan [...]
Posted by disco » ITV in blind panic; switches off all premium interactivity pending … on March 7th, 2007 at 1:15 am.