ITC CHAIRMAN SLATES BBC FOR NEWS DECISION

SIR ROBIN Biggam, Chairman of the ITC, slated the BBC at a recent ITC Dinner in Birmingham.
Sir Robin (pictured) accused the BBC of doing “a disservice to the concept of public service broadcasting” and “going beyond the boundary of fair competition.”
Referring to the weeks of discussion between the ITC and ITV over the scheduling of the evening news he said: “I regret that the BBC have exploited the situation for what they consider might give them short term scheduling advantage. A schedule which relegates ‘Panorama’ to a grave yard slot on a Sunday evening and carries four episodes of ‘Eastenders’, one an hour long, is hardly the stuff of public service broadcasting.”
Sir Robin also revealed at the ITC Dinner there is strong support for regional programming to continue in the digital future. Announcing some of the findings from the ITC’s public consultation on regional television earlier this year, Sir Robin said that regionalism and the importance of regional broadcasting had been strongly endorsed by viewers.
Sir Robin went on to warn that regionalism was in danger of being marginalised in the commercial sector as ITV faces increased competition from free-to-air broadcasters as well as pay-television: “We have to recognise that regional programming is less financially attractive to ITV than networked programmes, and provision of regional programmes is a trade-off in financial terms for the privilege of universal access.”