End of an era for UTV as ITV buys its Northern cousin

ITV is to swallow up the television division of UTV Media plc, marking an end of an era for the channel that began life as Ulster Television in 1959.

The FTSE 100-listed media group is buying UTV’s channel in Northern Ireland and taking with it - for now - UTV Ireland, the infant channel aimed at viewers in the Republic.

A thought that may strike some viewers on hearing the news that ITV has bought the television division of UTV Media plc may well be “didn’t ITV already own UTV anyway?”

In fact, while UTV has always had a close relationship with ITV, they are and have always been separate entities.

The Belfast-based UTV has held what known as the Channel 3 franchise for Northern Ireland. This means that what some viewers in the Republic now refer to as “real UTV” has an agreement with ITV to show “network programming” in agreed time slots.

At times, there has been the occasional moment of tension between the two companies about the quality of the programmes supplied and the price UTV had to pay for them. UTV’s record of producing its own shows up in Belfast, meanwhile, has been patchy, and the recession was not kind to its output.

In the 1950s, when Ulster Television was first appointed by the Independent Television Authority as the programme contractor for Northern Ireland, what is now “ITV” was a plethora of franchise holders for different regions around the UK.

Waves of consolidation over the decades saw only three companies left standing: The “mothership” of ITV, STV, which owns two Scottish franchises, and the only remaining standalone franchisee, UTV. And in the years before its surprise decision to launch UTV Ireland, UTV Media’s focus in recent years was not on television at all, but radio.

The Belfast company, which will now continue under a different name, is the owner of TalkSport in Britain and six radio stations in the Republic, including Dublin music stations FM104 and Q102 and Cork’s 96FM.

The prospects for UTV Ireland, just 10 months on the air, now look increasingly grim. ITV has been able to get its hands on UTV’s television assets at a nice price precisely because of the difficulties facing the division, with UTV Ireland expected to post a £11.5 million loss this year.

For numerous reasons, audience numbers have been slower to build than the over-ambitious UTV Media expected.

On weekends, TV3 cleverly broadcast repeats to shows such as Saturday Night Takeaway with Ant and Dec. This confused viewers who neither knew nor cared that the most recent episodes were being shown on UTV Ireland.

UTV Media chief executive John McCann called it the "Ant and Dec" problem. But it was not the only one. The channel's cost-draining news bulletins, overseen by former RTÉ Six-One editor Marcus Lehnen, were professional and overtly national (rather than urban) in their outlook, but they have failed to find much of an audience.

And while UTV Ireland's Dublin executives would clearly love to pour money into programme production, there hasn't been cash in the kitty to do so. Some shows that it did commission, such as the unceremoniously axed Pat Kenny in the Round, couldn't persuade the typical RTÉ One viewer to switch over.

Finally, there was the thorny issue of UPC / Virgin Media customers angered by the discovery that UTV Ireland’s schedule would not match the UTV one and was generally poorer.

This was because UTV Ireland's deal with ITV's distribution arm ITV Studios didn't cover the rights to key "ITV" programmes that are, in fact, made and distributed by others. TV3 owns the Irish rights to some, like Downton Abbey, Broadchurch and The X Factor, while others have fallen into a television black hole as far as many viewers in the Republic are concerned.

So the omens are not good for UTV Ireland as it exists now.

ITV plc predecessor Granada once held a 45 per cent stake in TV3, but sold it at the top of the market in 2006. Does it really have any interest in a future that would involve worrying about how many people in Cork and Galway tune in their Saorview receivers?

It seems far more likely that ITV will take a quick look at the large, loyal audiences garnered by UTV Ireland's rights to Coronation Street and Emmerdale and decide to continue selling advertising off the back of them, shutting down most of the rest of the operation that only this time last year was being set up.