What an extraordinary thing is the turnaround in performance of the British terrestrial channel ITV.
By all the laws of nature, ITV should be the last of an
endangered species, a hairy mammoth, surrounded by exciting new competitors
using new technology and new routes to market, reflecting rapid changes in
consumer attitudes and behaviour.
And yet. And yet.
The current top management duo, CEO Adam Crozier and
chairman Archie Norman, have brought about something of a miracle, turning a
loss bequeathed to them by the outgoing chairman Lord Grade of £2.7bn in 2008
into a profit of £464m in 2012, an increase of 17% on 2011.
How did they do it? Well, there were lots of cost savings on
the way, of course. But on their own these would only have slowed down the
progress towards a painful end.
It seems to me that the main strategy has been to invest
continuously in new programmes that people in large numbers want to watch (Champions
League football and most recently Mr Selfridge), and in keeping fresh the major
properties that already exist, some of them decades old (Coronation Street, X
Factor, I’m a Celebrity… etc).
That’s what advertisers, the lifeblood of ITV, still look
for. And that’s what they have been getting.
Will they be able to maintain their momentum? Only if they
continue to invest in creative product and creative people – and make some good
strategic investments along the way.
Of course Archie Norman (together with Allan Leighton)
wrought a similar miracle with a previous dinosaur – the ASDA supermarket
chain.
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