Dyke: ITV crucial to British broadcasting

The BBC director general Greg Dyke has rejected criticism of the BBC and told ITV that it has only itself to blame for the recent malaise at the channel.

Delivering the Richard Dunn Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival, Mr Dyke dismissed claims by ITV executives that its relative collapse was due to the BBC, arguing that ITV should look closer to home for its recent failures - the failure of ITV Digital, the money ill-spent on sports rights, bad programming decisions including moving the News at Ten and losing 'Home and Away' to five as well as upsetting traditional advertisers by taking money from dotcoms.

However, Mr Dyke said that a weakened ITV was not in the interest of the BBC, moreover a robust ITV would offer greater choice and competition, and so was "vital for the industry and the audience".

"If governments and regulators want to preserve some of the best features of commercial broadcasting in this country they will have to change their approach," he said.

"They will have to make it commercially attractive for ITV to remain a public service broadcaster. The days of doing it by decree are rapidly coming to an end and the days of charging ITV hundreds of millions of pounds for the privilege of being a broadcaster are certainly numbered."

Mr Dyke insisted that the future of ITV could only be secured if both government and regulators made it commercially attractive for ITV to remain a public service broadcaster.

Only by securing a strong ITV as an advertiser funded, free-to-air television group - alongside the BBC and Sky - could a healthy broadcasting market with a proper balance of power and influence be maintained, he added.

Without change, Mr Dyke stated that the future would be bleak for viewers and programme makers alike.

(GB)