Supplementary Submission from UTV

Dear Sir Patrick

May I take this opportunity to formally thank you and the Committee for your inquiry into Television Broadcasting in Northern Ireland.

I appreciated the time you took to hear our evidence, as this is a vitally important issue for the plurality of quality news coverage and also the public scrutiny of the devolved institutions.

As I indicated to you at the end of the second session, UTV is now submitting its response to some of the comments made in the later session. I do hope this is acceptable, but some points made do have to be addressed as we believe some inaccuracies were aired.

1. The Independently Funded News Consortia pilots (IFNC) are designed to offer alternative local news to the BBC within a region where the news on Channel 3 is at risk.

We believe strongly that Northern Ireland does not require an IFNC. UTV is fully committed to our news service until the end of our licence in 2014. We obviously cannot make any commitments beyond that as we do not know what licence conditions will be in place at renewal.

An IFNC pilot in Northern Ireland would mean public money would be unnecessarily spent at a time when fiscal caution is required across the while range of public spending. We would estimate that a fully digital IFNC trial with community media could cost as much as £10M for Northern Ireland alone.

Perhaps most seriously as we understand it, the IFNC would not run alongside UTV, it would be instead of UTV's news service. Undoubtedly jobs and skills would be lost which would never be recoverable. It seems illogical, to break a model that is working very well, when the proposed model is untried.

UTV is not against these proposals in other parts of the UK, but a trial is simply not required in Northern Ireland.

Ofcom's very positive words about UTV's news service I hope underline that this view is not just held by UTV.

2. There is a suggestion that ITV plc may hand back its PSB licences and become a fully commercial broadcaster. This is an old debate. ITV plc did make the threat that they may "hand-back" their licences. This would have a significant impact on UTV. However ITV has not repeated this threat for some time and UTV believe that ITV are working closely with partners and the regulator to remove operation burdens rather than pursuing a "hand back licence's" scenario.

In addition handback would not be a straightforward process and UTV understand it would take around 18 months for any handback to take place. With this amount of notice, UTV is confident it could secure an alternative diverse programme supply from other sources if required.

Handback is a risk, but not one we believe is significant. While it is prudent to have a fall-back position, it should be just that, rather than the point on which future policy is based.

3. Dr Alistair McDonnell quoted the new Ofcom minimum licence levels for local production in the UTV region and asked how serious these reductions reflect upon UTV news provision. The NUJ responded that they were very serious reductions.

UTV completely agrees they would have had serious implications if they had been implemented.

While it is true because of ITV Network changes UTV had to cease production of the mid-morning news, a three minute bulletin with a very small audience, we have actually increased our news output across our schedule in peaktime.

In 2010 UTV will produce 228 hours of news. This is against a licence quota of 208 hours. A huge proportion of this output is in peak (6pm to 10.30pm) or shoulder peak (10.30pm to 11 pm) programme time.

These extra hours are delivered through our new late evening news programme UTV Live Tonight. It is the only programme of its type in the country and has been praised by politicians, industry leaders, commentators and most importantly our audience for offering a valuable public service not previously available.

Our current affairs quota is 26 hours a year. In 2010 UTV is planning to deliver almost 39 hours of current affairs to our audience.

Both of these figures are far higher than any other part of the United Kingdom. It is wrong to suggest our licence minimum is the level at which we produce programming. We have historically significantly over delivered on our licence requirement.

In fact because UTV opt away from a large number of ITV Network programmes, if an IFNC was introduced to Northern Ireland, the slots that would be available to an IFNC would actually mean that the hours of news provided in Northern Ireland would fall, as the resources would no longer exist to provide UTV Live Tonight.

4. UTV did change its programme offering following our restructure in 2008 - but we did not "dumb down".

All companies have to modernise and refresh their product range. Television is no different. As the social environment of Northern Ireland has changed over the years, UTV had not. UTV was still an organisation geared up to report and analyse a conflicted environment. Our long-form current affairs programme Insight was no longer the correct format to analyse current affairs in our region.

Audience figures for the programme were falling and it was becoming harder to sustain extended runs of the programme with high quality investigations. We also found our audience wanted more instant analysis of issues such as health, education, environment, crime and other subjects that affected their everyday lives.

UTV has responded to this with UTV Live Tonight. Since the programme launched earlier in the year, we have delivered more exclusive stories than ever before. Our investigative reporters have more time and resources to deliver content. The news department was given more funding (more than £100k) and more edit and camera resources to produce this output.

It is easy to say an organisation has "dumbed-down" every time personnel changes are to be implemented. UTV believes we have proved this remark to be incorrect. We deliver more relevant and instant news and analysis than ever before. The nature of new programmes has indeed changed over the years, but this is because we reflect our environment and as Troubles related news is less prevalent, a more "normal" news agenda has taken its place.

UTV does not deliver "news clip" and "sound bite" news or current affairs. UTV Live Tonight is comparable to Newsnight or Channel Four News for the level of analysis and the time given to explore stories in depth.

5. The introduction of an IFNC would not increase the portrayal of Northern Ireland to the rest of the UK. The IFNC is designed to offer alternative local news to the BBC within a region where the news on Channel 3 is at risk.

Northern Ireland does require greater profile in programming for the whole of the country, however the proposed IFNC will not deliver this.

This is why UTV recommends a contestable fund (available to all broadcasters) to make non-news programming. This fund could be used for local and network programming from and of our region. UTV would suggest a fund in the region of £3M per year. Far less than would be required to sustain news provision.

The Government rejected this in Digital Britain, but we believe funds for all the devolved nations are vital to invest in each region's independent production sector to boost the creative industries across all platforms and truly reflect the diversity of the United Kingdom. This is likely to be more successful than the blunt instrument of quotas.

As always, UTV is happy to expand on any of these points should the Committee require further information.

Michael Wilson

Managing Director, UTV Television

30 October 2009