These idiotic trade union leaders really need a reality check
Dear Gerry Morrissey,
As with every other general secretary of a union at the moment, you are just waiting for that phonecall from a journalist asking for your two cents worth on the latest job cuts in your sector. Seeing as you front the broadcasting workers’ union Bectu, the job cuts at ITV were just what you’ve been pining for. You said you were outraged at the proposed job losses and declared that “Michael Grade has abrogated his responsibility to ITV’s staff.” Time for a quick reality check for you and your union buddies, I’m afraid.
To put your claims into context, here are the raw numbers: yesterday, ITV announced a pre-tax loss of £2.73 billion, that’s £2,730,000,000 in case you didn’t realise. Operating profits were down by a third. Total UK advertising revenues are predicted to be down 17% year on year in the first quarter on 2009 and be 20% down by April. Michael Grade, the ITV executive chairman, described the current situation as “the most challenging I have experienced in over 30 years in UK broadcasting”. Not unsurprisingly, ITV have been forced to hack away at their spending (Labour government, please take note). They outlined plans to save a further £155m this year, rising to total savings of £175m next year and £245m in 2011 through a variety of cost-cutting measures. These include cutting 600 jobs, around 13% of ITV’s 4,500 staff, less than six months after the last round of 1,000 redundancies. ITV has already cancelled some high-profile dramas, such as long-running crime thriller Wire in the Blood and a new adaptation of A Passage to India, and will soon cut The Bill from two episodes a week to one. It has also halted production on Heartbeat and The Royal.
Your response would be hilarious if it wasn’t so misinformed. You said that ITV’s management has “seriously lost its way” and that the cuts “target the very people upon whom ITV’s recovery depends, programme makers and resource staff, whose skills, creative energy and commitment put the product on screen.” Errrr, well, yes – I think that was the idea. You see, TV shows are not produced out of thin air. In case you hadn’t noticed, the entire world economy is collapsing and it takes lots of people and lots of money and lots of time to make a TV show so ITV have decided to make less TV shows to save themselves lots of money. Get it? Lots of companies are losing lots of money and don’t want to advertise on TV anymore because it costs money to advertise, so ITV have been losing lots of money as well. Get it? Instead, ITV are going to move towards entertainment programmes which cost less money because ITV has less money than it did before because of the credit crunch. Get it? In addition, thanks to Labour being complete idiots they are lots of restrictions on how ITV sells its advertising space and when advertising is shown as well as a ban on product placement, which means that ITV has less money as well. While I doubt that all these restrictions need to be lifted, no-one apart from Labour cares about product placement because if people don’t like what they see then they can always switch to a different channel, you see? Actually, my mistake - the ban on product placement comes from the European Union Audiovisual Media Services Directive so Labour aren’t the only annoying idiots to be standing in ITV’s way.
Poor Gerry. You, like so many other union leaders, seem to be unaware that the global financial system has gone into meltdown and companies are going bust every day. ITV seem to have come off fairly lightly and, while a lot of what ITV produces is complete rubbish, they are taking a fairly sensible and realistic approach to surviving this economic downturn. The bad news is that – wait for it – people lose their jobs in a recession. Hopefully you and the unions for industries such as car manufacturing and local government will come to accept this at some point in future, but I’m not overly optimistic that you will ever join that lovely place that I like to call ‘reality’.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
“Poor Gerry. You, like so many other union leaders, seem to be unaware that the global financial system has gone into meltdown and companies are going bust every day.”
‘Poor Gerry’ is, like most top union leaders, totally insulated from the realities of day to day work. Rather like our politicians.
And he’s just as much use to his members as those politicians are to us.
But I have no choice but to pay tax. Anyone still paying union dues to people like this is a mug.
They really are so out of touch with what is going on! As you said, if the Labour Government had responded to this recession as ITV have responded to their business, we might actually see the end somewhere in sight. Do the unions think that ITV is involuntarily funded by the taxpayer too?
This is really just a prelude to state aid for ITV. Lets face facts. Labour have and are pouring money into industries directly connected with their electoral importance to Labour. So, first off, their pet bank, Northern Rock which employs lots of people in… a Labour voting heartland. RBS, like NR, employs people predominantly in places that vote labour. Like Scotland. Both had executives who had various roles and relationships with Labour. Next up, we have the car industries. We’re throwing money at them (or about to) even though 1) They are foreign owned and 2) Are producing products people don’t want and can’t afford and 3) Wearing its faux-green cap, cars are bad. Why? Well, unions for one thing but Labour voters in those industries is the other.
ITV/Granada… Lots of production in the North of England. I wouldn’t be surprised if El Gordo finds a way to lob some of our cash at them too, especially if it can give him some control over it. Union bleating just sets the mood music.
I’m personally apalled by all this. Capitalism hasn’t broken. Bad businesses going bust in hard times is a perfectly natural operation of a market system. Putting a corpse of an industry (RBS) on state-aid life support just delays the inevitable; when the plug is pulled, the body will still be dead.
It won’t be a bailout – it will be ’short-term loans to see them through this difficult period’. Mind you, your point about jobs in the North might well be factor.
I would have thought trade union membership would probably be going up at this time, seeing as everyone is worried about job security. Will help fund those nice hotel jollies from the union leaders!
Poor ITV. It needs to raise £3.6 BILLION to compete with the BBC’s TV licence revenue raising operation alone. A loss of £2.7 Billion is a giant problem. They have spent to much on poor projects, but they have a very loyal, dedicated following. Mr Grade has come up with a plan and a strategy, which is more than Mr Darling. I can’t see much else ITV can do. Better programs would help, but advertising is their business model and they will stand or fall on that.
A CH 5 / ITV merger?
and all the while the bloated bbc is cushioned from reality by a compulsory tax.
Typical union mind,rather confront than work with,are his expenses published?
advertising is their business model and they will stand or fall on that.
That’s a problem for the whole TV industry, even in the states. As far as I can tell audience fragmentation and (Legit and illegit) digital distribution is knackering the idea of large-audience mass-advertising. The move is clearly towards interactive product placement which is to say if you’re watching 24 and like the pliers Bauer’s using to pull out some badguy’s toenails, you can pull up a link to a shop selling that exact model of tool. The problem is two fold:
1) The technology isn’t here yet and
2) Digital television isn’t ubiquitous enough to carry such a platform
Drama producers are getting round this – think DVD Box Sets, look at the penetration of The Wire over here (nobody watched it on the box but it spread like the clap via boxed sets). The problem is that ITV has no good dramas to sell in this way and while gameshows might be cheap, they have no resale value and are thus dependant upon chasing that ever-dwindling mass-advertising market.
ITV and Channel 5 between them could make for a very respectable channel. Taken separately, they churn out some absolute rubbish.
Product placement only accounts for about 1% of advertising revenues in the US but it would still help. It would be a shame if ITV dramas started to disappear in large numbers, which is why a merger would help secure the future of their best work.
The Unions are completely unrealistic, a couple of weeks ago the NUT were demanding a 10% pay rise, and saying that the recession should be “No excuse” not to give it to them.
Lunatics!
No kidding. Crying foul play after job losses is one thing, but just because they have the Labour Party by the financial balls doesn’t mean that making ridiculous demands is going to win them any friends among the general public.
Don’t expect to see much help for ITV from the government. They did not help when ITV’s excellent news channel went to the wall. The government gained by reducing competition for its mouthpieces, SKY & BBC news services.