Investors
Michael Grade Speech – ITV.com Launch
01/05/2007
Good Morning and thank you for coming to the press launch of ITV.com, our new broadband service.
“Variety; Drama; Features; Personalities; Sport; Childrens programmes; Womens Programmes and Pageantry.”
These are just some of the highlights from ITV’s first TV broadcast in 1955. Back then, ITV was tasked by the government with ‘making great television in a world where TV is immensely powerful.’ That was true then and half a century later, it still is now. But we are not just talking about Television anymore.
Of course you will still find drama, personalities and great variety on ITV - I’m afraid we’re still working on the pageantry - but the way we engage with our audience has fundamentally changed. Great content will always attract people to TV, but the industry has been transformed by technology. Today there is no longer just one screen to collapse in front of - there’s another on your desk and one more in your pocket.
All of us are grappling with the question of how you respond to these changes. But with every broadcasted launching new media services, the current obsession seems to be with ‘who is going to get there first?’ For me, the more important question is ‘who is going to get it right?’
From ITV’s perspective, I think that we have got it right, and I think our timing is spot on. Five years ago only 5% of UK homes had a broadband connection. Today it is over 50% and will reach at least 55% by the end of the year, with connection speeds rising and prices falling all the time. ITV is a mass market broadcaster and broadband is now a mass market proposition. So there is no better time than now to be launching a broadband service.
I believe we have developed a site that is more comprehensive than any other commercial broadcaster service, anywhere in the world. It’s a bold claim, but one that I think stands up to scrutiny. Some have got streaming, some have got catch-up, and some have got archive, but we’ve got all three, and much more besides. And when you consider the services we are developing for advertisers, there is nothing else - commercially at least - that comes close. We’re bringing the best of TV together with the best of the web to create something new and unique and compelling for consumers and advertisers.
Our Managing Director of Broadband, Annelies Van Den Belt, will
talk you through the site in a minute, but there are three areas
I’d like to particularly highlight.
First. The new ITV.com is, and will remain, a predominantly free
site. Our ‘click and watch’ technology means it is incredibly easy
to use - which is not true of many of the other broadcaster sites
out there around the world and in the UK - with our media player
sitting at the heart of every page.
The Emmerdale website last year showed you can build strong communities around content with more than 110,000 users signing up to follow Tom King’s murder investigation. This was significantly more than some of our pay experiments. There is also good evidence from the US where ABC’s online demand for Desperate Housewives increased by 16 times when it went from pay to free.
So we believe that free ad-funded content is more popular, and will be more profitable, than pay on our site. That doesn’t mean we rule out all pay altogether, but the vast majority of the site will be free at the point of consumption. It’s good for us, attractive for consumers and a really exciting proposition for our advertisers. And our online sales team is already working with our major advertisers to take online advertising to another level, without in any way undermining the consumer experience.
Second. The service is only going to be successful if our viewers feel they can really be a part of it. So as well as the web fora and the blogs, we are making user generated content (UGC) an integral part of our news service. As I’m sure you know, ITV News has led the way in using viewer content to break big news stories. With the Uploaded section of the site anyone can become a citizen correspondent, commenting and loading their clips onto the website with the best clips being shown on the ITV News bulletins that day.
Finally, this is a new platform in its own right, with its own
commissioning muscle. So as well as great TV content, we are
showing exclusive made-for-broadband content, starting with ‘Web
Lives’, a collaboration with award-winning filmmaker Roger Graef.
This is a new daily show with members of the public documenting
their lives in a series of 3-minute episodes. We will have more
original commissions as the site develops - some I hope from ITV
Productions - and we will be testing out different formats and
genres to see what works best for our online viewers. We are
committed to making 360 degree commissioning a reality, and I know
that the ITV.com team are already working closely with Simon’s team
to develop some great ideas that can be applied onscreen and
online.
So, to sum up. ITV has the UK’s most popular commercial channel,
the most successful family of digital channels, and soon we will
have the most comprehensive commercial broadcaster site in the
world.
The strength of the entire ITV family, from channels to
broadband, from ventures to mobile, comes from the quality of our
programmes and our investment in original UK content. This is a
unique strength for us and will help lift ITV.com head and
shoulders above the competition.
We launch to consumers within weeks and will be running a fully
integrated marketing campaign built around the concept of ‘Total
Freedom of Entertainment’.
However good we are at selling the site, we know that launching a site like this is not like launching a soap powder. It is not a commodity to be advertised and consumed - it’s something that people will find themselves. Something I hope they will email their friends about, and something that will grow and develop over time. By revealing the site to you today, ahead of our consumer launch, I hope we can start building that word of mouth straight away.