By me: Last month, ITV chief executive Carolyn McCall announced a nearly two-thirds fall in its pre-tax profits in 2023 to £193m, with revenues falling 3% to £4.2bn. McCall laid the blame on, you guessed it, the “challenging advertising market”. Like all commercial broadcasters, ITV is in a tough spot, made all the more diffcult by the fact that the largest UK commercial broadcaster has only lately pivoted to streaming, and still relies on linear advertising from its traditional channels business for half its revenues and the lion’s share of its margin. To counter the ad fall, ITV’s ‘restructuring and cost-efficiency’ programme will be accelerated beyond an earlier hiring freeze, McCall said, with the target of £150m in cost savings by 2026, a year earlier than originally planned. The market liked that and the stock rose, but the plan is expected to include redundancies as well as operational efficiencies. ITV is not alone in cutting costs. Channel 4 has announced it will shed some 18% of its workforce (240 posts) as part of its shift away from dependence on traditional TV advertising towards digital income streams. Germany’s ProSiebenSat.1 is just coming out of a two-year ad market slump, with prices down 10%. ProSiebenSat.1 is also leaning into streaming via its online platform Joyn but, like ITV, it needs time and expertise to develop this new and very different business. According to Enders Analysis, costs at ITV have risen 19% since before Covid, yet revenues have risen only 10%. This is unsustainable, hence McCall’s move to ramp up efficiencies. The big unknown is when the advertising monies will fl ow again, and at what level. There is cautious optimism that ad revenues are returning – but will it simply be a ‘dead cat bounce’? Even in a more robust ad market, there is another problem: the cannibalisation effect. As the streaming business grows, how much is it siphoning ad monies from the linear advertising business? And while ITV appears to have succeeded in its mission to attract ‘lighter viewers’ through ITVX, this hasn’t been enough to offset the decline in linear viewing: ITVX grew viewership in February by circa 35%, but overall viewing in the same month was down 3.4%, according to ITVX Debrief, published by the broadcaster. Put bluntly, broadcaster video on demand viewing (BVoD) is a small part of total viewing, and even robust digital advertising growth – ITVX was up £72m (21%) year on year – was unable to balance out the £225m drop in linear ad revenues. ITV was the slowest UK broadcaster to embrace BVoD, and ITVX claimed 9% of total viewing for all UK broadcaster platforms in 2023, lagging behind both BBC iPlayer (17%) and Channel 4 (14%), according to Enders Analysis. McCall forecast light at the end of the tunnel, predicting ad revenues will rise 3% in the first quarter of 2024 – and that the Uefa Euro 2024 football tournament in the summer will keep the momentum going. Let’s hope for ITV’s sake England plays well.

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