Granada in the dock

Jun 23 2008 by Jim Hancock, Liverpool Daily Post

LAST week, the Liverpool- born newscaster Peter Sissons launched an outspoken attack in St George’s Hall on Granada TV’s lack of commitment to Merseyside.

His denunciation included the startling assertion that Liverpool’s recovery might have happened ten years earlier if Granada had given the city a fair deal.

The 1986 opening of the Albert Dock news centre was dismissed as a cynical sop to win a franchise renewal. The presenters of Granada Reports, in its new home, were Irishman Tom McGurk and what Mr Sissons described as Liverpool-hating Tony Wilson (he was a prat sometimes about this city, but he hated nobody, Mr Sissons).

The 1990 Mersey TV bid for the ITV North West franchise was evidence that the Albert Dock ploy hadn’t worked, and Phil Redmond was answering a plea for Merseyside to be better reportedd and reflected in programme content.

Sissons’s speech follows the publication of Ray Fitzwalter’s book, The Dream That Died: The Rise & Fall of ITV. Fitzwalter was editor of the investigative current affairs programme, World In Action, for 11 years.

His attack on ITV is more widely focused than Merseyside or even the North West. Here’s a flavour: "The major companies have merged to form one characterless ITV based in London. With few exceptions, its programming by 2007 ranged from the bland to the blander".

I worked for Granada as its Political Correspondent in the late eighties and early nineties. Some of my happiest broadcasting days were spent in the Albert Dock. Granada TV News was emblazoned across the Roman portico front. The state of the art newsroom hummed with activity upstairs. This was a statement that Granada was (perhaps belatedly) making a big commitment to Merseyside.

But it didn’t last long. Since the decamping of Richard and Judy’s This Morning programme to London, it has been downhill all the way. The news operation moved out and the golden letters have been removed from the front of the building.

But the reduction in commitment to regional programming by ITV is even more serious – everything except the (still lively) Granada Reports is under threat.

ITV is facing major financial challenges. Google now takes more advertising than ITV. But why make the economies in the regional programmes that once made the network distinctive from the then London centric BBC?

Because they’re not popular and don’t attract advertisers, say ITV insiders. Could that have anything to do with the fact that they are scheduled against Eastenders or after bedtime?

I was chairing an event in memory of Tony Wilson in Manchester yesterday. We were discussing the multi-channel digital media future with a young audience.

I was frankly surprised that they were demanding two things. First, they want political features to cast light on the way we are governed, and second they felt that it’s the quality and distinctiveness of properly-made programmes that matters.