Melvyn Bragg: 'ITV taken over by suits'

[dutchman]

Lord Melvyn Bragg has criticised his former employer ITV, claiming that the broadcaster has been "taken over by slide rules and suits".

Last week, the veteran presenter confirmed plans to revive The South Bank Show on Sky Arts, after ITV cancelled the programme in December 2009.

Speaking yesterday to Radio 4's Media Show, Bragg said that ITV is now being managed according to "stupid consultancy scheduling".

"People who don't know how to design a boat are being asked to design a boat and then other people have to sail in it. I think they are wrong, wrong and wrong," he said.

"They look at these statistics and they think that's what it adds up to. They are so wrong and they will find out that they are wrong and I hope it's not too late."

Sky has agreed to broadcast The South Bank Show Awards in January next year on the Sky Arts channel, with Bragg also making a series of special documentaries about the winners.

Bragg said that ITV has abandoned its old schedule of cultural output in favour of commercial and populist programming.

"I think they thought, wrongly, that they'd run out of road with the sort of portfolio that had made them ITV," he said.

"That they'd got to concentrate their fire on a more strictly commercial outfit and that that would do the trick. I hope it does because I've got some friends there. I fear it won't."

Bragg said that television used to be run by people who believed in the medium, but is now operated on entirely different terms.

"It was taken over by slide rules and suits and on the whole a lot of the programmes that they used to be proud of they dropped and they're finding it hard to make a living. Now you draw what conclusions you want from that," he said.

Later, he added: "I think that a terrestrial broadcaster of [ITV's] size needs to cover the waterfront more than they're doing. It's the triumph of stupid consultancy scheduling that we're seeing."

Bragg praised his new home at Sky Arts, which he claimed is geared up to invest and support arts programming.

"They feel like an arts-making outfit. They're putting their money and their programmes where their mouth is," he said.

In April, Bragg said that the way the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 have covered politics in recent times has been an "absolute disgrace".