The schedules were already looking muddled by the changes to News at Ten – which prompted even cabinet ministers to take an interest in what was going on in independent television.David Elstein, a former chief executive of Channel 5, said yesterday: “ITV is just going through the most horrendous period in terms of ratings. The new soap Night and Day failed to hit the mark and the return of Crossroads became something of a national joke. Leslie Hill, the network’s chairman, and Stuart Prebble, its chief executive, have both departed recently.In recent months, fierce competition from the BBC has seen ITV lose the title of the nation’s favourite channel for the first time since commercial television began, with its share of the audience slumping to 24.6 per cent, compared with 26.1 per cent for BBC1.Mr Liddiment’s disastrous decision – quickly reversed – to schedule Premiership football early on Saturday evening, and the defection of the daytime stars Richard and Judy, compounded the sense that ITV had lost its way. Who would want to do it?” one former television executive said.His decision to go comes after one of the most difficult years in ITV’s history, with the debacle over ITV Digital and a catastrophic fall in advertising revenue. He was the man who struck gold with Who Wants to be a Millionaire? but was wide of the goal when he made Premiership football the staple of early Saturday evening viewing.
David Liddiment announced yesterday that he was to quit as ITV’s programming supremo – the job he professed to love more than any other – after five years in one of the toughest jobs in broadcasting.He will leave towards the end of the year once a successor has been appointed to the £300,000-plus post, having spent all bar two years of his career working for independent television.The television industry was left wondering yesterday who could possibly succeed him “It’s a pretty tough job. It will not do so until 95 per cent of homes have access to digital.The ITC said it considered a range of factors in coming to its decision, including proposals for implementing and improving coverage and the ability to “establish and maintain the proposed service throughout the licence period”.The BBC-BSkyB-Crown Castle bid was considered best-suited to fulfilling the requirements and promoting digital terrestrial television (DTT) by marketing strategies.Sir Robin Biggam, chairman of the ITC, said: “The Commission believes that the BBC-Crown Castle application is the most likely to ensure the viability of digital terrestrial television.”It will target those viewers who have not been so far attracted by digital TV and will help facilitate the move towards digital switchover.”.

The BBC has won the three vacant digital terrestrial television licences left after the collapse of troubled broadcaster ITV Digital, the Independent Television Commission announced today. The BBC and Sky are the dominant market players.To placate these concerns, the ITC may attach conditions to a BBC win, over access to the platform for other broadcasters and asking for a commitment to consider adding pay services at a later stage.Nick Bell, an analyst at Banc of America, said: “A decision [for the BBC] would be indicative of a loss of support in Government circle for Carlton and Granada, with potential negative implications for the timing of a merger between the two.”. The BBC and Sky will control what goes on this platform.”Although the BBC proposition threw up considerable regulatory concerns and it failed to provide any pay-TV element to its bid, it is considered the safest choice for the ITC. The closure of ITV Digital threatened the Government’s entire digital strategy, damaging ITV’s relationship with Downing Street and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.Conor O’Shea, an analyst at BNP Paribas, said: “It would be very difficult on political grounds to give ITV a second chance after all the negative publicity over ITV Digital But that leaves ITV without a digital strategy Medium term, I think that’s a real concern. The BBC-BSkyB alliance is favourite to be awarded the digital terrestrial licences today by the regulator, in a major blow to the rival ITV-Channel 4 consortium.
Betting in media and City circles was firmly on the BBC’s proposal for 24 free-to-air channels as the Independent Television Commission met yesterday to decide on the award of the licences vacated by the defunct ITV Digital The decision is due to be announced at 7.30 this morning. Perhaps the truth is that he realised no decision he took had relevance, given the decline of commercial terrestrial TV: flourishing subscription services, advertisers who want ever-more precise information about what their money is buying them, and the collapse of ITV Digital into a big hole Maybe David Liddiment got tired of digging.. BBC1’s ratings overtook ITV’s for the first time.One theory is that Liddiment wanted to quit while he was ahead.

The handcuffs turned out to be be on the wrists of ITV, the channel with an obligation to find vehicles for stars who haven’t always been up to driving them.Recently, Liddiment’s strategies have demonstrated timidity and nostalgia: the startlingly innovative soap Night and Day needed nurturing, but got axed; by contrast, the dull, efficient resurrection of Crossroads, not a ratings success, has been given a second chance.While there have been big successes – Pop Stars, Pop Idol – weekday schedules have leaned heavily on a tedious mix of soaps, detectives and Carol Vorderman. One was buying in soap and drama stars with fabulously expensive “golden handcuff” contracts, Robson Greene, Sarah Lancashire, Kemps Martin and Ross. He has since been involved with a variety of Asian voluntary projects in the area.Shamim told the group briefly about a trip he had made to Andalusia, with its glorious Moorish architecture dating from the medieval centuries in which Islam dominated Spain. But crammed into the tiny terraced house, with its knocked-through ground floor, were around 60 young men Their ages ranged between 18 and 25 Their backgrounds were more diverse “He’s had problems with alcohol,” whispered my companion “He was a crack-head He was another alkie He was done for stabbing a white man in the thigh There’s a few with convictions for violence. Still, if Kazuo Ishiguro can represent the English as angst-ridden anal retentives, why can’t Appignanesi represent the Japanese as nostalgic puritans and infantile homosexuals – the whole bloody lot of them?. In fact, Mishima was happily married with two children, and dearly loved his wife, Yoko.So we end up with a Japanese replica of a Catholic-Italian-Englishman’s fanciful imitation of an Japanese garden.

Mishima’s genius, his overtly masculine novels in the samurai-warrior tradition, his patriotic desire to purify Japanese constitution of its Western impurities, his rage against his country being mesmerised by Western materialism, his mission to restore divinity to the Emperor – all are a product of his alleged homosexuality. Thus the intricacies of Japanese culture, its notion of beauty and morality, all come down to sex. Appignanesi has constructed a Japan that is full of complex, rounded human beings, overflowing with pain, sorrow, expectation and desire.But by sidestepping conventional Orientalism, Appignanesi has invented a new, totally politically incorrect, form of Orientalism. Appignanesi’s Japan is far removed from the Orientalist image of a cold, impersonal and machine-like culture.