Adam Crozier, CEO of UK commercial broadcaster ITV, has admitted he went against the recommendations of shareholders and other advisors upon joining the company five years ago who suggested getting rid of the rump of the content side of the business and focus instead on the UK broadcaster. “Even then, you could see just how important creating your own content was to become with all the changes that were taking place,” he told delegates during a Media Mastermind Keynote at MIPCOM.

“We decided to put content at the heart of that strategy. Our media strategy was quite simple: make great content, make it famous on our channels and then sell it around the world. He noted that ITV was now the biggest independent producer of non-scripted programmes in the US and the third biggest distributor in Europe. “We have gone from having just three drama teams five years ago to 15.”

He defended traditional TV against suggestions it was in decline. “Channel brands are not dead and the 30-second ad is still vitally important. TV is the most powerful medium in the world. The Internet would love to have what we have.”

He suggested that television viewing was “vastly under-measured” at the moment but felt that this would be addressed by ensuring that measurement across a range of different platforms was possible. He said that the desire for great content would never go away. “ And that’s why it doesn’t matter whether you started life as a telephony company, a broadband company, an Internet company, a media company, the key differentiator for the future, whatever your set of pipes, will be what you have on those pipes, in other words, content.”

Categories: Articles, Broadcast, Content, FTA, Rights