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ITV may well have pulled off a major coup in appointing the towering figure of Archie Norman as the broadcaster’s new chairman. What’s more the £300,000 salary is 10% of what he was paid when he left ASDA.  This is undoubtedly one of the toughest jobs in TV.  Advertising revenues have been in free fall, audiences are down and the once coveted position on the terrestrial tuner is no longer that valuable.   Media experts like the Guardian’s Emily Bell have been foreshadowing the third channel’s demise for some time ”ITV looks like a basket case” she wrote earlier this year.

So why might Norman, an acknowledged powerhouse in retail and politics but with no media experience, change the game?   It is precisely because, unlike current chairman Michael Grade, he isn’t shackled by conventional ideas.  ITV has been quietly making progress of late and not because of the audience grabbing ratings winning X-Factor.   They are on the brink of doing a major deal with US video on demand venture Hulu which could see ITV holding a 25% equity stake in the UK operation of the Disney, NBC Universal, and News Corp joint venture.  Online TV delivery is the future for the medium and this could make ITV a major player.   Cutting deals with the Americans can be tough but let’s not forget that Norman is the man took ASDA to Walmart.

Some say that ITV’s only real value lies in the content, Coronation Street and X-Factor (and it doesn’t own the latter).   Archie Norman will restore some of the power balance from programme makers to the broadcaster.   He’s not a person likely roll over and have his tummy tickled by the likes of Simon Cowell.

As Steve Hewlett so succinctly put it in Media Guardian, “A major British media company with no effective strategy, no chief executive, an underpowered board and restless shareholders prone to interfering, facing the worst advertising recession in living memory, a digital revolution and the likelihood of a change of government. Splendid.”

As ITV reels, Ofcom is putting the finishing touches to its latest recommendations on relaxing the rules on commercial broadcast news in the regions, just a few months after recommending that the walls between regional print and broadcast ownership be torn down. 

In what used to be fondly referred to as Granadaland, you could be forgiven for feeling vaguely sorry for would-be media barons, what with all these exciting new opportunities and barely a sniff of profit anywhere to be found.

 Representing the old guard media owner, Trinity Mirror has pulled production of weeklies back to its Liverpool HQ, closed titles, moved printing to Oldham and laid off journalists and production staff.  It has set up its own TV studio, sees the logic of a shared newsroom with a radio station and says it would consider making a bid if Ofcom chooses the North West for its pilot plans for a de-regulated regional news service.

In the corner of the bright new owners, Ten Alps has been described as “one of the UK’s most exciting media companies” by Wayne Garvie, director of content & production at BBC Worldwide.  Based in Macclesfield, it has already said that it will bid for a Granadaland licence.

But where will the content come from?  Who has enough journalists left to provide a regional news service worthy of the name? 

Perhaps, whisper it soft, the time has finally come to stop treating PR professionals, and particularly those working in the public sector, as the enemy. 

There are enough of us ex-print and broadcast journos working on this side of the fence, hopefully with some news integrity still intact, for there to be a serious reappraisal of what regional broadcast journalism could do. 

Why shouldn’t people rely on independent local broadcast news, backed up by websites and a print title, for all that useful information that used to come in their local paper?  Is it really impossible to devise a format that will allow some funding for local broadcasting to come from local authority budgets for communications and consultation?   

Much as all PRs love the buzz of getting their story onto the local TV news, can we still afford the whole seduction process for public sector content?  Why can’t community broadcasting raise its game and its standards?

Time for some people who love broadcasting to show the accountants what can be done…