City & Business: Switched-on Roger

JILLY COOPER, writer of Riders and other racy popular novels, thinks he's 'absolutely brilliant'. In the City he's increasingly described as 'ubiquitous'. Traditional TV moguls regard him as jumped up and don't like him. But whatever your views - many believe he's bound to come a cropper - he's certainly creating waves. He is Roger Luard, chief executive of the media company Flextech. Deals come thick and fast, and even close followers are left gasping for breath; the ink barely dry on his purchase of TCI's main entertainment channels in the UK, he's now bought a 20 per cent stake in HTV, the ITV broadcaster for Wales and the West of England.

I'm generally as sceptical as the next man about high-flying entrepreneurs whose business and ambitions seem to float on a sea of self-serving publicity and deal-making, but I admit to being impressed by Mr Luard, his vision and his business. Those investors who manage to hang on to his coat tails - so far at least - make huge amounts of money and he has a growing band of City followers and supporters.

For me it is his view of the future of TV in Britain, with its dramatic and disturbing implications for the traditional terrestrial broadcasters of ITV and the BBC, that compels most. According to the latest figures from the British Audience Research Bureau, BBC and ITV channels account for little more than half of viewing in households which have broadband cable or satellite. BBC 1 and 2 achieve particularly poor ratings, sinking to as little as 23.2 per cent. At the moment it doesn't matter very much, since few households are cabled, but by the turn of the century penetration will have risen to 50 per cent or more, dramatically undermining the BBC and ITV duopoly.

For Flextech, which provides cable operators with a fair proportion of their basic package of channels, this is clearly extremely good news, and goes a long way towards justifying the apparently barmy stock market rating enjoyed by a company which by its own admission cannot pay even a token dividend until 1996. By the look of it, Luard has positioned Flextech as one of the most important TV providers in Britain.

But for the BBC, which has long claimed in defence of the licence fee that it will always hang on to more than 30 per cent of viewing in the UK, the outlook is bleak indeed. As a public service broadcaster its role will look increasingly irrelevant. If the BBC has a future at all, it must lie in exploiting its brand name as a high-quality programme producer and broadcaster in international markets; the BBC must transform itself into a global media player. The outlook for the main ITV players is scarcely better. In the domestic market, they can look forward only to a steadily shrinking proportion of the viewing and advertising cake.

So why has Luard bought into HTV? With cable as an alternative method of distribution, HTV's prospects are transformed, Luard claims. Other ITV companies ought to be thinking in terms of similar cable linkups for their programming; instead they seem intent only on consolidating mergers and acquisitions among themselves. Luard's view of the future may be exaggerated and dressed up to suit his own empire-building ambitions, but they also have a chillingly convincing feel.