You can't regulate the back-biting

Court battles, charges of bias... The ITC is under fire from all sides, says Stephen Armstrong

On 12 February the Royal Television Society is throwing a farewell bash for David Glencross CBE, chief executive of the Independent Television Commission. Everyone will wear evening dress, drink fine wine, bitch about each other and tell Mr Glencross how much they will miss him. And almost all of them will be lying.

They are not angry with Mr Glencross personally. He has served the cause of TV regulation since 1970, when he joined the ITC's predecessor, the Independent Broadcasting Authority. It is the ITC itself that is generating rancour. The body, which regulates all commercial television in this country, is under fire at a time when it is trying to define its role under a new chief executive in a rapidly changing media world.

Last week, the High Court heard the opening shots in Virgin's battle to overturn the ITC's decision to award the Channel 5 licence to Channel 5 Broadcasting. Virgin was joined by fellow unsuccessful bidders UKTV and New Century Television. "The decision is seen as indicative of the ITC as supporter of the establishment," says one ITV board director. "That's why outsiders like Virgin are getting so heated."

HTV, Yorkshire Tyne Tees Television, Anglia and Meridian's owner, MAI, are also furious that they have been forced by the ITC to take ITN's news service, which they believe is overpriced. YTTV is also struggling to change its local programming and is meeting resistance.

Nor is all well within the body itself. According to one former ITC staffer, the relationship between the full-time officers and the actual commission - a council of the great and good - has deteriorated. "The reports of officers passing all Channel 5 bids on the quality threshold and then the commission overturning them do not surprise me," he says. "The chairman, Sir George Russell, can no longer control his members."

The source of all these troubles is the 1990 Broadcast Act, which created the ITC out of the ashes of the IBA. One intention of the Act was to replace the IBA with a regulator with a lighter touch. The ITC is a sprawling hive at the heart of television. It employs 180 staff in its two main offices in London and Winchester. In 1994 it took pounds 15.5m from ITV, Channel 4 and satellite stations to run its various committees. The ITC oversees programme quality, standards of taste and decency, advertising and sponsorship, and checks product placement within shows. It also issues broadcasting licences and ensures fair competition in advertising sales. It ensures ITV meets quotas on forms of programming and that 25 per cent of ITV's output is made by the independents. It nominates the news provider of ITV. It steers commercial digital television and oversees Teletext. And this is a lighter touch.

In searching for a chair in the late Eighties, the Government struggled, then turned to a former chairman of the IBA, Sir George Russell. He realised the commission would face enormous difficulties if it started from scratch. So he recruited most of the old IBA and placed David Glencross, his previous chief executive, in the same job at the ITC.

Inevitably, therefore, the ITC still has its heart and soul in the patrician control of television that the 1952 Conservative government insisted on when it published its white paper introducing commercial broadcasting. It is trying to straddle a competitive media market and preserve the quality of the old monopoly system. "The ITC is a rather weak regulator, as it is much happier trying to double-guess what its political masters want than having strong independent views of its own," says John Perriss, chairman of the media policy group at the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. "It's very Yes Minister. If the commission is to move into the 21st century, it should be closer to the American FCC, which acts as purely a licensing body and has no say in programming content. lt is not the job of a government body to decide how much religious television people should watch every week."

The relationship between the ITC and its licensees is curious. "The broadcasters react to the commission as children to a parent or teacher," says Mr Perriss. "They whine incessantly about this or that aspect of the commission's activity but preen themselves with pride and pleasure when congratulated by TV's nanny." Top-ranking TV executives shy away from saying anything on the record. They are acutely conscious that, at some point, they will have to go back to the regulator for licence renewal or to bat away some fine.

Despite his late-night youthfest The Word receiving numerous tickings off, Charlie Parsons, of the independent producer Planet 24, is right behind the idea of regulation. "Many of the rules the ITC operates under need to be changed, but if you took the regulator away, you would have so many problems with politicians or advertisers and commercial products," he says. "What British TV really needs is for regulation to be streamlined into a single body. At the moment, BBC programmes are under less stringent commercial regulations than ITV and Channel 4."

Revolution seems unlikely, however. The Broadcasting Bill ducks the issue. And though the ITC's incoming chief executive, Peter Rogers, is seen as less of a native public service broadcaster, his five years as deputy to Mr Glencross have prompted criticism of the appointment.

When he does arrive he will have to deal with licensees lobbying over a new chairman as George Russell departs this year. He will also have to begin reviewing ITV licences, staking the ITC's claim on new on-line services and mastering the increasingly complex cross-media ownership situation. Then there are the conferences and parties where broadcasters will shake his hand, congratulate him on work well done and then bitch in the toilets about the parlous state of TV regulation. Nice job.