Monkey Business - Inside ITV Digital

The monkey tried to rescue ITV Digital

On March 27th ITV Digital collapsed, changing the face of British television forever. Shareholders Carlton and Granada, the biggest names in commercial TV, had poured more than a billion pounds into the digital terrestrial project.

An award-winning re-launch campaign involving a mascot called Monkey and comic Johnny Vegas could not halt the slide. ITV Digital pulled the plug, owing the Football League £179 million and leaving a million customers without a service for the digital boxes sitting in their living rooms.

In the week that the Government is to announce the new license holder for the digital terrestrial platform, the Money Programme investigates this cautionary tale of Britain's most expensive TV disaster.

ITV chiefs Michael Green and Charles Allen had made the mistake of taking on the most powerful man in British broadcasting, Rupert Murdoch. A catalogue of disasters followed the launch of their digital platform: inadequate technology, lack of equipment and worst of all, lack of content. Taste, Breeze, Wellbeing - their home-grown channels - were no match for BSkyB's movies and sport. In desperation they looked for something else. That something was football and ITV Digital were forced to pay £315 million for the rights to non-Premiership football with disastrous consequences.

Ten years earlier, in the same building, BSB had taken on Sky with the same combination of inadequate technology and lack of programmes. Is the British television establishment so hell-bent on keeping Murdoch out, that it cannot learn from its own mistakes? Is it muddle-headedness, or arrogance?

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Producer: Sarah Gregory
Reporter: Rajan Datar
Series Editor: Clive Edwards

'Monkey Business' will be shown on Wednesday 12 June 2002 at 7.30pm on BBC TWO