ITV Digital stays on-air
Staff wages and other bills at the collapsed TV broadcaster will be paid until April 15.
Granada and Carlton TV, owners of the digital service that went into administration yesterday, have told BECTU that they will underwrite the wage bill until April 15 if necessary.
In a deal struck with court-appointed adminstrators Deloitte Touche, the two companies which have lost an estimated £800m on ITV Digital agreed to put enough cash into the failed enterprise to pay on-going costs while the administrators try to rescue the business.
However, funding could be turned off before April 15, the deadline set for a new business plan, if no deal is reached with the Football League on ITV Digital's future payments for sports rights.
BECTU has called on Granada and Carlton to confirm that full severance payments, and pay in lieu of notice, will be given to staff if ITV Digital goes into liquidation, but both companies are holding back from making promises.
Although the union is hoping that the administrators will find a solution which keeps the digital network going in the long-term, the question of full pay-offs in the event of bankruptcy has been a main topic in converstions with Granada and Carlton since the court decision.
The collapse of ITV Digital, which transmits pay-per-view, as well as free-to-air, programming to 1.2m UK households, was widely predicted after the company signed up to record-breaking payments for football coverage, and was forced to subsidise its decoder boxes in response to aggresive marketing by satellite broadcaster BSkyB.
During the short history of Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT), which launched in 1998, BECTU has warned government that its failure to make a full commitment to a service which offered digital channels through normal home aerials, would play into the hands of BSkyB.
The satellite service, controlled by Rupert Murdoch, looks set to become the UK's monopoly provider of digital TV, following this week's announcement by cable company ntl: that it may not be able to honour its £12bn worth of debt.
Since the political debate on digital TV began, BECTU has consistently argued that the DTT system is the natural inheritor of the UK's public broadcasting tradition, and has welcomed the BBC's pledge to use ITV Digital's transmitters to offer a free-to-air service if the company finally goes under.
Calls for tighter regulation of BSkyB, and more support for the DTT platform, including the possibility of subsidised decoders, have been side-stepped by government.
The union is also stepping up pressure on Culture Minister Tessa Jowell to approve the start-up of BBC3, a new digital channel. BECTU, along with performers' unions Equity and Musicians' Union, believes that the £90m per year of new programming promised by BBC3 will be a desperately-needed boost to an industry reeling from the ITV Digital failure, and the worst recession ever experienced in advertising revenue.
Union members affected by ITV Digital's collapse, including those at many TV channels that could now face cutbacks, can call BECTU's broadcasting team - 0207 437 8506.