ITV Digital has duty to staff
The collapsed digital broadcaster has been challenged to honour staff contracts.
Responding to the announcement that ITV Digital will cease its pay-TV transmissions from midnight on April 30, BECTU has called for parent companies Carlton and Granada to underwrite notice and severance payments for its 1300 staff.
Assistant General Secretary Gerry Morrissey said:"Granada and Carlton may not believe they have a duty to the Football League but they have got a duty to the staff employed by ITV Digital. As partners in ITV Digital we expect Carlton and Granada to make good any contractual and statutory entitlement that the staff have."
The two ITV giants saw their digital service fall into administration last month after ploughing nearly £1bn into ITV Digital since its launch in 1998.
"The collapse of ITV Digital must not be allowed to affect programme budgets for ITV1 just because Carlton and Granada have lost money on this venture", said Morrissey. "Both companies have seen a serious decline in audience share and with it a decline in advertising revenue. Therefore the cutback on programme budgets is just going to make the spiral of decline even worse. ITV is having a difficult time at the moment, but let's be clear - they are not losing money, they are just making less of it."
Observers have predicted that the failure of ITV Digital, coming on the heels of cable company ntl struggling to re-schedule enormous debts, could leave BSkyB's satellite system as the only source of digital programming in the UK.
Morrissey called on the government and the ITC regulator to ensure that the digital terrestrial platform is maintained. "If it was allowed to fold", he said, "then it would mean digital satellite would ultimately be the dominant platform and this would be damaging to the British broadcasting industry."
BECTU has been campaigning for ITV companies to fulfill the commitments in their licences to the production of regional programmes, and has also expressed worries that the ITV digital collapse will lead to significant job losses outside London, in cities which have already seen job losses due to earlier ITV cutbacks.
Broadcasting Minister Kim Howells is due to meet all ITV unions (BECTU, NUJ, and Amicus) on May 14, where representatives plan to raise concerns about the future of regional output.
ITV Digital's three digital mulitplex licences have been returned to the ITC, which plans to advertise them to potential new operators from May 1. Free-to-air broadcasters, including the BBC, who transmit using the Digital Terrestrial Television system run by ITV Digital plan to continue offering their programmes to viewers who still have set-top boxes.
Union members working at ITV Digital can obtain advice from BECTU Head Office on 020 7437 8506.