Cash-strapped BBC? It outbid us for Meghan’s old show, says ITV boss

AN ITV boss has hit out at the BBC for buying the rights to a US legal drama starring the Duchess of Sussex – just as it ‘bleats’ about budget cuts.

Kevin Lygo, ITV’s programming chief, revealed the publicly funded broadcaster had ‘outbid’ his own company to acquire the show Suits.

Speaking at the Voice of the Listener and Viewer spring conference in London yesterday, Mr Lygo said it was a poor use of taxpayers’ licence fee money, adding: ‘You hear the BBC bleating about it [lower budgets for programming] and yet they have all the money in the world.

‘Why do they buy all that American stuff? I have had a go at so many different BBC people about this.

‘They just bought Suits, you know the thing with Meghan Markle in. You think why? They outbid us. What’s that got to do with licence fee payers’ money?’

ITV has long held concerns about the way the BBC competes for the rights for foreign shows amid fears it is driving the price up for rivals. It has previously accused the BBC of buying up expensive US shows to ‘maximise’ younger audience viewing figures. The BBC revealed last month it had acquired all nine seasons of Suits, in which Meghan, pictured, starred as paralegal Rachel Zane.

It comes after media regulator Ofcom told the BBC last year it needed to be more open about its strategy for buying foreign shows – and how acquiring foreign shows instead of making its own British programmes supported ‘distinctiveness’.

In a submission to Ofcom, ITV had said: ‘The first issue with the BBC acquiring mainstream third-party content is that it sits uncomfortably with its mission to be distinctive and take creative risks... The BBC competes against other broadcasters, such as ITV, inflating the price at which the content is purchased.’

A BBC spokesman said: ‘Our spend on acquisitions remains very small compared to our overall budget, where we are the largest producer of originated programmes in the UK. We spend less than 5 per cent of our annual content budget on acquired programmes, far less compared with other broadcasters.’ Meanwhile, Mr Lygo admitted ITV’s hugely popular, agenda-setting drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office in fact lost about £1million amid lacklustre programme sales abroad.

The series, detailing how hundreds of innocent sub-postmasters were wrongly accused of theft due to a defective IT system, prompted public outrage and helped put the Horizon scandal in the spotlight. Twelve foreign broadcasters have bought the rights to the series, but even that was not enough to break even.

Mr Lygo told the conference: ‘It’s a challenge to be able to fund some of the things that aren’t obviously of international appeal... if you’re in Lithuania, four hours on the British Post Office? Not really, thank you very much. You can see the challenges.’