ITV doesn’t come for free: it’s still us who pay for the ‘talent’
We’ll all remember what we were doing when we heard that Richard Madeley was to take the Good Morning Britain job on a permanent basis.
I was sitting down somewhere; reading the news that Richard Madeley was to take on the Good Morning Britain job on a permanent basis. His wife has agreed that he should get out of the house more. Many have expressed sympathy with this viewpoint.
Richard, master of the snappy 387-word question, has reportedly been signed up by ITV after he was allegedly “proven a constant hit with viewers”.
For a programme that draws an average 700,000 of the UK’s 67 million citizens, it receives an incommensurate amount of attention (and here I am, joining in). Mr Madelely, surely an inspiration for the creation of Alan Partridge, continues this trend.
While his professional shortcomings inspire some inadvertent amusement, we can’t be certain what ITV’s claims for the man’s apparently stratospheric levels of popularity are based upon. I looked at our Facebook page and could literally not find one positive comment for him. Several were actually rather cruel.
Some claim they will tune just to have the opportunity of switching him off. Others have expressed a preference for watching paint – it needn’t necessarily be drying.
Well, at least he inspires opinion, but one aspect to the story attracting little comment is Richard’s reported £300,000 annual salary for four days work per week.
ITV is not immune to paying huge fees to presenters who are as replaceable as a 40-Watt bulb.
There’s Holly Willoughby; still attempting to crack sincerity. Then there’s the extraordinarily mediocre Ant & Dec, whose popularity among their fans is yet to be explained to the rest of us. Two randomly selected Butlin’s red coats could provide adequate surrogation.
Their salaries are bewilderingly enormous and ratings provide no defence. It’s long established that any nonentity will be watched by millions if plonked on Saturday night telly.
But imagine if the BBC was paying them. You have even less say in paying for ITV than the Beeb. Advertising, and by extension YOU, remunerate these people via your shopping bill.
Depressing really.