Over the christmas period, I was up in Yorkshire - and quite unaccountably found myself watching ITV. The last time I watched ITV, I think, I was watching the World Cup. I never see anything worth watching on ITV - and, therefore, never also see anything worth watching on the rerun ITV2/3/4 channels.

What was fascinating on ITV Yorkshire was the amount of local advertising. Indeed, the channel was full of ads for Dixon (the car dealer), Perrys, Evans Halshaw and Reg Vardy (who appear to have merged or something); and many local furniture dealers and double-glazing companies. Some ads were -really- local: a caravan place in Lincoln was one of the advertisers, who’d have bought the Belmont transmitter only (from memory, YTV splits into three ad regions).

A lot was said last year about the dire state that ITV is apparently in. It probably shouldn’t be forgotten that Charles Allen did a pretty good job of salvaging much of the company: successfully completing the merger of Carlton/Granada; and successfully masterminding the launch of ITV3 and ITV4 (yes, and ITV Play, but let’s ignore that for now). The appointment of Michael Grade was seen as a masterstroke, coming just after a 20% purchase by BSkyB. Indeed, people appear to have stopped talking-down ITV: possibly after reportedly both BSkyB and Virgin were after a bit of it.

Perhaps the forgotten thing about ITV is its strength: regionality. While Channel 4 and five both offer regional television advertising, regionality is still the lifeblood of ITV, with local news and enforced local programming. They’re in probably the best place to make the most of this: there are precious few television channels who allow brands to advertise in small regions like ITV: certainly none with the audience.

To me, the local advertising really stood out - possibly somewhere as high as 30% of the advertising I saw was local. Gone were the horrific ‘local’ ad breaks I remember seeing on YTV in the late 1990s, full of radio voiceovers and captions; now, local advertising was of high quality and placed alongside national brands. The ads were excellently produced: one for a car dealer starred Jim Bowen, but the voiceover apologised that they’ve paid him to appear, but can’t afford his voice - Bowen always wanting to say something but remembering not to at the last minute. Another, for another car dealer, had Tiff Needell (ex of Top Gear) talking about the merits of the dealer’s swapshop programme.

The unique strength of ITV (and that of commercial radio, of course) is that, unlike national newspapers, magazines and even the internet, it can carefully target small regions of the UK, putting those brands alongside the national brands that it also carries. It’s a useful buffer against the vagaries of the national marketplace. The London-centric media can easily forget that the local marketplace can still be a very interesting place to be: and I was certainly rather taken-aback by the amount of local names I saw on YTV - far more than I remember there being.

Now, all they need is some decent programmes, of course. But then, having been away from any ITV programme for quite a while now, I don’t really recognise any of the station’s big stars or main programmes. Perhaps that’s part of the problem for ITV to fix: but it would seem that it’s got its own personal pot of regional advertising revenue that nobody else can really manage.

Disclosure: I work for a company which also owns two ITV regional franchises; though not in Yorkshire or London, and one which is a Virgin trademark licensee; this is a personal viewpoint.

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