Will 1,000 job losses be enough?
Often it is the little things that bring home what has changed at ITV - what has been lost.
Lee Bartlett, managing director of ITV Studios who succeeded Dawn Airey was as open and honest as he could be in the circumstances when he spoke an a Broadcasting Press Guild lunch yesterday.
It's taken Bartlett, Los Angeles born and bred, some time to come to terms with strange British television concepts such as regionalism, unnecessary layers of management and people working in silos, not talking to each other and fighting 50- year old battles.
It was when he was questioned about the decision not to go ahead with a new version of A Passage To India that the new realities at ITV became all too clear.
Lee was obviously involved in the decision to pull the plug on the production. Great script.It just wasn't going to make enough money.
Wonder if Lee has ever seen Brideshead Revisited or Jewel in the Crown?
Such a question has to stay unasked. It wouldn't be fair. Alas such thoughts and comparisons come from a prehistoric era or British television when ITV had a virtual monopoly of television advertising.
Now an ITV drama has to sell big around the world to be viable and and what may or may not have happened in a cave in India apparently just doesn't cut the mustard any more.
Where's the format to exploit?
ends