it s begun, the uk s first contestent forjunior eurovision since 2005 is about to take to the stage in the next hour. now on bbc news, the media show. hello and welcome. my guest this week is kevin lygo, the managing director for itv of media and entertainment. as such, he s responsible for all of the programming for itv on its tv networks, and on its new streaming service, itvx. he began his media career working on the two ronnies as a trainee at the bbc. he s also been a dealer in islamic art in paris for a while.
i think the bbc is the place for matt hancock. we will see. at itv, you are a broadcaster and a producer, selling programmes around the world. i m interested to know how your role straddles those purposes for itv. when ijoined itv, for about five years or more, i ran the studios, the production side of the business, and we all identified that it needed bolstering and it needed to grow, and owning your own programmes was a good thing to do. so we have spent many years investing in it, growing it, to now, it is maybe the biggest producer in europe sort of thing. it is a very important side and i don t manage that but obviously, now commissioning, i don t know, over half of the programmes we have at itv, on all the channels, are made by our studios.
so in the days it was designed, it was about you put your programmes out on the channels on them for 30 days, you could catch up if you missed it. that was the thinking behind it. now, the iplayer has changed all of this, and now what itvx is is a way. think of it more as a destination that you would go to to watch and itv programme and when you are there, it is so user friendly and look so good and the rest of it that you will find a plethora of other programmes, things you missed orl things you did not even know were there. it is a whole world where you can spend time watching shows. you re optimistic about it. i wonder why you think the itv share price fell nearly 20% when the plans were announced, and has not recovered. why do you think investors are nervous about it? i think investors can be funny about investment! what itvx is for itv is a serious investment. we re spending £160 million on new programming and it s additional,
quite what itv hoped for? how very dare you?! no, it was. do you know, the way that people watch television has changed and is changing all the time. all of us, if you think how you watch television at home, the streamers have influenced beyond anything else the way we now watch television programmes. that much, but the idea that the type of programme may not have shifted that much, but the idea that i want to watch what i want when i want and how i want is a big shift. i think streaming has done that. but that was true 12 months ago. what will i get from itvx that i will not get from the hub? the hub was designed to be a catch up service.
dropped every week, mainly from america, but also from the bbc and itv. so the choice is extraordinary, and this certainly is sharpening the wits of producers and writers and creators to meet that challenge. so help me understand what it is that makes one programme cut through all of that. let s focus on love island, one of your biggest hits. why do you think that format has generated so much interest, in a way that lots of other formats don t? yeah, i wish i really knew the answer to that one. i think what s extraordinary about love island is. i m so glad for everyone in television it came along when it did, because the accepted wisdom was, oh, young people don t watch terrestrial television anymore, they don t look at the schedule,