For Broadcast April 29, 2009

Broadcaster's new boss must embrace web revenues to secure its future.

Michael Grade was caught on camera at the Baftas sitting in one of the front rows – as well he should. It is a perfect place for a man with a long and prestigious television CV.

But perhaps his successor needs to be someone not so steeped in the traditions of TV's past. While there was no one from YouTube celebrating a Bafta this week, the video site must have been on people's minds when they saw Michael clapping a win for clip show Harry Hill's TV Burp. Clips have become a hot topic at ITV, which has seen Britain's Got Talent singer Susan Boyle become an overnight YouTube star.

There have been more than 100 million hits for the not-so-glamorous-but-oh-what-a-voice Boyle in the past fortnight, but Grade's ITV refuses to work with YouTube, branding it, and its parent company Google, "parasites". There are certainly compensation issues to be worked out with YouTube, but not working with the video site has lost ITV (and BGT producers Talkback Thames and Syco) real money on the Susan Boyle clip.

Estimates of how much range from £250,000 to £1.5m, but even if it's closer to the former, these are hard economic times for ITV and a few hundred thousand is not to be sneered at. It also compares well with what itv.com has so far generated from Britain's Got Talent, which according to Fremantle has attracted 12.6 million video plays on the itv.com site. Given ITV's average CPM for pre-roll ads and a bit more from sponsorship and banners, that has likely added up to about £350,000.

Talkback Thames owner Fremantle Media underlined its frustration with ITV by launching its own Britain's Got Talent channel on YouTube last Friday. The channel is available in every territory – except the UK, because ITV won't allow it.

Grade has been intractable in his criticism of Google. While other broadcasters are monetising the piracy and pushing the envelope in showing TV on the web, he has been fighting fires, slashing costs and head counts. This is not altogether wrong but it is possible to miss the forest for the tree-cutting.

The bigger point is that ITV will never be able to simply return to the glory days of being a licence to print money.

If Grade sees the future as simply a return to "normal" after the economy picks up and the ad cycle turns, perhaps he should consider relinquishing the non-executive chairman role he plans to retain.