Fincham: indies should forget terms of trade

The X Factor, ITV1

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Indies need to be prepared to ignore the terms of trade when negotiating with ITV during the financial downturn, Peter Fincham has warned.

ITV's director of television, channels and online told Broadcast that the whole industry was entering "choppy financial waters", which made it "timely" to reconsider the terms of trade and to "ask questions that haven't been asked before and challenge assumptions".

"It's a battle we'll all have to face up to together. We want to get money on the screen, but suppliers need to make margins, we respect that," he said.

Fincham, who ran Talkback Productions and then the merged Talkback Thames for almost 20 years, said he had been prepared to do deals outside the terms of trade. "We are talking to suppliers about the flexibility they can have working with us. It feels different during times of growth than when the ad market is contracting. People who box clever at times like this can thrive. People who put the barriers up and say 'that's how we do things', a bit less so."

ITV executive chairman Michael Grade has repeatedly called for the broadcaster's relationship with suppliers to be deregulated, including an end to the 25% indie guarantee.

Fincham added: "Quite a lot of our suppliers are bigger than ITV. It's a very different model from when the indie sector was created 20 years ago. Nobody can say that Endemol or Talkback Thames are dependent on us."