Ray Snoddy on Broadcasting

It's time for two cheers for Michael Grade for his performance as executive chairman of ITV so far. He led the way in announcing "zero tolerance" of broadcasting cheats and fakers - even though we now know ending premium phone line scandals cost the company £21 million in revenues in the first half of this year alone.

But while Grade has also clearly re-energised and inspired the company it is far too early for anybody to be basking in the sun. He can with some justice talk about seeing "encouraging" early signs of a turnaround, though mercifully there has been no reference to the green shoots of recovery.

The headline that probably best caught the mood following last week's announcement of results for the six months to the end of June was "ITV Profit Falls Less Than Expected". It is difficult to whistle too hopeful a tune when underlying profits merely fell from £202 million to £151million when City analysts anticipated a drop to £141 million.

The real grounds for optimism, apart from hope of better drama at 9pm and a good Rugby World Cup for the home nations, is the fact that estimated advertising for the third quarter might actually rise by1 per cent for ITV1 and up to 4 per cent across all ITV channels. Even this would be less than the expected growth in the TV market generally. It's not wonderful for ITV. It compares with a very low advertising base and could fade by Christmas. But some analysts noted rather sniffily that at least in July ITV may have had its first positive month in terms of audience share for about two decades.

You can bet that whatever happens Grade will do the best job that is humanly possible in the difficult circumstances.The worry is that the current may be flowing too fast in the opposite direction for Grade or anyone else to stand against it.

When the ITV chairman gets round to reading it, a report from Veronis Suhlar Stevenson, the US media investment firm, will increase the gloom. VSS found that for US consumers, at least, there was a growing trend away from traditional advertising-supported media in favour of paid-for entertainment such as the internet, video games and cable TV. The company says that from 2001 and 2006 the time spent by a typical consumer on paid for media increased by 16.8 per cent. Over the same period the time spent with traditional or ad-supported media such as broadcast television, radio or newspapers fell by 6.3 per cent. If such trends continue, and they might, it would spell bad news for the traditional media. For instance VSS expects online advertising spending to reach $54 billion by 2010 knocking print-based advertising off its perch as the largest advertising category.

It is not all quite as gloomy as it sounds. Even VSS acknowledges that online newspaper advertising in the US will grow to $7.7 billion by 2010. In the UK there are signs that advertisers are re-discovering the value of television advertising for building brands and are becoming slightly less credulous about the indiscriminate use of online advertising. Top advertisers abandoning Facebook because they did not want to take the chance of appearing next to pages for the British National Party provides a cautionary tale.

There are even signs of greater optimism in the UK national newspaper industry which has been fixated for years with depressing tales of declining paid-for circulations. There is a growing realisation that given the enormous growth of choice and competition over the past decade, the fact that more than 26 million people still read a national daily during any week, and more than 31 million on Sundays, is a remarkable achievement.

Now that Michael Grade has got zero tolerance out of his system it's time for him to go and do what he does best of all - making the public case for a resurgence of advertising-funded national television before it is too late. Decline is not inevitable but the case has constantly to be made to ITV's customers, both viewers and advertisers.

When he reports back on his first full year in office in the spring one thing is certain. Rather more will be expected of Michael Grade than a few "encouraging" signs of a turnaround.

(Raymond Snoddy presents Newswatch the BBC Television viewer access programme)

Get those hankies out, TV bigwigs on the rack

You need a bit of luck and a dash of controversy to make a session at the Edinburgh International Television Festival really interesting.

This year they've had both. The unknown hero who decided months ago that it would be a good idea to have an event called "Trust Me ...I'm in Telly" has given the festival a splendid launch on the opening Friday at the end of this month.

The big shots scheduled to face the music include Jana Bennett director of BBC Vision, Andy Duncan, chief executive of Channel 4 and Simon Shaps, ITV's director of television.

Between them they should be able to come up with bucketfuls of contrition – if not too many high level resignations.

One slight disappointment. Stephen Lambert of RDF and the man who might yet end up in the Tower for making the Queen walk in the wrong direction, was originally scheduled to make an appearance. For some reason it seems he is unable to take part. The session is being chaired by BBC presenter Nicky Campbell, pictured.

If the conversation flags Nicky could always ask his colleague Jana Bennett why the BBC didn't seek confessions from the guilty ones earlier – when the first piece of arrant fakery came out in the form of the phoney Blue Peter winner.

The answer might turn out to be that the dear old Beeb did indeed ask the dodgy ones to step forward. But no one did.

It was only at the second time of asking when a whistle-blower scattered the herd that the BBC finally discovered the shocking extent of the misdemeanours.

Terror and disease is good news for the BBC

There is nothing quite like bomb alerts, floods, new Prime Ministers and foot-and-mouth outbreaks – to put a spring in the step of television news chiefs.

Decline in terrestrial television audiences is not inevitable. They're still there for the big stories and they tend to move disproportionately in the direction of the BBC. The week ending 1 July had the Blair/Brown handover, the Yorkshire floods and the bomb attacks at the weekend. The Ten O'Clock News pulled in six million on Monday and ended up with an unheard of 9.5 million – at least in recent times - on Sunday, with the help of a useful inheritance from the Diana concert.

Meanwhile, News 24 nearly doubled its average annual reach to 10.5 million and although Sky News was also up, it was up by much less than the BBC news channel.

It's been a good period for BBC News overall with the BBC 1 One O'Clock News, Six O'Clock News and Ten O'Clock News all adding significant numbers of viewing and BBC Breakfast managing a one million each tie with GMTV.

News 24 now has an average weekly audience of 6.4 million compared with 4.3 million for Sky News. Sky argues the comparison is no longer valid because it is no longer on Virgin Media cable networks.

The overall message is that you can do something to arrest falling news ratings, although no-one would underestimate the difficulty of doing so. It would be rather unfortunate if the reward for such a mighty effort was redundancy.

There is also some good news for Independent Television News – though not a lot. for Channel 4 News, the best television news programme in the UK added 78,000 to take its total to 957,000 while BBC 2's Newsnight dropped 45,000 to 817,000.