Greg Dyke on Broadcasting

At last, ITV is truly independent. Sadly, it's now led by bean counters

Later this week, Ofcom will finally announce how much ITV will have to pay for its licences for the next seven years. While this will be widely reported on the business pages of the newspapers, cause a minor fuss in the City and create excitement or despair on the board of ITV, no one else is likely to care a lot.

Later this week, Ofcom will finally announce how much ITV will have to pay for its licences for the next seven years. While this will be widely reported on the business pages of the newspapers, cause a minor fuss in the City and create excitement or despair on the board of ITV, no one else is likely to care a lot.

In fact the announcement, which happens to coincide with ITV's 50th anniversary celebrations, will mark an historic moment in British television. It will bring to an end an era in which generations of politicians and regulators have had a profound influence over ITV. It will also bring to an end an era when the Treasury has been able to collect millions in special taxes because of ITV's reputation, created in the late Fifties, as "a licence to print money".

One thing certain is that, in the future, ITV will pay less for its various licences. How much less depends on which City analyst you believe. Some expect a cut of up to £160m a year, others as little as £60m, with most plumping for a cut of about £100m. Whatever the size of the cut, it will be backdated to the start of this year and the money will go straight to ITV's profits.

If the ITV optimists are right, it is likely to increase ITV's share price a bit and if they are wrong it will decrease it. But what really matters is that, for the first time in its history, ITV will be free from the straitjacket of political and regulatory control, because this is the last time the process will happen. In future, ITV is likely to pay nothing for its licences and won't really need them anyway, so the threat to ITV's future that the politicians and regulators have held over it for 50 years will be gone.

What the ITV companies have paid for over the years is the right to broadcast on a limited analogue spectrum. After the analogue signal is switched off in 2012, spectrum won't be limited and ITV won't have to worry what the regulators or the politicians think.

In the past, owning an ITV franchise was like a game of musical chairs. Everything was about pleasing the politicians and the regulator at the time the ITV franchises were about to be reallocated. Most ITV companies kept their licences, but the regulator always kept them on their toes by ensuring that one or two didn't. This meant that the leaders of the various ITV companies prayed that it wasn't theirs that was unpopular when the music stopped.

Thus a number of ITV companies lost their franchises in the beauty parade - like Southern Television or Westward - not because they'd done much wrong but because they were disliked by the IBA at just the wrong time.

The last Conservative government tried to bring economic rationality to the system by auctioning the franchises to the highest bidder. It didn't work out that way when the auction took place in the early Nineties. Two companies, TVS and West Country, lost their franchises not because they bid too little but because they bid too much, while others kept their franchises even though they had been outbid. And the management of Thames Television still believe they lost their London weekday franchise because they had upset Margaret Thatcher with a programme called Death on the Rock about the killing of several members of the IRA in Gibraltar.

All this will end this week. ITV will be told how much they'll be paying each year until the analogue signal is switched off, and that will be it. In future, no one in ITV will have to bid for a licence or pay large sums to the Treasury, so they won't have to worry about offending the regulator or crawling around the latest generation of politicians. Neither will be able to threaten their continued existence. ITV will be free.

From ITV's perspective, this could be seen as a golden opportunity to become a campaigning broadcaster able to take on the politicians whenever they like, with no fear of revenge. Sadly, that's unlikely to happen. Just at the time when ITV will be free to rock the boat, it has stopped making politically sensitive programmes such as Death on the Rock or troublesome current-affairs series such as World in Action.

When the current ITV board, without a single programme maker or person with a programme background among them, is combined with an ITV management led largely by accountants and ad men, you can understand why no one is interested in campaigning journalism any more.

It's all a bit sad; just when the chance is there to cause trouble, there's virtually no one on board who is interested. Some would call that Sod's law.