Carolyn McCall, CEO of U.K. media conglomerate ITV, doesn’t have her own office. Instead, on the open-plan top floor of ITV’s West London headquarters, she shares a desk with her executive assistan…
, doesn’t have her own office. Instead, on the open-plan top floor of ITV’s West London headquarters, she shares a desk with her executive assistant and her chief of staff. Right now, she’s sitting in a communal alcove around the corner while employees bustle past. It’s par for the course for a woman who “always wanted to be the visible leader,” as Alan Rusbridger, her former colleague at The Guardian, says.
“This Morning” swiftly put out a statement saying that Willoughby and Schofield were accredited press and had walked past the coffin as part of a package they were broadcasting on the funeral. But the controversy continued to pick up wind, fueled by tweets, petitions and memes. At one point even Domino’s Pizza U.K. jokingly tweeted: “Apologies to anyone waiting on their pizza, we’ve just received an order from Holly and Phil,” which racked up more than 180,000 likes.
Still, Clarkson has returned for the latest season of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” which wrapped just a few weeks ago. “We’re contracted to this one,” McCall explains. “So we will do that. And then we have no future commitments, and we haven’t made any statements about that.” It was McCall’s business-to-consumer experience coupled with an instinct for innovation, that persuaded the ITV board that she was the woman to lead the company into a new era. Former ITV chair Peter Bazalgette, who first reached out to McCall about the CEO position, describes her as a “forward thinker.” In the mid 1990s, for instance, McCall and Rusbridger flew to San Francisco to learn about the then-nascent World Wide Web.
But McCall’s “ultimate legacy,” as Jonathan Shalit, chair of U.K. management agency InterTalent Rights, points out, will be ITVX, a U.K. streaming platform that launched in December, replacing the company’s much maligned SVOD app ITV Hub. A prime example is “Nolly,” a new drama starring Helena Bonham Carter and written by “It’s a Sin” and “Doctor Who” showrunner Russell T. Davies. Bonham Carter plays ’80s soap star Noele Gordon, who was inexplicably booted off a real-life TV show called “Crossroads” at the height of her career. McCall says she wasn’t convinced when ITV’s director of television, Kevin Lygo, first told her about the show. “I went, ‘“Crossroads”? No one under 40 will know what that is,’” she admits.
McCall shoots down any hint she may be jettisoning the business or even a part of it. “ITV Studios is not for sale,” she says firmly. But the CEO acknowledges the stock market doesn’t really seem to “get” ITV Studios, given that, when it comes to production, outlay is large, return is slow and margins are generally small. But ITV is an integrated broadcaster-producer, meaning it gets multiple bites of the pie every time a show is made in-house, sold internally and then licensed externally.
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