ITV has announced a recruitment freeze and a crackdown on spending as the economic slowdown continues to hit the broadcast ads market.
In an internal memo from COO Chris Kennedy and chief people officer David Osborn, republished in part by Broadcast, the broadcaster says that it is taking action to strengthen cost controls and “reduce spending across ITV”.
This includes pausing more than 200 open vacancies across the company in a recruitment freeze to provide immediate savings. This takes place with “immediate effect” and will remain in place for the first half of 2024.
Staff are also being asked to limit spending, with ITV bringing in tighter controls on expenses, training, travel, entertainment and pay as well as recruitment.
Direct production expenditure at ITV News, Sport and Studios are not included in the cost saving strategy initally, but the memo states that staff in those departments should continue to “adhere to our existing production processes and budgets.”
No redundancies are planned at this stage, and the executives said they would monitor the situation for the next six months: “We’ll review progress half way through the year and if we can relax these controls, we will. If we need to strengthen them further, we will,” the memo read.
The cutbacks at ITV mirror those at Channel 4, where CEO Alex Mahon has described the current economy as being “in market shock territory.” So far, at least, ITV appears to have avoided a repeat of the circa 250 job losses which are expected to be announced at its rival imminently.
