Granada won its battle for Forte against the odds, and he expects to be just as successful growing the media business, with his sights firmly on the very big leagues.Charles Allen: caterer with an appetite for takeoversJob: chief executive of Granada and chairman of Granada Media GroupBorn: Lanarkshire, Scotland, in 1957Early career: financial management at British Steel, TM Group and Grand Metropolitan, where he helped to launch a management buyout of its catering subsidiary, Compass, with colleague Gerry Robinson, who is now chairman of GranadaRecent moves: joined Granada in 1991 and is ultimately responsible for its leisure, catering and television interests. “We need to show that we are a pretty girl at the party,” he says.Granada Media Group will have a struggle to compete globally. It is without a doubt a leading UK broadcaster, one of three – the others being Michael Green’s Carlton Communications and Yorkshire-Tyne Tees – that dominate domestic commercial television. They will be fighting at the margins, not necessarily in peak viewing, and there will be competition.” He expects the daytime schedule to be a prime battleground.Whatever the future of traditional terrestrial TV, Allen reckons the real money will come from the introduction of digital services, be they satellite or terrestrial.”The real future for digital is pay per view.

For instance, people will be able to buy a `season ticket’ to watch the matches of their favourite football team.” But, he warns: “There is work to be done encouraging people not to expect to get everything for free.”This is one reason he wants to find markets outside the UK, particularly on the Continent, where he believes there may be more of an immediate appetite for pay-per-view services.Using the GSkyB model, Allen intends to approach potential joint-venture partners in his target markets. One of these is expected to be a Granada Gold, featuring the best of Coronation Street, Prime Suspect, Poirot and other Granada hits. Thereafter, the Asian, US and European markets will all be targeted, probably with partners.”We see the GSkyB venture as a model for what we might achieve globally,” says Allen.It will be some time, of course, before the secondary market (cable and satellite) begins to contribute significantly to Granada’s profits. For the foreseeable future, it is the core ITV business that will fuel the media company’s growth Here, too, Allen sees room for expansion. “The consolidation of the ITV sector is continuing, and there will soon be fewer players,” he says.

“That should make it easier for us to work together.” Like any federation, the ITV system has had its share of tensions and jockeying, Allen concedes.He is one of the sector’s most fervent believers in consolidation, buoyed by the company’s happy experience combining Granada and LWT in 1994. “We put profits up by 60 per cent within 18 months, just on the basis of putting these two businesses together,” he boasts.There is even more value to be released within the ITV sector, Allen says. He is in favour of longer runs of programming, to spread costs over more hours of television That view is gaining support at the ITV Network Centre. He also believes there is a bigger market for “precinct dramas”, filmed on simple, established sets.

Granada’s new soap for ITV, The Grand, is an example of this.Allen wants his new company to expand the amount of programming it supplies to other broadcasters. This includes Channel 5, the new terrestrial service being launched next year by Pearson and MAI, two competing media companies. He is not complacent about the arrival of Channel 5, even though he expects its backers to have difficulty in moving the service into profit, particularly in light of the need for a pounds 100m-plus investment to help viewers retune their VCRs so they can receive the new signal.”Channel 5 will struggle, and the whole re-tuning exercise will be difficult But we mustn’t be complacent. “The idea that you could make money doing this was laughed at just a few years ago.

Now, everyone seems to understand it.”The first expansion is to come with the launch of five satellite channels, in league with Sky. “TV is a business, and the same rules apply.”It has been an undeniably good business for Granada, fuelled by programmes such as Coronation Street and Cracker and supplemented by significant overseas sales. But Allen sees more opportunities ahead.Granada Media Group will have a simple objective: to create new markets for the company’s programmes, either in the UK or internationally “We are programme publishers,” he says. It is also a growth business,” he said recently at LWT Television Centre in London. Allen has run Granada’s TV interests just as he has the rest of the group – with an eye to cost- cutting, low overheads and high operating margins.