Media Perspective: ITV must freshen up its content to make itself an easier sell.

ITV's programming seems a bit under-rated to me. OK, so liking elements of its output, especially on ITV1, depends on being a soap-loving detective drama fan.

But in these days of wall-to-wall property porn on digital TV, a bit of Coronation Street and Foyle's War can be no bad thing.

Yet, unsurprisingly given some of the gaffes it has made in the past, the broadcaster continues to take something of a kicking - both in the TV trading market and in the wider world.

On the commercial side, the market is braced for yet more change from ITV with the likely departure of its director of customer relationship marketing, Justin Sampson, and a greater focus on demonstrating 'return on investment' to advertisers - in other words, a harder business case.

But more recently, ITV's decisions on the programming side have come under greater scrutiny than those in the trading world, with critics arguing that it is no longer behaving like a commercial market leader.

The main charges being: first, that ITV1 has become over-reliant on a dwindling bunch of shows to deliver ratings and consequently ad revenue Second, that it has neglected both programming and on-air talent.

Press reports have made much of ITV's apparent insistence on flogging to death ITV1 hits such as Coronation Street (five episodes a week and counting) and The X Factor, and on pushing the celebrity format into areas so remote that even a Big ...