Clive Jones (ITV News Group CEO)
Clive Jones is Chief Executive of the ITV News Group. In this role he oversees the production of the national and international news on ITV and the production of all regional news and non-news programming across England and Wales. He also oversees ITV Network Sports Production, Broadcast Resources, transmission and the compliance of all network and regional programmes on ITV. He chairs GMTV, the UK’s commercial breakfast broadcaster — owned by GMTV Ltd, comprising of ITV plc (75%) and The Walt Disney Company (25%). On 23 April 2007, a BBC Panorama investigation disclosed that callers to GMTV's phone-in competitions may have been defrauded out of around £40 million, because the telephone system operator, Opera Interactive Technology, had determined the winners before the phone lines had closed. GMTV bosses blames the operators and pled ignorance but a Daily Mail enquiry stated that: "GMTV executives were fully aware that their breakfast programmes were taking premium-rate entries to their phone-in competition after the point at which it was possible to win." With GMTV's actual output, viewers may be getting defrauded of a whole lot more. Eamonn Holmes, the former GMTV presenter (once safe in a new job with SKY) felt that the programme was 'dumbing down' and complained to the Mirror about the commercialisation of the programme: "which meant that even an interview with the Prime Minister was interrupted for a sponsored item called Turkey Titbits when Eamonn had to talk about using up Christmas leftovers."
Jones is a non-executive member of the S4C Board of Directors and chairs the Wales IP Fund and Creative Business Wales for the Welsh Assembly Government, and Mediabox, the Government's new £6m youth media fund. Jones was made a fellow of the Royal Television Society in 1997.
Previously he was Joint Managing Director of ITV Network Limited for two years in addition to being the Chief Executive of Carlton Television responsible for Carlton's four ITV regions and Carlton Sales, a post to which he was appointed in 1996.
After graduating from the LSE, Jones began his career in journalism at The Yorkshire Post in 1970 and joined Yorkshire Television in 1978 since when he has worked continuously within ITV. Previous posts include Editor of TV-AM, Chief Operating Officer of TVS, Managing Director of London News Network and Managing Director of Central Television, then ITV's biggest regional company.
He founded and chaired the Cultural Diversity Network, which according to the BBC was set up in 1995 after:
- "Carlton commissioned research which showed that it was loosing large chunks of its Black and Asian audiences to cable and satellite channels...ITC and BSC research confirmed these findings and added that ethic minorities found terrestrial TV to be increasingly irrelevant to their lives."
He also chairs Skillset, the Sector Skills Council for film, television and new media and YCTV, the inner-city charity that provides initial television training and programme making opportunities to schoolchildren and young people. He is a governor of the NFT, on the board of the Young Vic Theatre and sits on the Runnymede Trust and the advisory board of Polis.
