They fully recognised the significance of the need to schedule properly. There were already arrangements for co-ordination between ITV and BBC - particularly on education programmes - and clearly for the purposes of operating a service more flexible and frequent meetings would be necessary. There should be no difficulty about, for example, putting together a sub-committee of the committee/council meeting serviced by officials.
Whatever happened, co-ordinating machinery would be essential to deal with news coverage. A single newsroom covering Welsh language reporting raised major difficulties of principle.
On the technical issue of providing coverage they hoped by the end of 1982 to have some 75% of Wales covered. They accepted, however, that small areas not covered were the more remote Welsh speaking areas where coverage was most crucial. It would still be possible to provide an acceptable level of cover by the beginning of 1983, but this would require some juggling of priorities in favour of the relatively small numbers of people in remote Wales and at the expense of English viewers.
As to reassuring the public that the IBA would play the game, the Government could make it a requirement that the IBA should produce the right kind of programmes at the right times.
As to their target audience, the IBA were aiming for 15-20% for their second channel and 40% on their first. That would certainly be their target for commercial success. They did see ITV2 as being a minority channel although they hoped to put one or two popular programmes on it to induce viewers to switch over from time to time.
8
-3-
