ITV programme chief David Liddiment's successes include Cold Feet, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and Pop Idol but the failure of Saturday evening football and reality show Survivor meant he became a casualty of the company's downturn.

WITH what some considered unseemly haste, ITV screened this week a factual drama about Harold Shipman, the doctor convicted two years ago of murdering his patients. They might have done better - and received fewer complaints - if they'd turned the cameras on themselves as the current situation at network centre would make a great drama out of a crisis.

The announcement that programme chief David Liddiment is being evicted from the ITV house after five years followed the departure of chairman Leslie Hill in June and chief executive Stuart Prebble the month before. Liddiment decided to leave of his own free will, perhaps before ITV's franchise holders decided they needed a scapegoat for the commercial broadcaster's current woes.

The financial disaster known as ITV Digital and a big downturn in advertising has resulted in a squeeze on production budgets.

On top of that, last year its audience share fell below BBC1's for the first time. The difference was minimal - the Beeb took 26.9 per cent against ITV's 26.8 per cent - but the fact that it had happened at all looked bad.

Liddiment wasn't pushed, he jumped while saying that "I can look forward to getting my life back and escaping the tyranny of the overnight ratings".

There appears to be no bitterness. He reckons to have enjoyed the job more than any other in his career. "It's a job I always wanted and I have enjoyed it immensely," he says.

He'll leave at the end of the year after a replacement has been found. While the current situation is gloomy, he can look back on his tenure of deciding what viewers will be able to watch on ITV with a degree of pride.

He managed to unite the franchises making up the network into a cohesive force in the ever-expanding TV market, rather than a bunch of squabbling companies around the country that they were.

He became director of programmes in September 1997, with his role being upgraded to director of channels just over a year ago. Among his successes he can count Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, Popstars, Pop Idol, Cold Feet and Bad Girls.

Broadcast, the industry's trade magazine, described him as "one of the key architects of ITV's renaissance in the years leading up to the dotcom crash and the resulting drop in ad spend".

He's had his failures too. He promised to change the face of Saturday evening television - and goodness knows, it needed a shake-up - by introducing Premiership highlights at 7pm. This followed ITV paying a fortune to outbid the BBC for the rights.

Viewers were less enthusiastic about the idea. Poor ratings and pressure from advertisers eventually forced him to shift soccer to a post-10pm slot and restore Cilla Black's Blind Date and other tired old entertainment shows to peaktime. His bold experiment was a failure.

ITV has also suffered falling daytime ratings following the departure of Richard and Judy from This Morning. And budgets for children's programmes were cut as money was diverted to peaktime schedules.

Survivor was another expensive flop. The US hit, in which a bunch of people were castaway on a desert island to fend for themselves under the scrutiny of a film crew, failed to attract big audiences over here.

Despite poor ratings, Liddiment commissioned a second series - which did just as badly.

That was a rare lapse in judgement. He's done well against an invigorated and combative BBC, where controller Lorraine Heggessey's aggressive scheduling has helped BBC1 overtake ITV.

He leaves as ITV pumps an extra £100m into drama for 2003, a welcome move as the channel has been forced to delay screening a number of projects because the network didn't have the money to pay for them.

Clive Jones, ITV's joint managing director, has paid tribute to Liddiment's "immeasurable" contribution to the channel. "He will be an extremely hard act to follow," he says. Which does, of course, raise the question of his successor.

The obvious person to help solve the ITV crisis is Channel 5 chief executive Dawn Airey, who has steered that channel since it began five years ago.

She'd already been approached, it's been reported, for the vacant chief executive post at ITV before Liddiment's announced his intention of quitting.

While some are tipping her to take over, Airey herself told Broadcast that she didn't think the job was right for her.

Other contenders don't have as high a profile as she does. But Channel 4's director of programmes, Tim Gardam, is considered a possibility, as is Simon Shaps, managing director of Granada Content and a senior figure at one of ITV's biggest companies.

Carlton director of programmes and former Panorama editor Steve Hewlett is in with a chance too. He's been up for the BBC1 controller's job in the past. Heggessey herself is seen as unlikely to switch sides, given her strong position and bigger budget at BBC1.

The future for Liddiment, a former LWT director of programmes, remains uncertain. Some say he might seek out a post in the theatre. He's already on the board of West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, where he directed the premiere of Kay Mellor's A Passionate Woman.

He had comforting words in his farewell statement which could be summed up as the worst is over. "Despite the financial and competitive challenges we have faced most recently, there is a terrific spirit alive in ITV that I know will see it thrive in the future," he said.