ITV plc
ITV plc owns a 16.9% shareholding in SMG plc, owner of the Scottish and Grampian ITV franchises, as well as a 40% stake in its news provider Independent Television News Limited.
On 27 April 2005 ITV plc bought SDN, the digital terrestrial franchise holder of Multiplex A (currently transmitting ten channels) from its shareholders, S4C and UBM for £134 million.
ITV plc also owns the largest cinema advertising business in the UK and Ireland, Carlton Screen Advertising and recently bought Friends Reunited, a website dedicated to reunited former school friends or work colleagues in a number of countries.
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History
ITV plc was the result of mergers between the various mergers between the companies of the ITV network that had taken place from 1993 when the ownership rules were relaxed.
The first wave of mergers began with Yorkshire Television acquiring Tyne Tees Television in 1992, forming a parent group called Yorkshire-Tyne Tees Television Holdings. In 1994, Carlton Communications - which had previously already owned a 20% stake in Central Independent Television - acquired the remainder of the company and, thanks to Central's shareholdings, inherited a 20% stake in Meridian Broadcasting. Later the same year, Granada acquired LWT (through a hostile takeover worth in the region of £750 million) and MAI, which controlled Meridian Broadcasting, acquired Anglia Television (with MAI becoming United News & Media, after itself merging with United Newspapers - owners of The Daily Express). Ownership rules, that previously restricted ownership of ITV licences by one company to two outright, plus 20% in a third, were relaxed, and so Carlton went on to acquire Westcountry Television (later re-branding it Carlton, along with Central), Granada acquired Yorkshire-Tyne Tees Holdings (with the parent group becoming Granada Media, later simply Granada) and United acquired HTV.
The idiosyncrasies and business model of the future ITV plc operation can be found in the way these new conglomerates operated their franchises. Carlton re-branded all of its stations with its own name, creating a single identity across the whole expanse of its territory. By contrast, Granada and United, while keeping the franchisees names, centralised their continuity departments - Granada in Leeds and United in Southampton. All three, however, merged the network production operations of their franchises, creating Carlton Productions, Granada Content and United Productions. This would later be taken several stages further.
By the end of the 1990s, there were three dominating owners of the ITV franchises in England and Wales: Carlton Communications, Granada plc and United News and Media. In 2000, after an aborted merger attempt with Carlton, UNM decided to leave ITV and Granada bought all the UNM stations, but sold HTV to Carlton in order to comply with the permitted audience percentage covered by a single broadcasting interest. It kept the production arm of HTV, however, re-naming it Granada Bristol and moving it out of Bath Road to a new, smaller office in Whiteladies Road (near the BBC). This arm of the company finally closed in 2006, following later rationalisation of ITV's production operations. The last remaining independent ITV franchise in England and Wales, Border Television, had been bought by Capital Group in 2000, and was sold on to Granada in 2001, with Border's radio assets being retained by Capital (now GCap).
In 2004, Granada and Carlton merged, creating a single company for all ITV franchises in England and Wales. One of the consequences of the merger was (according to the company) an over-capacity of studio facilities and production units around the country, which had previously been rivals, but were now all part of the same group. In order to make cost savings, several large regional headquarters, studio sites and programme departments closed and merged. Among the casualties were network production and studio facilities of Tyne Tees in Newcastle, Meridian in Southampton, Carlton in Nottingham and Anglia in Norwich. In all cases, ITV moved the regional franchisee to a new location complete with hi-tech facilities for news production, but with a minimal number of (physically smaller) studios and the loss of many jobs. Tyne Tees' factual department merged with Yorkshire's in Leeds; Meridian's factual and sport production moved to London; all network production in Nottingham was re-allocated to London, Manchester or Leeds (and the local Central News studio moved to Birmingham), and Anglia Factual has been reduced to a satellite operation, primarily producing output for the international market or occasionally third parties in the UK.
Prior to the merger, and despite being rivals within ITV, Granada and Carlton had already been involved in several joint ventures, including the digital terrestrial television operator ITV Digital that went bankrupt in 2002. They also owned the digital channel ITV2, which had launched on December 1998, and 65% of the (re-branded) ITV News Channel, previously owned by ITN and originally launched as the ITN News Channel. As well as consolidating its (now 40%) shareholding in ITN itself, the newly merged company was able to buy the final 35% stake in the ITV News Channel from ITN's original partners NTL in April 2004. In November the same year, and following a frantic last-minute deal with BSkyB to buy its half of the Granada Sky Broadcasting joint venture, they launched the digital channel ITV3, which replaced Granada Plus on satellite and cable. A year later they launched ITV4. However, due to multiplex issues (and the fact that it was losing money) the ITV News Channel controversially had its hours on Freeview]] reduced, and was finally closed down on 23rd December 2005, with its Freeview space was taken over by ITV4 and the CITV Channel, which launched in March 2006.
April 2006 saw the launch of the participation channel ITV Play. Following a series of scandals surrounding participation TV, the dedicated ITV Play channel was closed down in March 2007, followed by the late-night phone-in quiz shows on the ITV Network in December 2007, however the brand has continued to be used for part of the new gaming section of itv.com.
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Future
ITV plc has been the subject of a flurry of rumoured take-over and merger bids since it was formed. For example, on 2006-11-09, NTL announced that it had approached ITV plc about a proposed merger [1][2]. The merger was effectively blocked by BSkyB on 2006-11-17 when it controversially bought a 17.9% stake in ITV plc for £940 million [3], a move that attracted anger from NTL shareholder Richard Branson[4] and an investigation from media and telecoms regulator Ofcom[5]. On 2006-12-06, NTL announced that it had complained to the Office of Fair Trading about BSkyB's move. NTL stated that it had withdrawn its attempt to buy ITV plc, citing that it did not believe that there was any possibility to make a deal on favourable terms[6]. At the same time as the NTL bid, RTL, the owner of Five, was also rumoured to be preparing a bid for ITV plc,[7] with the possibility of a stock-swap with BSkyB. The plan would see RTL acquiring BSkyB's stake in ITV plc (with the aim of further acquisitions of shares in the future) in exchange for BSkyB taking full control of Five. However, no move from RTL has yet materialised so far.
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References
- ^ NTL (2006-11-09). "Ntl Incorporated Discussions with ITV plc". Press release. Retrieved on 2006-12-06.
- ^ ITV plc (2006-11-09). "ITV and NTL 'in merger talks'". Press release. Retrieved on 2006-12-06.
- ^ Welsh, James. "Sky buys 17.9% of ITV", Digital Spy, 2006-11-17. Retrieved on 2006-12-06.
- ^ Wilkes, Neil. "Sky/ITV: Branson statement in full", Digital Spy, 2006-11-20. Retrieved on 2006-12-06.
- ^ Welsh, James. "Ofcom examines impact of Sky's ITV stake", Digital Spy, 2006-11-21. Retrieved on 2006-12-06.
- ^ Oatts, Joanne. "NTL complains about Sky as it drops plans for ITV Ofcom", Digital Spy, 2006-12-06. Retrieved on 2006-12-06.
- ^ Oatts, Joanne. "RTL to make ITV decision this week", Digital Spy, 2006-11-16. Retrieved on 2006-12-06.
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External links
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