On a corporate level, one of the big continuing stories in the media world this year was ITV, the once mighty name in UK commercial television, that continued to struggle, despite now being one commercial entity (in England and Wales at least). Top man Charles Allen was basically pushed out by increasingly tetchy shareholders, leaving the broadcaster without a credible chief. It was then that cable company NTL, having merged with Virgin Mobile and about to be rebranded Virgin Media, approached ITV with a takeover offer. A merged ITV/NTL would be a formidable force in UK TV - and a definite threat to rival BSkyB. Which is why the latter quickly bought up a 17.9% stake in ITV just as NTL made its takeover approach. It is unlikely ITV would have accepted NTL's approach anyway, but with BSkyB now an influential shareholder the commercial broadcaster's board were even less likely to do business with NTL. Which pissed off NTL and its shareholder Richard Branson rather a lot. After all that ITV announced it had poached Michael Grade off the BBC to become its new chairman - meaning despite everything that happened in 2006 more or less everyone seems quite optimistic and possibly even rather excited about the immediate future of ITV. Which means the broadcaster is unlikely to merge with anyone. So no mergers in this domain either - though the ITV companies in Scotland and Ulster (STV and UTV) did get close to merging and, despite initially calling off merger talks, are reportedly now again considering combining their operations.
Dec 22, 2006
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1 min read
ITV gets graded: Michael Grade hired as chairman after NTL and BSkyB stake
A review of ITV's 2006: chief Charles Allen left, NTL's takeover approach was rebuffed after BSkyB bought 17.9%, and Michael Grade was appointed chairman.