ITV to merge with C4 and Five? Not a chance
Yesterday, ITV unveiled a cunning plan. It could merge with Channel 4 and Five, to save all the commercial (advertising funded) broadcasters from certain doom during this recession. But it will never happen. And it’s not just me who says so.
I caught former ITV exec Steve Hewlett opining on this subject on, of all things, the Chris Evans show on Radio 2 last night which had thrown over its business slot to the story. Hewlett, who is now a media commentator and consultant, said the TV mega-merger had “not a snowball’s chance in hell” of ever happening.
His reason? The Competition Commission has just vetoed a proposal for the BBC, ITV and C4 to club together and launch and online TV service, codenamed Project Kangaroo. The commission reckoned Kangaroo would control too much of the emerging market in online video. So why the hell, asked Hewlett last night, would it allow three major broadcasters to merge and control between 60 and 70 per cent of the TV advertising market which is demonstrably worth several billion pounds?
Answer: it will not. This merger won’t happen but the idea has raised ITV’s share price for a while and perhaps rattled the bars of those in government who are thinking about the future of TV. There certainly will be some consolidation among broadcasters, urged along by the recession, but for my money a merger of C4 and Five is still more likely, with or without a deal with BBC Worldwide.
