Duncan Gray
The proposed sale of ITV’s broadcasting arm to Sky has been greeted, for the most part, with a kind of weary inevitability. ITV, the most successful commercial public service broadcaster in British history, is preparing to place its channels, ITVX and advertising operation inside Sky. ITV Studios will remain separate. The programmes, we are told, will remain free to air. The newsrooms will remain editorially distinct.
The danger now is overcorrection: waving Sky-ITV through as an act of regulatory penance
The temptation is to treat this as sad but necessary consolidation. British broadcasters are too small. Global platforms are too large. ITV’s advertising revenues have been moving the wrong way. Sky has the technology and advertising machinery. ITV has free-to-air reach and national habit. Put them together and a stronger British-facing competitor emerges.
That may be true. But it should not mean the deal gets waved through with the light-touch scrutiny that Philadelphia-based Comcast might prefer.
