Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 29, 2024, 01:20:43 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Channel 4-Channel 5 merger?

Started by Blue Jam, March 02, 2004, 09:56:17 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Blue Jam

QuoteTelevision broadcasters Channel 4 and rival Five have held merger discussions, the BBC understands.
Talks about jointly selling advertising time extended to informal discussions about the possibility of a merger.

A tie-up between the channel and its commercial rival would provide stronger competition to Britain's newly emergent broadcasting giant, ITV plc.

However, any change of ownership at publicly-owned Channel 4 would require an act of parliament.

ITV worries

Sources close to the broadcasters confirmed informal talks were taking place.

Graham Lovelace, media analyst at consultants Lovelacemedia, said: "It's all linked to the merger of Carlton and Granada to form ITV plc.


 Channel 4 might be interested in it because they are declining and we are growing

Five spokesman  


"Channel 4 and other commercial broadcasters are worried about the creation of a single ITV advertising sales house."

He said a merger between Channel 4 and Five - with Channel 4 playing the role of senior partner to Five's "cheeky sister" - could benefit both companies.

Closer ties

But he added: "Channel 4 is signalling to the regulator Ofcom and the government that its days as a publicly-owned company are numbered unless the government puts more money in or Channel 4 gets together with similar players in the industry."

A spokesman for Five described talk of a merger between the two companies as "just speculation".

"Channel 4 might be interested in it because they are declining and we are growing," he told BBC news online.

Five is jointly owned by Britain's United Business Media and German broadcaster RTL.

Mr Thompson is understood to believe that both channels would fare better in the increasingly competitive UK commercial sector if they worked more closely together.
- from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3492276.stm

Will we just get more soft-porn "documentaries" and programmes about the Nazis? Will it force the BBC to make more effort and drop reality shows*? Or is this merger really likely to go ahead at all?

*Or is John Major just talking complete bollocks?