ITV plc

ITV plc is a British media company that operates 12 of the 15 regional television franchises that make up the ITV network, the oldest and largest commercial terrestrial television network in the United Kingdom. The network, which is currently branded ITV by ITV plc, has vied with the British Broadcasting Corporation's BBC One for the status of the UK's most watched channel since the 1950s (a crown it only lost in 2005).

The company was formed by the merger of Granada plc, the parent company of Granada Television, and Carlton Communications however it was effectively a takeover by Granada of Carlton with Granada being valued at about twice the worth of Carlton and getting 60% of the newly formed ITV plc with Carlton gaining the smaller 40% stake. It began trading on 2 February 2004. This was the most recent stage in a long process of mergers between the original ITV regional franchises, however it acquired the remaining 25% of the Breakfast franchise holder, GMTV, from The Walt Disney Company in 2009 and also Channel Television from its previous owners Yattendon Group plc in 2011.

ITV plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.

Pre-merger
ITV plc was the result of a merger between Granada and Carlton following 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 in 1996). 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, renaming 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 Radio plc.

The merger
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 upon Tyne, 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 (which has since closed and re-emerged as Shiver Productions); 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, reduced to a satellite operation of ITV Studios and primarily producing output for the international market or occasionally third parties in the UK, was eventually closed in January 2012.

Post-merger
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, replacing Granada Plus which ITV plc closed down 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 23 December 2005, with its Freeview space being taken over by replacements ITV4 and CITV, which launched in November 2005 and March 2006, respectively.

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 continued to be used (until recently) for part of the gaming section of itv.com.

Recent developments
The Company was the subject of a flurry of rumoured take-over and merger bids during 2006. For example, on 9 November 2006, NTL announced that it had approached ITV plc about a proposed merger. The merger was effectively blocked by British Sky Broadcasting on 17 November 2006 when it controversially bought a 17.9% stake in ITV plc for £940 million, a move that attracted anger from NTL shareholder Richard Branson and an investigation from media and telecoms regulator Ofcom. On 6 December 2006, 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. At the same time as the NTL bid, RTL, then the owner of Channel 5, was also rumoured to be preparing a bid for ITV plc, with the possibility of a stock-swap with BSkyB; the plan would have seen 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 Channel 5. In the end, no movement was made on this possible deal and RTL sold Channel 5 to Richard Desmond's Northern & Shell Network in July 2010.

In 2010, a large-scale business reorganisation, called "five-year Transformation Plan" was launched. Thanks to stringent working capital management and cost management some of the set goals were already achieved in 2012. These include a ranking upgrade (from BB- to BB+), an increase in audience share and reduction of debt (from net debt of £730 million at the end of 2008, to a positive net cash position of £16 million at the end of the first quarter 2012).

Organisation
ITV plc is divided into three divisions: Broadcasting, which operates the TV networks (including the ITV News Group, which runs the ITV regional licensees); ITV Studios, which comprises both UK and international production, ITV's facilities businesses and Global Entertainment which exploits programme rights, and Commercial & Online, which runs itv.com and the ITV Player, ITV's advertising sales arm and has responsibility for ITV plc's shareholdings in Freeview, Freesat, SDN and YouView.

ITV franchises
ITV plc currently owns the following ITV franchises in the UK:

Former Granada-owned franchises:
 * Anglia Television: East of England franchise
 * Border Television: Scottish/English Border and Isle of Man franchise
 * Granada Television: North West England franchise
 * London Weekend Television: London weekend franchise
 * Meridian Broadcasting: South and South East England franchise
 * Tyne Tees Television: North East England franchise
 * Yorkshire Television: Yorkshire/Lincolnshire franchise

Former Carlton-owned franchises:
 * Carlton Television: London weekday franchise
 * Central Independent Television: Midlands franchise
 * HTV: Wales and West of England franchise
 * Westcountry Television: South West England franchise

Former independently-owned franchises:
 * Channel Television: Channel Islands franchise

Both Carlton Television and London Weekend Television are now exclusively known as ITV London although both still remain in legal existence. The combined Wales and West franchise also operates as separate entities (ITV Wales, ITV West), although legally they both form part of the single franchise previously held by ITV Wales & West Group.

ITV plc is also the sole owner of the ITV national breakfast television franchise ITV Breakfast, formerly known as GMTV, which airs and produces Daybreak and Lorraine. On 18 October 2011, ITV plc agreed to buy Channel Television from Yattendon Group plc for an undisclosed amount, the transaction was completed on 23 November 2011.

Other assets
ITV plc owned a 16.9% shareholding in STV Group plc, owner of the Scottish and Grampian ITV franchises, which was reduced to around 5.5% following a Rights Issue that ITV did not take up. It also owns a 40% stake in its news provider, Independent Television News (ITN).

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.

In December 2005, ITV plc bought Friends Reunited, a website dedicated to reunited former school friends or work colleagues in a number of countries. In March 2009, the company announced it was selling the site as part of disposal of non-core assets.

ITV plc also owned Carlton Screen Advertising, once the largest cinema advertising business in the UK (and still the largest in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland). In 2008, the business's UK and Irish operations were separated, with the UK operation passing to Odeon Cinemas and Cineworld, and being renamed Digital Cinema Media. The Irish operation continued to trade as Carlton Screen Advertising, and remained in the ownership of ITV plc until May 2009.

The company is also the co-founder of Freesat alongside the BBC.

Channels formerly operated by ITV plc

 * ITV Play
 * ITV Sport Channel
 * ITV News Channel
 * Men & Motors
 * The Zone

Networks on which ITV plc channels broadcast
[1] 19 micro region variations covering England, Wales & the Channel Islands [2] 10 regional variations [3] 4 macro region variations [4] Only part time 01:00 - 06:00 currently

Channel 3 Licences in detail
Since the passing of the Broadcasting Act 1990, the legal name for the associated public service broadcasting (PSB) licences has been Channel 3. The number 3 having no significant meaning other than to distinguish it from the other PSB analogue channels at the time (namely BBC One, BBC Two and Channel 4). In part, the number 3 was chosen because the regional ITV station would be tuned on the third button on the television.

Channel 3 is divided into 15 regional broadcasting licences and one national breakfast time licence which the franchisees use as their remit to operate the ITV Network that covers the UK. In 2012 it was announced that the licences would be automatically renewed for a further ten years.

The Channel 3 licences are now held by three main companies:


 * ITV plc (via ITV Broadcasting Ltd) who own the 12 regional licences for England & Wales plus the Channel Islands (Channel Television Limited) and the national breakfast time licence (ITV Breakfast Broadcasting Limited) and broadcasts as ITV with +1 and HD variants.


 * UTV Media plc (via UTV Ltd) who own the licence for Northern Ireland and broadcasts as UTV with +1 and HD variants


 * STV Group plc (via STV Central Ltd and STV North Ltd) who own the two Scottish region licences and broadcasts as STV with +1 and HD variants.

Historically all companies holding a franchise licence were part owners of ITV Network Limited (a non-profit organisation), which commissioned and scheduled programming on the network. Since the amalgamation of several TV companies over a time period (and therefore control of the English regions and Welsh licences) under ITV plc, this arrangement has been re-negotiated and replaced by an affiliation system whereby ITV plc commissions and funds the network schedule, with STV and UTV paying a broadcast fee. All licensees though, have the right to opt out of network programming, with the exception of the national news bulletins, and to show their own programmes instead.