Feature: ITV Sales Now Dominated By Big Two

The consolidation of United News & Media’s TV assets into Granada Media last week caused a series of reshuffles in ITV resulting in airtime sales for the whole network being sold, for the first time, by one of two companies – Carlton Sales and Granada Media. Carlton bought HTV – the franchise which serves the West of England and Wales – from Granada and only days later picked up the ad sales business of Scottish Media Group’s Scottish TV (STV) and Grampian TV franchises, previously sold by UNM’s TSMS sales house. Granada subsumed the rest of TSMS and United’s TV business, leaving just the two ITV giants.

STV and Grampian brought an extra 4.5 million people to Carlton’s offering. According to agency estimate figures, the Central and North Scotland franchises have accounted for 6% of ITV’s advertising revenue in 2000 so far; HTV takes another 6%. Along with Carlton’s West Country, Central and London weekday areas, the group now controls 47% of the network’s revenue, reaching 31 million people and 56% of ABC1s. Granada picks up the remaining 53% of revenue.

According to industry observers, the Scottish licences are thought to be quite a hard sell; concern was also raised that it may be harder for advertisers to gain value as STV and HTV, not necessarily the most demanded areas when sold separately, will now be sold together. Demographically, HTV and the Scottish areas have lower percentages of advertisers’ key ABC1 audience – at 45% and 42% respectively. London and Meridian, for example, are 57% and 55% ABC1s. Whilst Carlton sells London weekday, Granada controls both London weekend and Meridian.

HTV, STV and Grampian offer around 8 million adults combined, whilst Granada’s Yorkshire and North West cover more than 10 million adults. All of Carlton’s franchises combined reach 54% of UK homes, whilst Granada reaches 65.4% – the overlap is in London. However, despite lower populations and fewer ABC1s (or perhaps as a result of), adults CPTs in Scotland are the lowest at 585p; HTV is also fairly cheap at 698p. These compare to London weekend at 1,719p, Meridian at 1,212p and Anglia 1,021p – all Granada sold franchises.

In terms of viewing, Granada now controls around 14.4% of all TV viewing, just below the 15% share restriction, and Carlton takes just over 10%.