TV-AM To Drop Out Of Channel 5 Bid

With just six days to go before the bidding deadline for Channel 5, yet another potential investor is to withdraw, leaving strong doubts for the future of the new terrestrial channel.

Chairman of TV-am, Bruce Gyngell, explained the decision, saying “We’ve looked at it, crunched the numbers and I have to say, I wouldn’t invest in it myself. So why expect institutional investors to?”.

The withdrawal of TV-am is another blow to the Entertainment Channel consortium which has also lost the interest of Conrad Black’s Telegraph group and the media group Time Warner. The recent withdrawals are pointing to revelations that it would cost the licence winner up to £100m to set up transmitters and to retune videos affected by the news service.

The decision means that there may be only one significant bidder for Channel 5 next week – Five TV, which includes Thames Television, Columbia and Moses Znaimer, a Canadian cable TV expert.

However, David Frost and Jeremy Fox, joint owners of the Entertainment Channel are refusing to retreat, saying that there is still a 50-50 chance that their bid will go ahead.