ISBA Voices Concern Over Stealth ITV Merger
ISBA has expressed concern that Carlton and Granada’s decision to combine parts of their marketing operations could represent an attempt to “merge by stealth.”
Carlton’s chief executive, Gerry Murphy, revealed in an interview in yesterday’s Financial Times that the two ITV companies are planning to merge parts of their back-office operations in an attempt to win back advertisers and cut costs at a time of financial uncertainty (see ITV Power Brokers Team Up To Stop The Rot).
ISBA has long been concerned about the dominance that single ownership of ITV would have on the UK airtime market (see
It continued: “Such practices could, conceivably, represent a form of collusion which would hold negative consequences for competition in the airtime sales market and give Carlton and Granada’s sales houses opportunities to manipulate advertising sales.”
ISBA emphasised that any moves between ITV’s sales houses to collude in airtime trading would result in “formal opposition” by advertisers, who would take the matter to the relevant regulatory authorities.
However, Murphy admitted in the same FT interview, that existing regulatory hurdles would damped the prospect of reopening merger talks for up to three years. ISBA welcomed the statement, saying it represented the first time that a senior ITV figure has publicly recognised this “key point”.
The IPA has also expressed concerns over ITV’s dominance in the market for airtime sales, and in its response to the Government’s draft Communications Bill (see Draft Communications Bill Relaxes Cross Media Rules), the advertising body called for enforceable rules on both advertising airtime sales and on those who own and control airtime (see IPA Gives Limited Welcome To Draft Bill).
ISBA: 020 7499 7502 www.isba.org.uk
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